Hametsu no Oukoku (The Kingdoms of Ruin)

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Japanese: はめつのおうこく

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Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 12

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Oct 7, 2023 to Dec 23, 2023

Premiered: Fall 2023

Broadcast: Saturdays at 01:53 (JST)

Producers: Mainichi Broadcasting System, Nikkatsu, Mag Garden, RAY, Nichion, arma bianca, NetEase, CTW

Licensors: None found, add some

Studios: Yokohama Animation Lab

Source: Manga

Genres: Action, Drama, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Theme: Gore

Demographic: Shounen

Duration: 24 min. per ep.

Rating: R - 17+ (violence & profanity)

Statistics

Score: 6.25¹ (scored by 65,605 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #8455²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #1370

Members: 171,642

Favorites: 898

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6.25

Ranked #8455Popularity #1370Members 171,642

Fall 2023TVYokohama Animation Lab

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Episodes: /12

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Synopsis

Bestowed with magic from God, witches worked to guide humanity toward progress, garnering adoration and fear alike from humans. However, times have since changed. With the advancement of scientific knowledge, humans now stand on an equal footing with witches. Determined to weave their own destinies and establish supremacy over the world, the mighty Redia Empire has ordered the extermination of all witches, which may bring the era of magic to an end.

Fleeing from the decree, the famed witch Chloe and her apprentice, Adonis, seek refuge. Hot on their heels, the Empire captures the duo and mercilessly executes Chloe. Agonized by the brutal murder of his master and the callousness of humans, Adonis vows to avenge Chloe by annihilating humanity with the very magic they intend to destroy.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Hametsu no Oukoku was released on Blu-ray in three volumes from February 2, 2024, to April 3, 2024.

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Adaptation:

Hametsu no Oukoku

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Adonis

Main

Ishikawa, Kaito
Japanese

Doroka

Main

Waki, Azumi
Japanese

Chloe

Supporting

Shiraishi, Ryouko
Japanese

Yamato

Supporting

Hino, Satoshi
Japanese

Clementine, Ophelia

Supporting

Karyou, Mayumi
Japanese

Kunoichi Crew #6

Supporting

Okamura, Haruka
Japanese

Punch

Supporting

Miyake, Kenta
Japanese

Kunoichi Crew #5

Supporting

Kurisaka, Minami
Japanese

Goethe

Supporting

Saitou, Jirou
Japanese

Shirousagi

Supporting

Taniyama, Kishou
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Cao, Cong

Producer

Aoi, Hiroyuki

Producer

Yoshitake, Shintarou

Producer

Wakabayashi, Hideyuki

Producer

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Opening Theme

"Kieru made (消えるまで)" by Hana Hope

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Ending Theme

"Prayer" by Who-ya Extended

Reviews

Dec 22, 2023

KANLen09

Recommended

Funny

The Kingdoms of Ruin - Extreme hatred built on nonsense logic that perverses the idea of justice, but it being "so bad it's good" to play the bad guy and get some mind-numbing satisfaction due to it being over-the-top edgy? I highly question the "novel" concept.

When was the last time we had an extremely over-the-top gory and violent series filled with extreme hatred to the point of nepotism? For many, the classic series of Lynn Okamoto's Elfen Lied would come to mind, being the Summer 2004 anime that would, for one, grow to be infamous for its violent mess of gore, cruelty, and nudity. Even ... after 20 years, its effect on AniManga can still be felt for millennia as a cult favourite, inspiring many others like Ryukishi07's Higurashi franchise and Sakae Esuno's Mirai Nikki a.k.a Future Diary to name a few.

Well, for one prolific author who goes by the name of yoruhashi, he/she thought otherwise to create something that would capture the attention of those reading the one and only work that would get people riled up in a frenzy: Hametsu no Oukoku a.k.a The Kingdoms of Ruin. The work that is unapologetic to its vulgar themes of gore and violence will definitely make one feel VERY uncomfortable and disgusted from its premise alone, from the typical war between entities to pure genocide. Side note: This is actually the sequel to the unknown prequel series "The Kingdom of Caliburn", in which some of the characters in this series had more prominent roles there, which spans 175 chapters. How does both series link to each other? Read on to find out.

In a dystopian world where God created humans and witches, the latter were more advanced thanks to their magic, which is used to help people and maintain prosperity between the two entities. However, with the rapid advance in technology akin to the Industrial Revolution, the human Redia Empire took control and immediately declared that the witches were rendered obsolete, ordering the assassination of all witches with no plea for mercy. And for one such witch by the name of Chloe, she raised a human apprentice by the name of Adonis, who is still taught the old world's tradition that humans and witches live together in harmony. But the reality could not be farther from the truth, for soon Adonis learned about the Empire's ruthless killings of witches, Chloe included, as she is stripped and humiliated before the humans before meeting her cruel death. That sent Adonis into a rage, and with the magic that he learned from Chloe, the capture by the Redia Empire unleashed his rage, though it would not take until sometime in the future that someone would coincidentally get him to escape from the Empire to enter a revenge party against humanity.

You can already tell that everything about this show is not meant to be likeable. From the outset, the characters are all either a bunch of pure-hearted and naïve, or set for disaster with their heart-filled egos, trying to fulfil what's best for the people and for themselves. Let's start with Adonis, the pure-hearted human who still wishes for reconciliation between humans and witches; that objective was long gone with the public execution of his teacher Chloe. With his magic pen, which was the last gift given from her, that is the human apprentice's only tool to invoke magic against anyone who is in direct conflict with his interests. The revenge-filled heart has no remorse or any hope because reality is shoved in your face, and that's Adonis's reason for living — to ensure that he only gets the last laugh. Needless to say, there will be at least a comrade alongside him who wants to make her own live count as well, and that is the witch Doroka. Like young Adonis before his world thinking was tarnished, Doroka is nothing more than just the typical witch, sold for the Redia Empire's slavery and got saved due to perchance, only to unconsciously release Adonis from his stranglehold. But her character development is definitely one of the most bizarre I have seen in anime this far, going from the kind-nurtured girl to one who has no conception of reality, even in the face of cruelty, and Adonis acting as the antithesis of the world. It's certainly frustrating to see Doroka act the way she does, always being the damsel-in-distress for Adonis to save her, apart from being a burden just by her presence alone.

That said, apart from the other human profiles ranging from the Redia Empire's nobility to the side profiles of the witches, the most prominent from the Empire's leader of Emperor Goethe to the Queen's helper of Shirousagi (whose relationship is the most "show, don't tell" subtlest of all), the link between both Caliburn and Ruins is quite the fascination and interest that while this is just side cheddar as opposed to Ruins, nonetheless, here it is, and take this information as you will about Doroka:

In every universe, there will always be a Witch of Love, and a Witch Disciple (like Chloe/Doroka and Adonis). And in the Kingdom of Caliburn, Dorothea and Alfred have to defeat the Queen (which is another Witch of Love from a different timeline). Unfortunately, they were defeated, and she cut Alfred's head to revive her Witch Disciple (her lover in that timeline). That is also the reason for Dorothea to come to the timeline of The Kingdom of Ruin; the purpose is to revive Alfred in her timeline by killing Adonis, but I guess there are requirements that are not mentioned anywhere because she could have killed him long ago. Basically, it is a cycle. The Witch of Love from this timeline will lose her lover and eventually go to another timeline to save him.

Former Date A Live director Keitarou Motonaga may not have the best track record when it comes to directing shows (see studio A-CAT shows of Winter 2021's Soukou Musume Senki a.k.a LBX Girls, and Winter 2022's Kenja no Deshi wo Nanoru Kenja a.k.a She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man), but for par of the course, he has done the adaptation justice with the minimum of his resources, the most glaring aspect being the rather subpar production by Yokohama Animation Lab. Despite all of the issues, from censorship to iffy animation, partially faulted by the manga's depiction of its violent nature, it looks decent to a palpable degree...provided that you can bear through the anime's repulsive nature.

The music itself is easily the best part of the anime, given its depressive nature akin to a genocide state that sees deaths as common influxes of daily life. Most particularly, Hana Hope's OP has the mystical feeling of hope at the beginning until it hits the chorus, where everything just drops the ball to full-on melancholic misery. And Who-Ya Extended's ED song "Prayer", I just could not think of a better song to express all of the regret and rage that Adonis felt while losing Chloe, then pursuing revenge as his full-time job to eradicate humanity, or anyone that does not lean to his philosophy. I for sure did not think that the ED song would become one of my favourite songs of this season, because depressive songs, ironically enough, make for banger songs (listen to Enen no Shouboutai's Season 1, 1st Cour's ED song of Keina Suda's veil as a great example). Latom.

At the end of the day, you and I both know that Hametsu no Oukoku a.k.a The Kingdoms of Ruin is a trash/garbage-tier shit anime/series, let's not kid ourselves. But I'd like to think that for as much as Elfen Lied had done the same to break my heart and soul watching something as gut-wrenching, this show has surprisingly done the same for me.

You can treat my review like a bludgeoning troll, but to me, experiencing this show has been a sorrowful, but engrossing, yet "entertaining" ride like a Highway to Hell...or appropriately, a Crimson Skies of the High Road to Revenge's memory burn that I will never, EVER, forget.

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Jan 3, 2024

Keny0

Mixed Feelings

First two episodes were like a strong 7/10, maybe even an 8. The hook is really there and you wanna see how this epic revenge story pans out! But unfortunately the overall quality and writing just falls off one cliff after another. Every. Passing. Episode.

The animation gets terrible last half of the season and they just keep relentlessly throwing plot twists, dark stuff and blood fiestas in your face for the sake of it, hoping it will keep the viewers ever interested. (It gets old and even predictable real quick) Oh yeah and the author most likely gets off on unhinged violence towards women, ...

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Dec 22, 2023

jahver

Not Recommended

Funny

I’ll be the first to admit I am an inconsistent writer. My life is a constant barrage of new tasks and distractions that keeps me from accomplishing, well, pretty much everything I set my mind to. Things get especially difficult to manage around the holiday season but here I am, back in the game, because over the past 13 or so weeks I’ve been subjected to one of the most indefensibly piss-poor, psychologically agitating pieces of “art” I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Hametsu no Whatever, Who Actually Gives a Shit About the Title of This Garbage is the rare kind of complete and ... utter disaster that only surfaces once every few years, whenever anime studios have to really start scraping the bottom of the barrel for content. It single-handedly snapped me out of my depressive stupor because of how eye-openingly bad it was. It even inspired me, in a way, to never produce anything on this level of quality, lest I never call myself an artist again in my life. I’ve started writing and illustrating again thanks to Hametsu, and I at least owe it or the author of the webcomic or the staff behind the adaptation a bit of thanks by trying to interpret this work of pure schizophrenia before I inevitably sink back into the oblivion of daily apathy.
Hametsu is an anime where not a single aspect of it is pleasant or inviting. It shocks you in with a bleak, cynical first episode full of rape, slavery, genocide, and just about every one of humanity’s worse vices before shifting gears and psychotically jumping between genres every single episode like an ADHD kid who managed to ingest a red skittle and keeps trying to entertain himself with whatever’s around him. We go from EXTREMELY fucking edgy revenge fantasies where characters unironically say stuff like “I don’t even feel like raping you so I’ll just kill you” that sounds more like an Anal Cunt song title than real dialogue while standing waist-deep in pools of blood rife with faux-philosophical melodrama about how “humanity is…LE BAD”, to corny shoujo shenanigans where the unbearably annoying main girl fawns over the edgelord bishounen MC and gets scared by a spider or something and turns into a chibi while silly comedic music plays. It genuinely feels like a series that was on the brink of getting axed every chapter. At a certain point I should’ve discerned that there was nothing of value on display here and moved on, but it’s hard to look away from a trainwreck.
From the very first episode, Hametsu wants you to know that this is a serious show. The comically evil and petty human emperor genocides every witch on the planet because modern technology has made magic obsolete (the emperor actually says “the fruit of our wisdom, the smartphone” is superior to fucking magic that can level cities) and sexually assaults Adonis’ mentor/love interest in front of him before shooting her in the head while thousands of people salivate like animals. Adonis is then placed into stasis (for some reason, they never really explain this brilliant little moment of bad writing) to let his hatred marinate for a few years until he’s ready to kill his way to the emperor. Want to understand the complex mechanisms at play that led to all of this happening? It’s simple, really. The queen is actually a time-traveling witch who has the power to mind control everyone on earth except for other witches, who are all female and reproduce asexually using a magic tree on the moon, and the other female MC is a reincarnation of her from the future who has the same magic power as her or something according to the author Yoruhashi’s previous work (which is untranslated so I’m doing my best to try and interpret it using what meager Japanese I know) so she decides to mind control the king and everyone under her rule into hating witches so she can wipe them all out and end any competition to her reign, and also the anti-witch technology is giving everyone super cancer.
Got all that? Good, because after Pinkshit (I’m not even going to dignify this character by calling her by name, you’ll learn why later) manages to execute a prison break by stealing the controls from a wildly out of place caricature of a transsexual, Adonis breaks out and decides that instead of killing the emperor, he’d rather cause 9/11 2 and gun down thousands of innocent people (children included) onscreen because they’re guilty by association. From there, the show descends into misery porn and over the top wangst for the next 5 or so episodes. They go to the moon, all the witches want to revive Adonis’ mentor and kill him, he summons the humans to kill them instead and revives Pinkshit (an annoying nag he’s known for all of a day), kills a guy named Yamato who wants to fuck his sister or something, burns down the magic witch tree and leaves. Is this Alpha Male behavior or blatant stupidity? Also, remember the king? The queen brainwashes him into an heroing by throwing himself off a building because he got super cancer from the anti-witch technology. He’s not important after all. What is important, however, is her becoming an Idol of all things, because it wouldn’t be a product of the absolute dregs of the anime industry in 2023 without idolshit being forced in even when it makes zero sense in-universe. Now the two are suddenly back on earth and the show takes a few episodes to devolve into a bunch of thinly-connected shoujo-lite moments where Pinkshit and Adonis are radically different characters out of nowhere and there’s an unfunny quip or silly moment every 5 seconds.
This is where the series’ two main issues become clear as day; firstly, it can’t commit to anything. The tone shifts around with little restraint in between episodes, sometimes multiple times within the span of 2 minutes. It introduces a dozen new characters every single episode and either kills them off before they can meaningfully grow or develop or blatantly writes them out of the story once the writer gets bored of whatever subplot they spawned from. Even Adonis’ revenge plot gets phased out halfway through the fucking anime. This is not how you write a compelling story; this is a teenager’s emotionally charged fanfiction you’d read on LiveJournal in 2006 where every character is based on someone from their high school.
The second glaring issue of Hametsu is how unlikeable each and every character is. I don’t think Adonis requires or deserves an in-depth explanation; he’s a one-dimensional perpetually emo dipshit with zero critical thinking skills who can’t even seem to remember his own motivation. He gets his ass kicked in every single fight and only manages to win because of his tremendous plot armor. No one ever refutes his insane rhetoric outside the other worst character, Pinkshit, who is honest to God one of the most insufferable characters ever written. She is a walking woman moment; nearly every single line of dialogue from her is her whining and crying about how Adonis shouldn’t kill the enemy combatants who are literally trying to murder and/or enslave the both of them and their entire race at any given moment. She doesn’t shed any tears for the innocent people Adonis slaughtered earlier in the show, but she’s more than willing to slap him in the face and bitch him out for defending her from the never-ending onslaught of armed soldiers and cyborgs who want nothing more than to see them hanging and literally killed off the last members of her entire fucking race a few minutes ago. Pinkshit’s even more out of touch with reality than the guy who wants to commit mass murder, and she’s supposed to be the moral high ground of the anime. Every 5 seconds she’s whining about how “we can all still live in peace!” like a braindead hippie who reduces every single complex human thought process down to the simplest possible rationalization. Sure, she may have a point, this conflict is only arbitrary and would’ve been avoided altogether if anyone in this setting wasn’t staggeringly retarded, but just because every character is a slave to their own emotions perpetuating a totally pointless and dumb as fuck battle doesn’t mean we need a character pointing out what’s already obvious every single minute they’re onscreen as if that isn’t the most annoying thing a writer can do. I’m not sure if Pinkshit’s intentionally written to be out of touch because you can never be sure of anything with this show, but if she is it shows the author has only an incredibly shallow and cursory grasp on the concept of pacifism. Writing a character who is both naïve and likeable is admittedly difficult, and Yoruhashi decides to forgo that entirely by writing Pinkshit to be so comically stupid and braindead that any sense of likeability is automatically thrown out the window whenever she opens her hole. The only thing she really excels at is rabidly simping for Adonis and taking the brunt of his abuse, because pandering to the “I can fix him!” crowd is a guaranteed way to print money.
Meanwhile, every other character in Hametsu is some kind of raving degenerate with no moral compass or a weird sex pervert. They’re all shallow, one-dimensional psychopaths. As a matter of fact I couldn’t tell you any of their names, but I can tell you what atrocities they engage in, because every character in Hametsu would feel right at home in the Dirlewanger Brigade. And the more savagery and inhumanity gets thrown in your face, the cheaper and emptier it starts to feel. There is no moral gray area here outside of Adonis; everything is presented in extremes. In Hametsu, you are either a good guy or a remorseless monster who will gladly inflict any type of suffering onto whoever you can when it’s convenient. The only in-between is Adonis, whose mass-murdering behavior gets portrayed more like a he’s just a tortured bad boy making a few mistakes rather than a victim warped into a mass murderer by his circumstances. He has no depth. If the story even bothered trying to explore his thought process and rather than trying to gloss over his atrocities, there’d be at least some semblance of humanity to him. But then his previously defined personality gets thrown out because Pinkshit’s intolerable idealism starts rubbing off on him. At the end of the day the only character I can say I thoroughly enjoyed watching onscreen was Shirousagi, the white guy with dreads and an absolutely baller hat who beats Adonis so hard he looks like he’s about to cry and gouges out Pinkshit’s eyes onscreen. What a Chad. He is exactly what he’s presented as, and in his case that’s alright because he’s a stone cold badass and the closest I came to actually rooting for a character in this entire anime. Hametsu is probably the only anime where a guy who looks like Brian Welch rips out a Mori Calliope clone’s eyes and then crushes them, so at the very least you can’t call it unoriginal.
You’d think I’d at least have something good to say about Hametsu after I spent nearly 2000 words railing on it harder than a Thailand ladyboy, maybe some words of praise for the production quality of the anime? Woefully, there is none. Yokohama Animation Lab is just about the very bottom rung in the anime studio society; almost every project of theirs is rated a 6 or below on here, and that’s probably not an accurate gauge considering how many users wantonly hand out 10s to every anime they watch. The opening animation is probably where 99% of the show’s budget went, and if I’m being truthful it’s not that bad. The song (Kieru Made by Hana Hope) is far too pretty and refined for a show like this. It almost feels dishonest; I was expecting something more like Musashi Gundoh’s infamously deranged opening, that’s a clear and present indication of exactly what you’re about to watch, but Hametsu’s opening feels like it belongs to a much more refutable anime. And on that note, I can’t bring myself to praise its extremely shitty animation and presentation. I’m not sure what I expected considering the source material was almost entirely unknown outside Japan before the anime was announced, but this anime treats drag and drop animation like a fucking Olympic sport. Every fight is a slideshow where off-model characters slowly move across still frames and jitter around. There’s a scene in episode 11 where Pinkshit drops to the ground that’s utterly weightless, and she looks completely stiff. This scene was so ridiculous looking I had to pause the episode and get a drink to steel myself into finishing it. The anime was directed by School Days director Keitarou Motonaga, a guy who is infamous in this day and age for fundamentally not understanding the source material of the projects he directs (see: Digimon Adventure tri, an incredibly pretentious borderline fanfiction-tier movie series that almost killed the franchise in terms of animated projects).
Hametsu is a show I can’t fathom anyone taking seriously, even the people behind it. The part of my mind that’s still trying to comprehend why this even exists can only rationalize it as being some kind of avant-garde parodic work. It is one of the few anime I’ve seen that goes from comically overblown edge and misanthropy to goofy preschool humor within the span of a minute every single episode. There’s a scene in episode 3 or so where Adonis brutally kills a bunch of soldiers onscreen and within 20 seconds or so it cuts to one of the villain generals chibified and dancing around while making stupid noises. That’s basically the thesis statement of this anime. Either nobody had any idea what they were doing behind the scenes, or they knew exactly what they were doing and none of us are intelligent enough to grasp this kind of cutting-edge satire.
Either way, tl;dr: https://i.imgur.com/WYNwMyK.png

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Poll: Hametsu no Oukoku Episode 12 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Dec 22, 2023	94 replies	by Garrett_Dark »» Apr 21, 12:23 PM
Poll: Hametsu no Oukoku Episode 8 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Nov 24, 2023	58 replies	by Garrett_Dark »» Apr 21, 2:19 AM
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Hametsu no Oukoku

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