Hakuouki

Hakuouki is an anime made by Studio DEEN, who have, in recent years, gained infamy for putting their names to a variety of very poor shows in recent years, as well as making a horribly butchered adaptation of Umineko. So, does Hakuouki enter the ranks of awful DEEN series, or does it redeem the studio? Well, put simply, it is terrible. It is a perfect example of why DEEN are a bad studio. There isn't a single good thing about it.

But before I get into the details about why Hakuouki is horrible, let's just sum up what Hakuouki is about for those not familiar with ... the series. The series is introduced with a young "boy" trying to escape from a strange vampire-like demon. At the last minute, "he" is saved by a group of samurai, who then take "him" hostage. As it turns out, the "boy" has seen more than he should have done, and is now being held captive by a large group of suspiciously attractive men. As it also turns out, the boy is named Chizuru and is not a boy, and is a girl disguising as one. If this sounds cliché to you then that's probably because it is.

As it turns out, Chizuru is looking for her father, a doctor who went missing in Kyoto. Later on, it turns out that her father is involved with the medicine that turns men into the aforementioned vampires that are never once called vampires in spite of being nocturnal creatures once human but now superhuman who lust after human blood.

Now, the biggest problem with Hakuouki is, rather simply, that it is boring. Throughout the entire 12 episodes, the show held my interest for maybe 5 seconds at most. Despite being a show about swordsmen and demons, there is very little action. While a similar statement can be made of Saraiya Goyou, a similarly themed show that aired at the same time, the fact is that while the latter keeps the viewer's interest with a quirky style, fascinating dialogue, and originality, Hakuouki does nothing of the sort. Hakuouki is rather bland, having no real selling point other than the cast of bishonens. Stylistically, the themes that run through Hakuouki have been done before many times, and better. And the worst complaint that can be said of it is the dialogue. Hakuouki is an adaptation of a visual novel, but it doesn't seem to understand the "adaptation" part of that. Everything in this show is just talking. The action is almost never focused on, and is completely weightless when it is. The plot has no intrigue or suspense. It is just talking. This could have been forgiveable, but even worse is that the dialogue isn't even good. It's just boring and lifeless, and it begs the question of why this was taken from a VN at all when it simply acts exactly like one.

Now, I said before that the selling point of the show is the bishonens, but there's a problem with that too. As a heterosexual male, I know that I am not the target audience, but there are still some clear problems even taking that into account. For a start, there isn't a single character in this show with a likeable or memorable character trait. Every single one of them is completely one-dimensional. None of them are developed on, very few of them go through any kind of personal struggle, and at the end of it almost every character is simply forgettable. To make things worse, the character design in Hakuouki is extremely weak. It is often completely impossible to tell one character apart from another, with them all being uniformed, alongside many of them sharing various features with other characters, and combined with my previous complaint it can often make the show confusing out of a lack of basic knowledge for which character is which.

The only character who is actually worth mentioning here is Chizuru, the shoddily disguised centre of our reverse-harem. But don't mistake my meaning, she is by no means a good character. For the most part, she is only memorable simply for being the only girl. But due to her being in focus, unlike 90% of the cast, she becomes memorable, and her faults become noticeable. For one, she does not help the plot at all for most of the series, except towards the end, in which her only role is to become a living MacGuffin that the enemy forces want. When thrown into combat, she is completely useless, and seems to have no self-defence instinct whatsoever, leading other characters to become injured in her stead while she just stands there.

The ending is one of the few moments where the show is actually interesting, but it may also be the worst for the complete contradictions we are shown. Now, I don't want to spoil anybody, but it's going to be hard to discuss the ending without doing so, so if you are particularly spoiler-sensitive and want to watch this series for whatever reason, I would advise you to skip the rest of this paragraph. Basically, one of the samurai is killed in front of Chizuru, and a member of the enemy force is nearby at the time, though he was not the one responsible. Another member of the samurai sees this, blames the demon, and drinks the potion that turns people into the not-vampire creatures so he will have the strength to kill him. Now, there are several problems with this. For a start, a very curious question is raised... where did he get the potion? The potion is not supposed to be easily accessible, for obvious reasons. He had no reason to plan for an event like this, so he would not have prepared it. There is no foreshadowing or reason that suggests he was already considering the change. It simply doesn't make sense. But on top of that, after the battle, he reveals that he knew that the man wasn't responsible for his death. Which now means that the drinker just sentenced himself to a life as an undead monster to get revenge on a man he knew wasn't even responsible.

Sadly, Hakuouki repeatedly proves itself to be a terrible show without a single redeeming feature, but just to put the cherry on top, DEEN are giving it a sequel in the fall. Yes, you heard that right... somehow, this mess of an anime has gathered enough of a fanbase to warrant a sequel. So sadly, we haven't even seen the end of this series.

I'm sure I've made this clear by now, but my verdict on this anime is simply a no. It does not deserve to be watched by anybody, and if there is any justice in the world it will have been completely forgotten by the end of the year... at least if DEEN don't end up making a third series.

Final Words: I'd have more fun watching paint dry.

Animation/Graphics: 3/10
Story/Plot: 1/10
Music/Background: 6/10

Overall: 2/10

**MAY INCLUDE SPOILERS**

"The protagonist, Yukimura Chizuru, is the daughter of a doctor who works in Edo. Her father "mysteriously" vanishes thus she has to leaves Edo to find her. When she arrives at Kyoto, Chizuru is attacked by criminals and witnesses a fight between an oni and the Shinsengumi...erm bishies. Taking her into custody and saving her, the bishies debate on what to do with Mary Sue errm Chizuru when they discover that she is the daughter of the doctor they are also looking for (whoa.. unexpected eh?). They decide to become Chizuru's playthings..ermm bodyguards and help her look for her father(the doctor). The story ... is overall not romantic with a poorly adapted historical and political background."

I tried to enjoy this anime.. several times... but it in the end it failed. There is just too many mistakes.

1. The main character is useless. She can only cry and whine and offer words of encouragement. Like we haven't seen that before.
2. Other characters are only eye-candy. They don't really have a purpose except standing and looking pretty all the time.
3. Plot is absolutely ridiculous and just predictable.
4. Filerish Episodes
5. Unnecessary Time-Skips
6. No Character Development whatsoever.

These are just the list of reasons to not watch this pathetic excuse for an anime. I assure this animes' only purpose is for fan service. Girls are definitely going to eat this one up.

I hated this anime mainly because the main girl character was stupid, annoying, and totally relied on all the guys to protect her. The fighting was nice but her character completely ruined it. A lot of things are very very cliche which is annoying too with all the "I will protect you to the death" and meaningless flirting scenes.

I really wanted to like this series. Maybe it was my fault for starting the first episode with high expectations.

Pros: If you're into ikemen, then this is a fine show for indulging your fancies. In fact, there's a gratuitous episode where the shinsengumi need to get topless for a physical. However, the pros end there. Beyond the beautiful faces, there's not much else. As there are many characters packed into 12 episodes, you never really get to know any of them.

Cons: I'm not sure what they were thinking when they thought they could pack all that Japanese history into a dozen episodes. At ... any rate, it's not good as a historical anime. It's also no good if you're trying to watch it for romance or drama because there isn't enough of it. Again, way too overarching, packing all the characters and years of history. Character development is also lacking. Even the main protagonist, Chizuru, falls completely flat by the last episode. She actually started the series somewhat interesting, but as the plot unrolled, she regressed more and more until she was just a damsel in distress that cried and became a helpless ornament in the fighting scenes. Sigh.

Take away: Watch this show for the ikemen, and expect nothing more beyond their handsome faces. (Sadly, even their good looks were not enough to entice me into watching Season 2.)

Please save yourself from watching this. The actual story line concept was really cool and the characters had a great base and were aesthetically pleasing. However there was no followthrough with any of this gold. The script was sappy, the actual progression of what was happening was so boring, and although the characters had a good base, they were pretty pathetic in the end. Everything was done halfway from the fights to the barely there romance. I could't find any likable character because in the end they were all one-dimensional. Also the story is based around a girl looking for her father. This main character ... is basically a filler character. She does nothing significant at all and is so clueless. What a disappointment.

Story: I dont know where to begin with this because well there really wasnt much of a story to tell could be do to the fact that this is a 2 part series but mostly because there wasnt a story here, the story is kind of hard to explain there is to much going on for a 12 part season and even when they add the next part im still a little confused as to what is going which of the characters are oni and who isnt, its a story poorly told they needed to stick to one topic and i feel they may have ... done a little better job with what they ended up doing i give the story a 5/10.

Art: To me this was the only strong area of this show but still not great the animation is somewhat typical of studio deen large eyed characters, the background art is really good but not something jaw dropping but its easy on the eyes and when the story is not really worth watching just enjoying the sights is something you can do with this series 7/10.

Sound: Music for Hakuouki is ok the opening theme is pretty catchy if not a typical anime opener and the ending song is a little better but still nothing that would make you rush out and by the soundtrack to, also the in series music is not bad keeping it well within the action on screen to help set up the moods without being to in the way, the voice acting is done well but again nothing that would really make you take notice of who is voice acting who 6/10.

Character: This show is no Baccano, that anime did a great job at giving each character a personality so that if another characther was talking about him/her you knew exactly who they were talking about, but with Hakuouki i really had a hard time really understanding who was who all the characters were generally the same and a few even looked similar which just added to the confusion, they did fill out there anime cliche personalities for a anime set in this time period, I had a big problem with chizuru this anime is i guess about her but she has no presence at all she was just there and the other characters aknowledged her being there at times when needed one of the worst main characters i have seen 5/10.

Enjoyment: Its hard to enjoy this anime that starts with what plot and goes through about 6 more before the show ends its a little overbearing and you just dont feel attacthed to these characters or worry about what might happen to them 3/10.

Overall: This anime is going to have to tie up some loose ends in the next part to really showcase something that could turn out to be a little better but that is a tough mountain to climb after this showing her, to many plots to many characters hurt this anime in alot of ways if they would have spent more time focusing on one plot this anime might have been a little better but they didnt instead tried to force alot of story down our throats and not really concluding any of them after 12 episodes is a hard pill to swallow 4/10

If you're looking for an anime like Akatsuki no Yona with a strong female lead, don't watch (at least for this season).

While Yona grows tremendously by the end of the series Chizuru does not. Yona is more like a leader of the pack while Chizuru is just a random girl living off of the guys. Chizuru has a sword and says she's been trained, yet I haven't seen her wield it to protect herself once. All she does is say she wants to be with the guys while not making any efforts to become stronger or polish her skills to protect herself to not be ... a burden to the guys. She has no awareness of the surroundings and gets others in trouble. Girl, just leave and join the other side to bring out your inner powers.

By the end of 12 episodes, I'm still left with this pathetic, weak girl. The story is ok. I will continue to watch as I heard she gets a little better.

A poor adaption of one of the most well written visual novel's out there.

Watching this before I played the VN, I did feel it was "alright" if not a little frustrating a times. But even back then I could see charm and decent plot shining back through, so I got the game and found out myself. Even the old first version of the game that was released on psp (and has been vastly improved upon in a PC version released more recently) was leagues better than this pathetic excuse.

Chizuru as a character does lack a lot personality (she's not quite a card board ... cut out like many VN protags, and I'd say her passive personality is more reflective of the attitude of women at the time) but thats kind of the point. In game, you made up for that with your own feelings and choices. However, the anime really should have taken more time to expand upon her, and give her more of a personality. The game can get away with a bland personality, but the anime cannot because it lacks the player autonomy the game has.
Arguably however, the anime did expand on her personality and even added some! Specifically the traits of; weak, dependant, sulky, selfish and generally around being unlikeable! Hooray!

The route the anime appears to take is the Hijikata route, yet it does it in ways that purposefully damages other routes (making the MC look annoying, stupid, and useless at best). Admittedly the game's first version shares this problem, but it wasn't so much a story thing as it was a mechanic thing, simply an option there if you didn't want to raise the other character's affections (the new game fixes this, by pretty much giving you chance every time to raise your desired characters affection without really lowering others, so its much more bearable).

The only things I can really compliment the anime on is the art and historical accuracy; though even then these are both things the game did BETTER. The only thing good to come out of this adaption is the possibility of interesting people enough for them to look up and play the game its based on.

I know I'm comparing this anime to the game a lot, but as a wise man named Dom once said, "If you want the huge boost in audience interest you get by taking on the name of a popular piece of work you have to accept that you will be compared to that piece of work".