The whole story is based around a man named Hakuoro, or at least that’s the name they call him. He is a man who lost his memory and can’t even remember who he is or why he has a mask on his face that will not come off. I know what you’re thinking, ‘She calls everything a stereotype so she probably will call this a stereotype as well’. The truth is your right. I will call this a stereotype but in this case, I think it actually works rather well to a point. There are major spoilers that will help answer why he lost them and it’s not just a bump on the head, but for the reasons they do give us it just does work for this type of story line. Since it’s based off of a game series, the main character is normally the one we play as. For this, it seems logical to have that character not know anything about his past in order to explain why he would select an answer to a question in the way he does. It also helps you learn more of his past through his eyes. I do understand why people use it, but it is over used.
Going back to Hakuoro, his personality is sort of bland. Sure he acts like a true leader, someone clothed in mystery and experience beyond his years, but sadly that seems to be the only thing that he has. That is sort of the ‘point’ where the stereotype point doesn’t seem to want to work. You can give a person amnesia and have him still have a personality, but here he just seems like a cardboard cut out with how serious he takes things all the time… until a point. You see, this show has a strange way of making everything that happens as a spoiler so it’s hard to talk about. I can say though that at that point you really do see the layers of Hakuoro that are really in depth. Where up until that point, he seems as though he is the perfect person in the world and then it makes you think he might not be that perfect after all.
The next characters are the two sisters that act as his adopted family. It doesn’t seem right introducing them separate as they are so close. We will start with the youngest first I think. Aruru is a rather fun loving girl although we start out with her being rather timid. She has a really shy personality that makes me smile whenever I see her acting so curious. There really isn’t much else about her except that she acts her age. She is a really believable little girl who I think might be around 6 or 7 years old. Eruru on the other hand is a very motherly figure. She cares not only for Aruru but for everyone around her. She is so many things that its surprising such a young girl can do all the things she does. She’s not only a big sister to Aruru but she consoles Haruoro whenever he is torn between his discussions, calms those that need to be calmed, heals those who are sick both inside her group of friends and outside in the town, and somehow is still able to manage herself. I am surprised she doesn’t break, making what she proclaims in the first episode ‘country girls are strong’ make a lot of sense.
Now there are so many characters in this show that it is really hard to talk about every single one of them. Most of them are even spoilers for parts of the show which makes this review a living nightmare to try to do without spoiling anything. So instead of talking about the rest of the characters, I guess I will use this area to talk about the setting of the show. The show is based loosely around an indigenous people from Japan known as the Ainu (Aynu). Think of them as the Native American’s of Japan (in a very very loose based way). They hunted and gathered their food, lived in small communities, and had a culture that was very based on the land. If you look at Haruoro’s name, it actually is an Ainu word that I believe loosely means “White Emperor” (I am not an Ainu nor do I know how to speak Ainu, it’s something I found online). They mixed the Ainu culture with a Feudal Japan culture in order to make a rather interesting war torn country, much like in historic times. The only difference is that in the show, everyone (except for Haruoro it seems) is an anthropomorphic creature. They have the bodies of humans with ears and tails (or wings) of an animal. Many of the strange things seem to point to it being an alternate timeline to our own but every once in a while, they sneak in a bit of technology that doesn’t seem to make any sense. It just adds to the mystery.
This show has a strange way of jumping up and down a lot. As was stated many times before now, this is a show based on the rise and fall of nations doing battle. As such, there are many different battles that are fought through the course of the series. Between each battle however, we are given a couple small breaks between the actions. These can be as boring as political debates on the next course of action to a slice of life following the lovable antics of Aruru and her friends. I think part of this is to show exactly how war is carried out, but also I just think it’s partly for our psychological relief. This show is 26 episodes long; if we had a battle that lasted that whole time, we would be up in arms the whole time wanting our side to win. We wouldn’t have time to get into the characters heads, no time for us to become emotionally connected to them, to hear the story of their past, to understand why they are fighting. These breaks do give us that time to get to know them, and sometimes to introduce new characters.
The animation is so beautiful at times, and then we will get points that just seem rather standard. Backgrounds are always so detailed and colored so amazing that it’s hard to notice the little things that don’t look quite right though. There are small times that the show used CG to show off some of the action scenes but I don’t blame them. The fact that this is a battle heavy anime means that there are a ton of extras that would have to be drawn over and over again. CG helps cut the corners of this and if done right, it looks really good. I could barely see the differences for the most part between the CG and the animation so I think that is a win on their side. The times they didn’t use the CG stuff was actually rather good as well, with characters movements being rather fluid and not many hiccups in design. I love how for most of the comedy, they kept to the same style as the rest of the show instead of trying to go chibi all the time. One of the main things I found so attractive of this show is the colors they work with. The colors are so vibrant and beautiful but they change the brightness to fit the mood. It can be so bright with fun colors and then suddenly have rather dark deep colors to show a very serious mood.
The music has this sort of haunting tone to it that seems to be sad but also a little mysterious. I am not sure if they were trying to match the concept of Hakuoro or just a sort of haunting nature of the people but it worked rather well. Pretty much all of the music besides the opening and the ending song were only instrumental, and captured the mood nicely. I do not know how close it is to Ainu music but it felt like it could be part of it. The English Voice acting I think was right on the mark with a lot of the characters. I sort of fell for Hakuoro’s rather soft and yet forceful voice for some reason. Jogn Gremillian did such a beautiful job making Hakuoro sound like a caring man but also a man who can take charge when it was needed. For what little lines Aruru had, Sasha Paysinger did a very good job with the rather cute voice that actually didn’t get on my nerves at all. For real, it wasn’t a high pitched moe character that normal people do, but a more sweet style that I love. Kira Vincent-Davis did the voice for Eruru, and though it was rather good, I somehow feel a little disappointed in that the character sounds close to others she has done. Also, big props on Vic Mignogna who actually for once in his life played a character that was most of the time serious and didn’t freak out all the time! (Ok, so that might not be exactly true on this being the only character he played like that, but most of his characters do tend to freak out.)
This show had very few flaws to it in my opinion, and had to be one of my favorite shows to jump into. You could feel the great chemistry between the characters, the amazing look of the battles, and the rather calming moments of the breaks.
