Reviews

Mar 30, 2018
Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens is like an action movie made in todays Holywood. It doesn't make sense, it's overflowing with clichés and one could ask why the hell does it even exist. Yet, it does and I have to bear with the fact that it'll continue to exist. Because there is one reason why it does still make a lot of money. And that reason is the action, because action equals entertainment. But entertainment, like Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens perfectly shows, doesn't equal quality.

The story takes place in a city Fukuoka, which, in this fictional version, is overflowing with killers and assasins. So much infact that the show itself tells you that 3% of Fukuoka's population are indeed those blood-seeking hitmen. Wait.. what? Let's take a minute and think about how ridiculous that number is. Speaking in the name of math, every 33rd person is a killer, and we are not counting those who are not directly killing, but work within the hitmen system aswell, hence the number of people either working or helping the hitmen companies is even more ridiculous. Not only it begs a question like 'why doesn't the police or goverment do anything about it' it's also absurd to believe that such a city could even exist as it would be very normal for people to move out of a city in which there are murders happening at every corner of the street. Oh but please don't missunderstand, I don't want this show to be realistic, I purely want it to make sense. Which it doesn't.

You might start complaining that I'm digging too much into details that are not supposed to be the main factor of the show and that I'm just nit-picking to find mistakes in it. Which is fair, because I propably am, however I just can't stand that the show tries to act normal and peaceful even though the information it provides suggest almost everyone should be dead by now and the whole city should be in shambles. And it's not just that. Nothing about the show makes sense. I have an another example. There are some sort of detectives, which might make you think that somebody wants to do something about the situation. However, the only thing the detectives do is kill the 'bad guys', which results in more mad people, which results in more hitmen jobs, which results in more killed people. Good job Mr. Detective, you really saved the city this time around.

One thing I hear a lot when defending a non-sense making show is that it's just making fun of itself, which is something I understand and can respect. In terms of Hakata however, it just seems like a lame excuse. Sure, all the things I've written might make it seem like the show is a one big satire. However, even if that's supposed to be the case, it doesn't work. A show that it worked quite well in is for example Animegataris. Which was just a parody in general, and a good one at that. Hakata is not a parody. It's creators exaggerated every single statistic number to new heights to make it seem like it's an original idea and then completely forgot to explain why are the things as ridiculous as they are. That's a parody? No, that's laziness.

In terms of the actual story, the show could be divided into a couple of arcs in which always some sort of bad guy who likes to kill people appears only then to be killed or reformed to a good guy in the end. Sounds plain and simple and that is exactly the case. It always tries to give us background information about some of the characers, but not only those moments fail at making me care about them, the flashbacks themselves are in most times so overused and cliché that you can't even take much from them. There was for example that classic case of two best friends forced to kill each other in order for one of them to survive. Which is as cliché as you could possibly get. The whole story development also lacks a lot of drive and almost every episode, even if having a different villain and resolving around a different character, always had the same feeling as the ones before. Overall, the story ended up being a huge pile of rubbish mess that didn't make any sense and wasn't even interesting one bit.

Another thing that supports my claim of Hakata being a bad anime are the characters. Which are (suprisingly?), just very bad. I guess I'm gonna start with the main duo, Bamba and Lin. Both of them are hitmen and they start living together because of circumstances I don't even remember anymore. Bamba is a.. nice guy, potentially. A classic case of an outgoing, caretaking MC that would normally end up with the female MC. I said normally because there is not really a female MC present. But you know who is? It's Lin. A guy, who is, for untold reasons, wearing women clothes and a blonde wig for the whole show. Yes guys, that 'girl' on the cover is a guy in reality. Well, atleast the show says it. I personally wouldn't want to believe it because outside of having a male voice-actor, that guy is just a classic anime woman in heart. You know, just a 'trap' in general. And I hate traps. They are always the most bland and poorly developped characters in the entire show and their only purpose to exist is to get the memes going for you. Which is a process just begging for attention. He is also an extreme Tsundere, which is just a terrible personal trait for males in general and the whole series makes it seem like he has a thing for Bamba. All hail yaoi? Well, nothing really happens (thank god), but the feeling is certainly there at times. And while the show tries to make us care about both of them, neither of the two appealed to me in any way. Quite the opposite actually.

As for the other characters, I don't think anyone is even worth mentioning. There is really a lot of side characters and almost none get any actual screen-time. The reason for that is that the show really overdid it with the number of people shown. You'll realize soon enough that there are so many characters just standing in the background doing absolutely nothing, that really shouldn't even be there. The problem of so many random characters came in place when some of the kinda important ones really started to blend together and I just didn't know which one of the bad guys is on the screen anymore. And talking about characters, I think the show tried too hard to 'please' everyone with the personalities diversity. There is the super-smart guy, the loli, the strong guy, the dumb and aggresive guy, the Tsundere, the nice guy, the innocent and clumsy guy and some others. I'm not saying that this would't work under different circumstances, however in this case it felt like the show once again tried to hide it's huge flaws behind a thing that could possibly appeal to the audience, which could result into them not noticing the actual mess. And by the mess I mean the non-existent plot continuity and terrible character development.

The last thing the show does and the only thing I can agree does atleast respectably well is the action. Environment around hitmen and assasins provides quite a lot of ground for fightning and killing and the show does an OK job at exploiting that. The fights, while not being dramatic or climactic by any means, are pretty much the only bearable part this anime has. One because you are able to forget about all the other things for a while, Two because they are not the worst even in comparison to some others. Though I still have to say that while the close-quarters combat was the one done decently, whenever anyone tried to use a gun I was asking myself if they ever held that thing in their hands.

The art was definetly not the worst, I would call it very fair. Some characters had interesting desings though most of the less important ones looked almost the same. The whole animation wasn't bad and the arstyle looked nice and clean. The OST was very fast-paced and decent, though nothing extraordinary by any means. The voice-acting was not the most pleasant, though I think it's rather a problem of the character personalities rather than the actors that voiced them.

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With my review coming to an end, it's about time to answer some questions. Is Hakata fun to watch? Possibly, it's fast paced and has a lot of blood. That's enough for lot of people. But is Hakata also a good anime? No, it's not. It tries to hide it's undeniable flaws behind some action and self-aware jokes, and goes full-on enjoyment mode without caring about it's actual quality. And while I think I would fall for the bait half a year ago, I'm slowly getting to the level in which I also care about if the anime is actually good. And Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens is not.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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