I will be completely forthright and admit that I went in Hakata Tonkatsu Ramens (hereafter HTR) both expecting and wanting to hate-watch it. Even starting to watch this show with a clear bias against it's being good, I will be damned if it did not completely pleasantly surprise me by being a really enjoyable experience. I expected the show to be dumb, fun, and crappy, but what I found was that it was only the first of those two things. I love things that are dumb and fun, and as such I unironically loved watching HTR.
Story: Only sort of. There isn't really a strong plot, but what there is instead is a whole bunch of character development and world building. In short, a hit-man named Lin comes to a new town full of crazies and murderers and finds out that it is actually the coolest town ever. Hakata is a city where everybody seems to be allowed to kill anybody they want to with essentially no repercussions and also does so professionally. Lin meets and befriends secret samurai detectives in cute sweaters, terrifying little girls, mushroom-shaped 1337 hackers, camp gay revenge dispensers, and clumsy and petulant ninjas. There are also some subtle homosexual overtones, in the way that an episode of Rupaul's Drag Race also contains some subtle homosexual overtones. This show is gay as a peacock and all the better for it.
Art: Not great. Actually pretty bad, which kind of drags the show down a bit. The character designs, barring one in main character Lin, are nothing to write home about, and the action scenes frequently go off model. The whole show in general looks a little crunchy. The fact that I still liked it anyway is a testament to the other strengths of HTR.
Sound: Love the OP. The song is catchy and emotional and always gets me hyped up. The voice acting is also great, and makes characters that could have been really stupid and cheesy instead seem grounded and relateable. Overall the sound great and fit the show like a glove.
Character: Why you should watch this show. Not all of them are great, although all of them are fun. The ones who are though, namely Lin, deuteragonist Banba, and their relationship, are worth the price of admission on their own.
Let us first take Lin. When we are introduced to Lin we see what appears to be a beautiful young woman in a school uniform and sensible high heels, but we soon find out that, despite what he may look like, Lin is very much a dude and will very much kill your ass dead if you get in his way. Lin lives his his life as a woman, and the fact that Hakata Tonkatsu Ramens chooses to have a person on the LGBTQ and so-forth spectrum as its hero and not choose to make fun of them or (SPOILER ALERT) murder them graphically is such a sight for sore eyes. We grow to know and like him despite and in fact partially because of his many and varied foibles, just as Lin grows as a person as he meets the residents of Hakata.
Chief among these residents (at least in Lin and the story's eyes) is Banba Zenji, a detective with a mysterious secret life and an LL Bean sweater. Banba takes Lin in during a rare moment of vulnerability, and much to Lin's consternation he discovers that he kinda likes it here.
The show ships Lin and Banba from the get, and their interactions are pretty damn cute. Lin is a textbook tsundere, and the fact that he is a man living as a woman makes the interaction between him and Banba all the more rife with incidences for Lin to tsun out over. Banba is alternately cool and adorable as the mood takes him, and really it is no wonder Lin falls for him so hard. I mean, just look at that sweater.
HTR never comes right out and confirms that Lin and Banba are boning down, but come on guys we all know they are. It's great, just have fun with it! At one point Banba's ex girlfriend sits down with Lin and is like "so Banba's totally your boyfriend, amirite?" and Lin is like "nooo I'm totally not a gay" and then she basically looks at the camera with an expression on her face that might as well have been subtitled "GURL PLEASE." Lin doesn't bother to defend the point. He's too busy being dere.
The rest of the characters are more or less successful and fun, particularly mushroom hacker and glasses ninja agent, but all of them feel like they live and belong in the world of Hakata. They all serve to help tell the story of Lin learning to love other people and eventually himself, and as Rupaul says "If you can't love yourself how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else?" The entire city of Hakata gives him an AMEN.
If you made it through this overly effusive review, you owe it to yourself to watch this show. You are clearly interested in or at least appreciate gay shit, else you would've tuned out the second you saw the big scary word QUEER (oh my god so spooky!!!). If you are the kind of person who would enjoy watching To Wong Fu, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar but would also enjoy watching one of the sillier James Bond movies, go ahead and watch Hakata Tonkatsu Ramens. I am that type of person, and I LOVED it!!
