Ouchy!
Namahage is always the answer
WATASHI NO SMARTPHONE GAA
DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAArghh~!
Seeing the various praise LA saw towards Hinamatsuri in the Spring 2018 season, LA was interested but not exactly saw what all the hype was about but after almost binge watching (which is something LA rarely does)...LA can really see why Hinamatsuri gets the praise it does, as a feel good tongue in cheek comedy.
Hinamatsuri's premise revolves around Hina voiced by Takako Tanaka who up a literally crashes into a lowly yakuza's apartment block breaking his vase, this yakuza Yoshifumi Nitta voiced by Yoshiki Nakajima is obviously displeased but Hina slowly worms her way into Nitta's life and brings in a few...heartwarming characters to the hijinks.
Here's the thing, Hina is like Mob from Mob Psycho 100, very powerful psychic, but she only wants to fed, fulfill her desires and be generally a sloth towards Nitta, another words Hina is what happens if Mob never EVER gets to 100 and many if not ALL of her hijinks leads other characters preceding major plotlines, mainly Anzu voiced by Rie Murakawa, Hitomi Mishima voiced by Kaede Hondo and Mao voiced by Ari Ozawa.
Let's start off with Hitomi, Hina's friend in school, she's the typical nice girl of the group, her major plotline and comedy mostly revolves around her being generally the kind-hearted person who wants to help people BUT having the inability to just say no and this problem snowballs as she soon becomes a middle school BARTENDER and then latter on gets salaryman-like jobs to pay ends meet, if there is ANYTHING Hitomi's plotline says about hard work and the ability to say no is that saying no erases any responsibility, work and money. Hitomi's plotline though hard hitting reality and how absurd Hitomi's premise takes itself and even follows through with it is admirable to say the least and LA had a few chuckles before reality crashed into the mind at the same time...hey LA didn't say Hinamatsuri is also a reality-bumping comedy cos Hitomi gives just that and balances out to be honest.
Anzu was actually LA's favourite and why Hinamatsuri is a feel good comedy anime, as as soon as Anzu is introduced she's seen as a delinquent trying to find Hina but becomes a thief, soon having known that stealing is wrong (mmmkay) she becomes homeless and learns the basics of survival, how precious money is and "family" latter down the line. Anzu's entire homeless scenario is one, unique to anime as anime really never looks into the homeless and it's even more heartwarming and heartwretching when things go south with Anzu's homeless group. Anzu and the homeless group does get better ESPECIALLY Anzu who saw her homeless group as family and her properly getting adjusted into society and because of all the shit went through you just can't help but root for her and to never tarnish that smile of hers...yeah without a doubt Anzu has the best plotline and character development in the entire anime.
Next up is the person who got Anzu into that position (indirectly), Hina the lazy, deadpan psychic, she is the exact opposite of Anzu as she's an expensive, lazy and sometimes ignorant character of the series, but you'd think LA would hate her, well not really as she pretty much like Houtarou from Hyouka in preserving energy in a sense but when she TRIES to do to help Nitta or anyone around her, generally she screws up one way or another but not in that "asshole-ish" way but more like "she doesn't know any better" and this doesn't help Nitta, the thought counts but those actions also leads into some wacky situations that escalates the situation. Though Nitta and Hina's father and daughter-like relationship goes more at an emotional direction it changes Nitta in being kind-hearted as well as opening someone into his life and in turn Nitta helps Hina become less greedy and annoying.
Finally we have Mao, who's pretty much the leader towards Anzu and Hina but she goes Castaway and her mission much like Anzu is to find Hina but for another reason, anyways she probably has the worst situation right off the bat but her plotline are sorta book starts and ends towards the anime, thus we don't get exactly alot of screentime with her.
Hinamatsuri's comedy is VERY tongue in cheek about most things with alot of the punchlines being setup very nicely as well and how running gags of certain characters' plot affect another so that the characters' running gag NEVER gets stale as a result as each characters' plot progressively gets more absurd (mainly Hitomi, Anzu is grounded in reality while Hina is pretty much static) while the running gags themselves are more visual cues than vocal ones, heck even some of observational character jabbing comedy can be a laugh with how mundanely absurd situations get and the results are funny, hell how about the fact that the climax to when the plots get more serious become anti-climaxes and the anti-climaxes BECOMES THE JOKE. Nonetheless the comedy is very well executed thus would be major props to a comedy anime no?
The animation done by feel. is well great, almost excellent. The character designs have a level of consistent polish to them, making all of them exotic and distinct, the few fight scenes there are were outstanding even if "looked" mundane, the punch and impact to those fights were great and finally the backgrounding complimented the character designs well. Studio feel did an excellent job in the animation department with that level of polish towards the character designs especially.
Voice acting, well LA has some favourites quite obviously, from Rie Murakawa and Kaede Hondo as Anzu and Hitomi respectively as Rie Murakawa's more feel good and dramatic cadence was amazing, while Kaede's got to all out with her wacky ye mature cadence alot of the time. LA will give props to Takako Tanaka as Hina as even though she was mostly deadpan her cadence was strong enough to give Hina oddly enough personality. Finally Yoshiki Nakajima as Nitta was a good to sometimes excellent tsukommi to Hina's boke and overall had great reactions and one-liners to many of the comedic moments of the anime.
2018 had ALOT of great comedies, from Asobi Asobase, Chio-chan no Tsuugakuro, Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san and Last Period: Owarinaki Rasen no Monogatari, but if there was one VERY good "feel-good" anime with some uniqueness to itself then Hinamatsuri is a surefire choice to pick. Was this LA's favorite comedy of 2018's?...ALMOST, it's definitely up there in LA's Top 3 as it was a solid comedy with solid characters and plot to back it up, great production and a great voice cast...hmmm in that case, Hinamatsuri now takes LA's second favorite comedy of 2018 making Chio-chan no Tsuugakuro third.
"Dear, bring me a tissue..for Chio-chan no Tsuugakuro"
