Category: Anime Reviews

Star Driver Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Star Driver




Out of all the series that premiered during the past Autumn 2010 season, Star Driver stood above the others, promising an epic mecha story; completely original, not based on anything and animated by Bones. It really looked to be the classic of the season. In the end though, that did not happen, but it still has enough to like.

It’s a series that combines school life with over the top mecha battles. It has quite a large cast of characters, all of which it tries to flesh out. And to be honest, it does a pretty good job there. Star Driver’s cast is fresh and dynamic, and the characters that do get the chance to show their stories are well fleshed out and interesting to watch. The school life moments make this a fun and cheerful show to watch, with a good balance between drama and light-hearted stuff.

Where Star Driver falls down is in its ambition. It both tried to have a huge story and cast, and tried to take its time and make this an enjoyable slow paced storyline. It just didn’t manage to do both and instead of focusing on one, both ended up a bit too unfinished. The story knows how to build up to to its final climax. In fact the final episode is excellent in how it brings a lot of build up from the entire series together. But at the same time there are a ton of plot devices that it never uses, the story is full of plotholes, and half the cast never gets its time in the spotlight, leaving them kindof wasted and especially making the scenes that focus on them rather pointless.

The nasty thing here is that tar Driver could have become an utter classic if it had more episodes. It’s good, but it has left a ton of potential lying around by not being able to focus on everything, and focusing on too many characters (even though it created a good reason for trying to do so). The mecha battles also get less and less interesting as time goes on. Both because in the end they serve no real purpose to the storylines, but also because of how they just get more and more repetitive.

So does that make this series worth watching in the end? I’d say that it does. It definitely has a great storyline and characters; it’s just not as good as what it could have been. The creators did succeed into creating a fun and original series to watch and keep you busy, interested and excited. Just don’t expect anything amazing.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Tries to do too much in too little time and ends up unbalanced because of it, but it still is able to write good scenarios and climaxes.
Characters: 9/10 – Takuto never really established himself as an excellent lead character, but there are quite a few excellent side-characters here. And the cast is very versatile just consistently interesting to watch.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Amazing looking mecha battles and soundtracks, with the animation outside of the mecha battles being quite good as well.
Setting: 8/10 – A bit incomplete, but it’s definitely inspired and original, and requires a lot of reading inbetween the lines.

Suggestions:
– Revolutionary Girl Utena
– Macross Frontier
– Baccano

Bakuman Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Bakuman




Bakuman was the slice of life series of this season. It shows the struggles of two guys as they aim to get their own manga published in Shounen Jump (or Jack, as it’s called here). It’s slow-paced and really not much happens for the standrds of a 25-episode series, but if you like the kind of series that take their time to tell a story the nit has nice things to offer.

Bakuman is slow, but never stagnates. It is a shounen jump adaptation itself, and in the same veins it’s constantly pushing its own story forward, albeit with tiny steps at a time. Moritaka and Akito grow into solid main characters, and also the side-characters all have their charms. The show also offers a nice look into the process of making a manga, along with the process of getting such a thing actually published.

Nothing really stands out for this show aside from a few select episodes, but it’s a perfect series to just sit back, watch and relax to. Its content and plot are definitely interesting to keep your attention, though it is a hard show to get into. It takes quite a while for the characters to get some signfiicant development to the point where they’re actually interesting enough, and this show is full of shounen cliches until that point. Becuase of that, I can’t fully recommend this series yet before having gotten the chance to judge its second season (because yes, that ending does leave you hanging a bit without resolving much or making much come together).

Overall Bakuman should have used its time a bit more efficiently. I know that the screenshots above make it seem like really exciting, but that’s just because the manga it’s based on is fast-paced. The anime isn’t. There are really few series that can claim to have as much time as Bakuman to tell their stories, and with that in mind the pacing does move rather slow and overall, too little happens for a 25 episode series. It does a lot of thing sirght, though.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Slow, but solid.
Characters: 8/10 – The cast of this show is dynamic and interesting to watch… as soon as they’ve received some development.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Neither impressive nor flawed, the animation is simple but does what it needs to do.
Setting: 8/10 – The analysis on the manga making process isn’t anything deep, but interesting nonetheless.

Suggestions:
Touch
Glass Mask 2005
Hikaru no Go

To Aru Majutsu no Index II Review – 75/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




Despite its faults, I liked the first season of Index. It had an interesting backstory that looked at science versus magic, It was a bit inconsistent, but that was parrt of its charm. Every arc was different and interesting in its own way, which always made me guess what it would focus on next. The second season, though… I just can’t call it as good as the first. There were just too many things that feel half-assed.

Index II still follows the format of various arcs, ranging from two to six episodes. It’s just that the short arcs feel too short, and the long arcs feel way too long. This show has become completely unbalanced in the process, and it somehow lost its ability to determine how much time each arc needs. The short arcs still have their own charms in the way that they are concise and to the point. The problem really lies in the long arcs.

In order to fill up space the creators bring up endless strings of fanservice. The fanservice in this series in particular is terrible because it just keeps repeating itself with exactly the same set-up over and over. In just about every episode we are forced to sit through some horribly forced set-up where a guy (most often the male lead Touma) walks into a naked girl. It’s completely pointless, and even worse these scenes are so numerous, poorly timed and written that they just keep destroying the atmosphere that the rest of this show was trying to build up.

Beyond that, though, when you look at the big picture I also just can’t help but wonder what the entire point of this second season was. During most of its arcs, I just get the feeling like the creators are stalling or time and waiting for a hypothetical third season to wrap everything up. The different arcs all accomplish relatively little in both character and setting development. After this series, we hardly learned anything new about the cast of characters, aside from some introductions. Meanwhile, the purpose of most of the arcs in terms of the setting was establishing that the Roman Catholic Church is the enemy. It has completely lost the variety of the first season as well.

It does have its moments where it redeems itself, though. A few arcs are actually quite good, especially the shorter ones, but also near the final episodes the show picks itself up again. Index remains an action series, and when the action does pop up, it can get really good and creative. Purely interms of suspense, there’s nothing wrong with this show. It just fails at telling its story. Have I also mentioned the way that it tends to resort to Deus ex Machina with wrapping up its stories?

Storytelling: 7/10 – As a thriller it can work pretty well. It just is completely unbalanced, way too long and way too repetitive.
Characters: 7/10 – Doesn’t really add much upon the cast. Plus, they can get really annoying and repetitive during their “light hearted antics”.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Not as good as in the first season, but it still has a number of excellent-looking action scenes.
Setting: 8/10 – It doesn’t do much with it, but granted: when it does it shows that research was spent on making this into an original and unique setting here.

Suggestions:
– Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu
– Armed Librarians – The Book of Bantorra
– Shikabane Hime

Fractale Review – 77,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Fractale




Noitamina is an excellent time-slot that is about to enter its seventh year now. Throughout all the series that it showed, I can only name two series that I really consider to be worse than Fractale: Library Wars and Jyu Oh Sei. Fractale is an enjoyable adventure-series. But it SO has no idea what it’s doing.

The thing with this show is that it completely lacks any sort of vision. It advertises itself with the “unique” Fractale-system: a system where people are separated and lost the need for physical touch. It’s a fascinating setting, so of course this show doesn’t bother to spend any time at all on what SHOULD HAVE BEEN the central theme of this show.

Instead we get a generic adventure plot surrounding a bunch of annoying teenagers that sometimes from out of nowhere receives a huge mood whiplash into dark plot turn of events. At any point where this show introduces a new interesting concept or idea, you can bet your hat that it’ll only get abandoned quickly, in favour of its main cast, and BY GOD are they annoying. Especially Clain suffers from the “bad main character”-syndrome with his whining, but also the rest of the cast doesn’t really get their full chance to shine in this series.

The solve salvation of this series is that it did have an excellent team of writers and animators on board. The animation is consistently excellent, especially for TV-standards. There are really few still frames, if any. And as annoying and short-sighted as the characters sometimes are, the consistent animation does give them a unique dynamic. This show is also great at building up tension, telling climaxes and making its graphics, music and storytelling all come together in one whole. Especially episode 7 is an amazing example of this.

This show knows how to tell a story. It just completely fails at deciding what story it wants to tell and so we have to sit through episodes at a time of nothing happening, only to rush through other actually good and interesting parts. This show doesn’t fit 11 episodes. Heck, I doubt whether 26 episodes would have been enough for all of the ideas that it just skims over. At the end, it’s just another adventure. It’s quite an enjoyable adventure, but don’t expect much more.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Nice sense of adventure in terms of the small picture. In terms of the big picture though… not so much.
Characters: 7/10 – Decent characterization, but the characters themselves are really, really annoying.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Excellent vibrant animation.
Setting: 7/10 – Had potential. It just never uses it.

Suggestions:
– Laputa: Castle in the Sky
– Shangri-La
– Popolocrois Story 1998

Hourou Musuko Review – 87,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Hourou Musuko




The past season had three series that really stood with head and shoulders above the rest. They were all genuinely good and took their genres into new and fresh directions. Hourou Musuko takes a look at cross dressers. Most of time when they’re portrayed in a medium, they’re portrayed for laughs or flamboyance. Hourou Musuko however is entirely built around showing the issues that boys who feel like they are girls (and vice versa) run into while growing up. And it does so brilliantly.

For starters, this is one of those series that has a slow pacing, yet somehow manages to make a ton of stuff happen in each episode. It’s full of subtlety, and because of this it can get a ton of genuine drama out of the characters using its limited time of only 11 episode excellently.

This show actually made quite a bold statement by not animating the first X volumes of the manga it’s based on, but instead starting somewhere in the middle. The great thing about this show is that despite this, it still doesn’t feel incomplete. Characters sometimes refer to things that have happened to them in the past, but it’s apparent enough to the viewers to figure out what happened. This method gave the characters both a rich past and future and it gives the impression that there really is much more to them than what we see in the series. It’s a terrific way of characterizing them, and the entire cast of this series pretty much feels incredibly genuine and believable. Oh, and finally we’ve found another show that takes a realistic look at romance, as opposed to the overly sappy view you see in nearly every anime.

It’s a series for which I’ve had hardly anything to criticize for. The story is perfectly balanced, the plot twists are amazing in their subtlety, the cast is amazing, the animation brings both the cast and setting come alive and there is hardly anything that this show does wrong. If I had to nitpick at something then it’s that the characters are portrayed a tad too mature for their age. But so what? This is a wonderful portrayal of growing up. The cross-dressing is only a tiny part of this series. There’s so much to this show, and it’s only 11 episodes long.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Wonderfully subtle, with some amazing plot twists.
Characters: 10/10 – Amazing portrayal of young teenagers growing up,and their issues dealing with it. Wonderful development.
Production-Values: 8/10 – This show is really good at far away shots, with restrained animation, still bringing its cast to life.
Setting: 8/10 – Excellent portrayal of a school in japan. This show knows how to ring its environments to life.

Suggestions:
– Aoi Hana
– Asatte no Houkou
– Sasameki Koto

Kimi ni Todoke Second Season Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Kimi ni Todoke




Each year, before the start of each Autumn Season, I hold a little poll in which you can all force me to blog a series I wouldn’t normally even consider to cover. The only time at which I could not complete such a series was in 2009, with Kimi ni Todoke’s first season. It had very solid production values; Production IG made sure of that. However, as a romance it just had no idea what it wanted to do. Any scene that focused on Sawako’s (the lead character) growth as a character was overshadowed by its romantic drivel that refused to go anywhere.

It really was the classic syndrome of romance shows, where the creators just refuse to let relationships play out normally, in favour of forced and artificial cheese and drama. It’s because of this that I wasn’t looking forward to its second season. But lo and behold: it actually redeemed itself a bit. The biggest surprises of this season definitely lie in its sequels.

This second season really shows that the creators took a good look at what happened to the first season, with the intention to fix its major flaws. They put aside the romantic nonsense and simply constructed a series with the sole purpose of resolving the romantic relationship between the two lead characters. It’s an in-depth look at how the relationship between the two lead characters grows. It’s no longer another simple “will they won’t they”-story, but instead the series changes into a “when, how and why will they hook up”. A much more interesting premise, and to make matters even better: the creators also figured out how to use slow pacing. Instead of using it for stalling, they use it to slowly build up everything they need, deliver one hell of a climax, and afterwards carefully wrap up everything that needed to be wrapped up. It’s a massive improvement over the first season.

At the same time though, I wouldn’t say that this is the second coming of White Album. The fact remains that the first season just left a lot to be desired, and it didn’t even seem to build up for this second season. The second season does make use of some of the things that happened throughout the first season, but it mostly feels like the creators went “oh crap, we actually need to develop these people”. Kimi ni Todoke still is an overly pure portrayal of teenaged romance: great to swoon away, but at the same time it’s not like the story behind it is really deep and thoughtful. The characters remain one-sighted teenagers who only seem to think about romance and the drama still is based entirely around the fact that they refuse to talk to each other. They’re just much better written and portrayed than in the first season.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Has exactly what the first season lacked: focus. Carefully builds up its simple but effective romance.
Characters: 8/10 – They refused to develop in the first season. In the second season however, they do, and IT’S ABOUT BLOODY TIME.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Production IG is solid as expected, though there are too many distorted faces.
Setting: 8/10 – Nothing special nor nothing bad here aside from an overly idyllic portrayal of teenaged life. But then again, something tells me that was very much intentional.

Suggestions:
– Bokura ga Ita
– Aoi Hana
– True Tears

Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka Review – 70/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka?




That’s it. With this I’m done giving these generic looking moe shows a benefit of doubt. Kore wa Zombie Desu ka is not as bad as Dragon Crisis. In fact, it has a few parts that are actually good, especially in its first half. It lead me to believe that, in fact, we might get a very enjoyable fanservice show here. Unfortunately though, this show then proceeded to run all of my hopes into the ground.

Let me start with the good stuff: this show is quite creative when it wants to be. When it wants to, it can use its cliched ingredients, insert some good chemistry between the characters, throw in some crazy plot twists and create an excellent tension. There really are a few excellent episodes in this series, especially the first and the one about the slasher. It’s just that there’s just so much crap in the rest of this show.

Zombie is at its best when the chemistry around its characters is dynamic. It’s got well written banter that works well with its nonchalant zombie main character. It’s quite enjoyable when it doesn’t take its own cliches seriously and instead tries to put them into a creative scenario. Most of the time though, it just forgets this and devolves into dull moe hi-jinks. Eventually, it just gives up trying to be interesting and just opts for lazy slice of life that’s just there to fill up time. The characters in this show are nowhere near well written enough to remain enjoyable when they’re not funny.

The big nail in this one’s coffin though is that it has no bloody clue how to tell a good story. The drama in the first half can actually get quite good when the show still is a collection of random episodes about the important characters, but it completely falls apart when it tries to build up for some overall storyline. The drama gets incredibly cheesy, and the worst part is that the creators don’t even realize this, so they just keep stretching the cheese ad nauseum.

The entire second half of this series is based around complete stupidity from one character that ends with one heck of a Deus ex Machina (several of them, actually). And then, when the climax is over and you thought that things couldn’t get any worse… episode 12 will destroy any good memories that were still left with one giant middle finger to both its audience and cast of characters.

Studio Deen. Please put some people who can actually tell a story on your next series. I mean, you’ve showed in the past that you can make genuinely good moe shows with Touka Gettan and YamiBoushi. Why so much laziness?

Storytelling: 7/10 – When it wants to, it can be very enjoyable and dynamic, but this doesn’t happen often enough and gets ruined by some terrible episodes and drama.
Characters: 6/10 – Try to be serious, but fail. Try to be enjoyable, but fail as well. Only when they try to be themselves they work well.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Pretty decent animation. Certainly not the worst.
Setting: 7/10 – Has nice ideas, but doesn’t use them often enough.

Suggestions:
– Touka Gettan
– Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
– Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito

Dragon Crisis Review – 55/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Dragon Crisis




The past Winter Season was a dark season… for Studio Deen in any case. They came out with more series than any other series, and all of them were disappointing even despite my low expectations. I mean, I am a fan of them and all, but the reason for that is most definitely not their consistency!

I originally wanted to be a bit more generous with my rating for this series, but the more I thought about this show, the more I realized that it just doesn’t have anything redeemable. There’s no reason to watch this thing; everything it does has been done better a thousand times already. Dragon Crisis at heart is a boring cliche-fest that lacks any sort of ambition.

The structure of this series consists out of six two-episode arcs. This show somehow manages to do the impossible and become progressively worse with every successive arc. Seriously, just when you think that this show couldn’t get any worse, it manages to finds some way to prove you wrong until at the end, the creators just outright give up. Every arc is pretty much focused on adding someone to the lead guy’s harem. Yeah, that loses its charm really quickly.

Beyond that the writing is just outright stupid. This is the kind of show that was written by people who think that teenagers (its target audience) have the mental capacities of a lobotomized squirrel. Characters act solely on what’s convenient to the plot and make the most bizarre leaps in logic at times. Any attempts of this show to become genuine is overshadowed by their complete stupidity. Add that to a plot that is just chockful of plot evices, deus ex machinas and inconsequential techno-babble that too make no sense whatsoever. All of that really is not helped by a really annoying cast of cliches and stereotypes that are supposed to be characters in which hardly anyonee stands out.

One of the big eslling points of Dragon Crisis looked to be its animation, with Masashi Ishihama (the guy behind the gorgeously animated Read or Die and Welcome to the Space Show) as its animation director. But even factoring in the lower budget that this series received, the animation is surprisingly bland: it’s not used well, the characters are all carbon copies of each other with just different hairstyles and despite a relatively high framerate for Studio Deen’s standards, none of the visuals stand out as particularly impressive.

The reason why I still consider a series like Fractale to be good, despite the way in which it too has a lot of flaws, is because it still is a very enjoyable adventure. There is absolutely nothing enjoyable about Dragon Crisis. None of the drama works, its stories are completely void of any creativity, its characters are just there to get in the lead guy’s pants and it just had no intention of trying to do anything even remotely interesting.

Thats the big problem with Studio Deen: they’ve been losing their talent left and right and just aren’t trying hard enough most of the time. They need some incentive: something to really get them to produce the really good stuff again, because this… this just is a complete waste.

Storytelling: 4/10 – Completely unambitious, doesn’t know what it wants to do and therefore is full of deus ex machina and plot induced stupidity.
Characters: 5/10 – None stands out. It’s just one big harem with all the cliches in place.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Not as good as you’d expect, but doesn’t cause this show to get any worse than what it already is.
Setting: 5/10 – This show looks like it adctually has a complex background with its dragons and rare artifacts, but in the end it’s nothing but mere cliches and techno-babble.

Suggestions:
– Dragonaut The Resonance (Yes, I’m actually recommending Dragonaut over this one. At least that one had some ambition!)
– Fractale
– Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou

Letter Bee Reverse Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Letter Bee




Letter Bee as a series that’s difficult to recommend. I mean, the heights it can reach is amazing, but its quality does tend to fluctuate and it tends to waste time, the fillers of the first season being the biggest example of this. The second season of Letter Bee is a huge improvement over the first, though, let there be no mistake about that. The amount of amazing episodes has pretty much doubled and the cast of characters grows into an amazing one that plays off each other wonderfully. It’s just not as good as what it could have been, but more on that below.

First of all, the first Letter Bee Left with an absolutely amazing cliff-hanger. It was tedious to sit through that series at times, but everything just came together in those final ten minutes. The second season immediately builds further upon that, and does so wonderfully. The creators just come with episode after episode of character-building that makes the main cast a delight to watch, with some of the most gorgeous artwork and very imaginative episodic stories that are just full of charms. The first half of the second season shows Letter Bee at its utter best.

And then… the creators found out that they only had 50 episodes to work with. With a manga that’s still ongoing, they had to make the choice to continue adapting the manga that this show is based on, only to cut off somewhere in the middle of the story, or make up their own finale. They chose the latter.

Now, I know that anime original endings are notorious, but Letter Bee actually does a very good job of wrapping up its story: a breath of fresh air after all those countless series that just refuse to end because the manga or light novels that they’re adapting doesn’t fit into 13, 26 or 52 episodes. Most of the storylines that needed to be wrapped up are wrapped up pretty decently while at the same time most of the characters also get a good closure.

This really could have gone wrong terribly, but the end result is a cohesive and enjoyable series. But the fact remains that the creators of the anime just aren’t as good storytellers as the writer of the manga. The adventure parts feel a bit sloppy and lack detail, and the emotional turmoil dies down a lot in the anime original parts. The tension becomes just less dynamic and interesting and overall it just never really manages to reach the height it once got to. It’s not bad at all, it’s just… less good. That’s one disappointment that you do need to take into account when watching this series.

Overall, today it’s very rare for series to have 50 episodes. Letter Bee’s biggest fault was that it didn’t use them well. Make no mistake, though: when this series is at its best, it really is amazing and this last for more than a dozen episodes. The big difference between the first and second season is that even when the second season is disappointing a bit, it’s not like it becomes too annoying, boring or unwatchable: there’s definitely enough interesting stuff happening, it’s just not as interesting or well executed as it once was.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Excellent at building up and closing off its story. Especially the first half is wonderfully told with a lot of creativity.
Characters: 9/10 – The main selling point of this series: at this point in the series the characters have received some excellent development that is used wonderfully.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Gorgeous at times, but unremarkable at others. The soundtrack still is very good.
Setting: 8/10 – Dulls in a bit after a while, but still good and full of moral dilemmas.

Suggestions:
– Popolocrois Story 1998
– Argento Soma
– Natsume Yuujinchou

The Hakkenden Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




The Hakkenden is an OVA that I decided to check out because it’s something like an animation fan’s wet dream. Seriously, it was a series that just kept returning on the resumes of famous, well known and very talented animators. To just name the most notable people who worked on this thing: Masaaki Yuasa (Mind Game, Kaiba, Yojou-han), Takashi Nakamura (Fantastic Children), Shinji Hashimoto (Kid’s Story, Black Heaven’s OP), Satoru Utsunomiya (Animation director of Gosenzosama Banbanzai), Shinya Ohira (Wanwa the Doggy). And if that wasn’t enough already: among the key animators were Mitsuo Iso and Takeshi Honda (Dennou Coil) and Kenji Kamiyama (Seirei no Mobirito, Ghost in the Shell SAC) was one of the art directors.

Seriously, outside of anthologies like Genius Party, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a large amount of ridiculously talented animators and animation directors come together on one project. The producers really took both up and coming talent with the intention to make an incredible visual masterpiece.

And indeed: the animation in The Hakkenden is exquisite. It’s got thirteen episodes in total, and just about every scene looks gorgeous. The amount of still frames is kept to an absolute minimum, but what makes this show really stand out is its truly excellent inbetween animation. Let me tell you: this OVA has been one of the first, if not THE first, that managed to successfully and consistently animate small armies, never giving up any kind of detail on even the most insignificant soldier.

Beyond that, the animation also manages to bring its characters to life. The amount of detail that is in their movements is just completely amazing throughout nearly every episode, but the ones that really stand out are episodes 4 (Masaaki Yuasa and Takashi Nakamura actually worked together on that one), 9 (Satoru Utsunomiya has a unique style that focuses on many subtle movement and incredibly fluid framerates and gets total freedom to use it here) and 10 (Shinya Ohira and Shinji Hashimoto are both wild and vivid animators and show this off in an absolutely stunning episode) are absolute visual masterpieces.

As for the story and setting: the Hakkenden is a very authentic series: backgrounds are all excellent, the stories that it tells about its characters create a wonderful atmosphere of the darker days of Japan’s history.

This OVA basically has two major problems. The first is that it is a fervent supporter of a guy named Murphy. Seriously: whenever you find yourself thinking “this could go wrong really badly”, it does. This show really tries to drag its characters to hell over and over, and that does get a bit one-sided after a while. Especially considering how it paints the picture that anyone who held even the slightest amount of power in Japan was a total bastard over and over.

The second flaw is that sometimes, it really feels like complete scenes are missing. There are parts that this series refuses to explain, leaving huge holes in the story. The story jumps around way too much: at one time the eight titular dog warriors are together, then they’re split up again, then they magically are together again. The worst is how it just refuses to explain how they all meet each other: they just get introduced, they tell their story, and suddenly they’re all travelling together.

It’s definitely worth the watch, though. I’ve seldomly seen animation this consistent and this good at bringing its characters to life. The Hakkenden was an incredibly ambitious project, especially when you consider what some of the people involved all ended up accomplishing after they finished their work on this series.

Storytelling: 7/10 – Great atmosphere, but a bit disjointed and one-sided in terms of the big picture.
Characters: 8/10 – Solid characterization (also really helped by the animation).
Production-Values: 10/10 – Absolutely fantastic. Amazing and life-like animation.
Setting: 9/10 – Very authentic picture of the old days of Japan, with roots deep inside folklore.

Suggestions:
– Genius Party
– Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto
– Robot Carnival