Star Crossed Anime

Contrary to what I predicted last week, turns out there is a continuation to the “cliff-hanger” last week, and more importantly, it serves as a catalyst for Hinamatsuri this week’s first half. This is a second week in a row that the show involves little-to-no crazy superpower hijinks, which I’m not sure if it works for the show’s benefits. I always consider these ridiculous power Hina and Ainzu possess one of Hinamatsuri’s distinctive personality, thus without those the show feels more like your typical odd-couple slice of life comedy show. I’m quite glad that Hina and Nitta pair gets a main focus in this first half. Hina gets kicked out of the house by Nitta, it’s a kind of natural progression considering how much of a sloth and mindlessness Hina is. Too useless that she immediately spends her amount of money on food, then stays with Anzu but does nothing but eats food and reads manga. Anzu delivers what might be one of the best line of anime this season: “That girl’s not even fit to be homeless”. She learns the rope of surviving though, when she teams up with the street band and performs “tricks”. The band becomes extremely popular much to Nitta’s surprise.

As for Nitta part, unexpectedly receives harsh reaction from his group through his bad choice of phrasing (I love that comedy bit where some strangers stand up against him the most), even being banned from Utako’s bar until he makes up with Hina in one of the episode’s most hilarious sequence where Utako throws salt right after he left – an act of cleansing all the evil’s spirits. I particular love the way Hinamatsuri animates Utako clumsy actions – he finds himself worrying about her despite claiming that he doesn’t care about her well-being one bit. This part is supposed to be a break so that both Nitta and Hina can see the importance of the other in their lives, but I’ll be honest to say that it doesn’t grab me much because it has been done to death before. In the end though, what worries me the most is the way after going through many hardships of being homeless, Hina doesn’t change much except that now she knows for sure that wants to be with Nitta. In terms of character’s development, this blue-hair girl is still pretty much a brat. Consider how her two friends grow right before our eyes through their dire situations, I’m a bit concerned that if Hina doesn’t grow soon she might be the least interesting character out of this pack.

Speaking of Hina’s two friends, the second half spends on Anzu and my girl Hitomi encounter for the first time. What I like the most about them is how despite being very contrasted in terms of personality (one timid, one self-centred, ends up at vastly different outcomes (one has money more than she could imagine, the other only makes few bucks a day), in an essence they have been going through the same thing: that they learn something out of their usual personality and they come to do their jobs with pride. There’s a hint of pride in Anzu’s statement of being homeless, there’s a great montage about Hitomi not only being good at bartender, but also excels on customer’s service – provides the kind of atmosphere that Nitta’s boss, her own homeroom teacher and even Utako herself can be their honest self and not worry about their real life. At heart that’s exactly what Hitomi’s doing here. Hitomi even manages to half-blackmail one staff so that Anzu can have those bags of cans, a glaring example of how she adapts real fast. Anzu goes a long way too, bringing her new “friend” home and offering her install-noodle as a repayment, something she learns by heart through her homeless gang. We shall see how they grow as friends but I suspect that this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Hinamatsuri week 3 plays like an extension to Anzu and Hitomi’s stories last week. It’s like two sides of a same coin where you can see these girls grow in a direction you don’t expect (NO innuendo here), albeit at the cost of the central chemistry between Nitta and Hina. Here’s the trick to why Hinamatsuri has such refreshing cast: establish a typical stock character, put them into situations that completely out of their comfort zone, and their real characteristic emerges. Hinmatsuri is interested in the way those characters behave and act in such situations, and the source of humor come from how they define their own characteristics. Take Anzu in this first half, the self-centred Anzu learns a long way about the value of work and the value of money by joining in the homeless community. It’s a neat idea the show explores here, since usually the way the normal Anzu type just couldn’t care less about all this, yet our homeless girl not only starts from the very bottom and adapts well, but finds true meaning behind it. Kudos to Yassan who provide a fatherly figure to our Anzu and shows her the way of how the homeless makes their own money. We see how she works to get the cash: collecting cans, looking for loose coins and walking for hours to receive just a few hundred yen. It doesn’t worth it, as it shouldn’t be, but this hard labour makes her realize how hard it is to make her own money, and how “wrong” she was for stealing foods.

She receives a cold shoulder from the homeless guys at first, who aren’t keen on taking young girl to their clan, but they all change their mind after her singing, which remind them of their grandkid. I especially like the song she sings, of course it makes sense for a person without food to sing a song about the hungry wolf goes munch, munch, munch right? And especially they are literally the lowest of the foodchain here (they’re the little pigs in the song). Her singing is just like mine, which to say horrible (thumbs up for the VA who nailed it on singing with wrong beats here). Being accepted to the homeless group also means she becomes one of them, and at that moment she grows attachment to them to the point that she would swallow her childish pride to accept the money for Nitta, since she knows that money can support the tribe greatly. All of her efforts come to naught, however, when Usako and the district people caught her and made her pay for the amount she stole. My favorite bit amongst this chase is when Usako won’t call it quit and spits when hearing the police; somehow all this fits her character (and somehow it rhymes). Ohh and Usako has a history with cops. I’m waiting for that episode right now. Getting caught is actually NOT a bad thing, since now Anzu pays off her debt and can have a fresh start as a homeless girl. This is a surprisingly touching tale about a girl who learns love and the value of effort in the damnedest place. Hinamatsuri continues to surprise me.

On the other side of coin, the second half is narrated by my girl Hitomi, who moonlight as a bartender at night. Despite her efforts not to work in the bar with hilarious mind games with Usako (damn, this girl learns fast), through many unforeseeable circumstances (including being blackmailed twice by Usako), she ends up working as a bartender, and needless to say, the customers, even Usako are fond of her bartending. The way her good-girl trait plays very well in contrast with everyone around her. The troubles come when her homeroom teacher comes to the bar, so the gags involve around the teacher’s suspicion of Hitomi, as well as challenge Hitomi to hit him with her best shots. Hit him with her best shots she did marvellously. There’s many play on words here: with Mishima- Million Dollar, Baka na? “Impossible” – Bartender. There’s also a wordplay in manga source only that has the vice president says Bartender – Tender bras. My favorite part is the elegant way Hitomi shaking her milkshake cocktail in a glorious animation by feel Studio. It’s certainly satisfying to see how Hitomi has changed since we meet her, but this section lacks the nuance the first half had done so well.

The last part focuses back to our main duo Nitta and Hina, although for me it’s the weakest part of the show so far. We have seen all this before, Hina tries to be a good girl (but I enjoyed her little nightmare here), ends up wrecking every single thing in the house. The most genius part for me is the way the show leaves Nitta’s reaction open-ended, because normal anime loves to show’s characters exaggerated reactions even stupidest jokes. Not here. We won’t know exactly but we have a pretty good idea on how Nitta will react. And sometimes by doing less, it matters so much more given now we have to fill the gap ourselves about what might happen to Hina afterwards.