I honestly don't know where to begin with this delightful (read: sarcasm) review of this wonderful (again, sarcasm) anime. Hamatora offers both sublime comedy wrapped up in neat visuals and striking art that compels the viewer to want more... Okay, I can't keep that up; Hamatora is offensively shit.
Don't agree that it's terrible? That's fine, but Hamatora makes Diabolik Lovers look good in comparison, and that was every part of its namesake in diabolical. I often get asked the question why I even bother with shows that I hate when they just send me into a rabid, froth-at-the-mouth rage, and the answer might lie in my masochism. Because I enjoy torturing myself and Hamatora is the perfect wooden horse. Seriously, MI6 should just show their captives endless re-runs of Hamatora. They'll sing like a canary at the prospect of having to watch more after the first episode.
Though I suppose I should give voice to my loathing of this show instead of detailing how dreadfully bad it is with no explanation. So here it is.
I'll get to the plot after I mention how boring the characters were. Any sense of interaction felt stale and, other than a little exposition, it didn't feel like the writing really pushed the characters forward. You have some of the most contrived names for characters (Nice, Birthday, Moral, Art) that I started to wonder if they were parodying themselves.
It came as no shock when Nice was revealed to be the top of his class in Minimum holders, but the only reason we get for this is that he passed a set of difficult tests. While we're shown a segment of this testing, we're still left in the dark as to the nature and difficulty of the test, so we have no real hook from which to dangle its importance.
The magic system, called Minimum, is a power unique to the individual that manifests in a handful of humans. A group of these Minimum holders have formed a freelance agency from which they operate out of a cafe that Nice, hilariously, keeps forgetting to settle his tab at. Though demonstrated, we're not exactly sure what each person's power is. Nice's ability to speed up his movements when he puts on his headphones has no explanation for why music turns the subsequent frames into an acid-fueled rave.
As if the jarring colours I had to suffer weren't already bad enough, Nice's ability just cranks it up to Rothko levels of nauseating. Five episodes did little to even drop a hint as to how music was the source of his power.
I suppose there are explanations for some of the powers, but the lack of information overall ruins any sort of interest in them. Not to mention that the powers are never explained as to how they actually work and I often had trouble remembering who had what power. The magic system is left ambiguous, which felt like a lazy attempt to insert an excuse for why characters can do seemingly reality breaking things without putting too much thought into it.
Now, the plot: I remember Saturday morning cartoons in my youth having a more thought-out plot than any episode of Hamatora. Even the slapstick humour of Tom & Jerry was more rivetting than some naked guy sweating pink mist while doing stomach crunches.
Who even allowed this mess to get past production needs firing for using Scooby Doo as a reference. That's all Hamatora's plots boast: watered down parodies of Western children's cartoons - and not even the marginally average ones. The plot is so simplistic in its obvious attempt to veil its massive plot-holes and inject some "understanding philosophy: a beginner's guide" into the villain, who was little more than a caricature of the "shark-teeth-obviously-evil" trope.
An example of the poor plot appears in the very first episode, when the agency are called to two "separate" jobs. One is to protect a safe that someone might attempt to steal while the other is protecting a girl with knowledge someone seeks. Remember, these jobs are introduced as completely separate entities. As it turns out, the girl actually overheard a rich guy she was doinking the code to his safe, and yes that's the very safe the other, completely-unrelated-totally-guys! job involved. So putting aside that, the one thing some guy mumbles in his sleep is a perfectly coherent and unjumbled code, the coming together of these two plot points was so ham-fisted and laughable that comparing it to a bad children's cartoon was not far off the mark. Oh, what was in the safe? Well after 20 minutes of suffering we finally found out... porn magazines. Really now? Fuck you, Hamatora.
And this brings me to the crux of Hamatora's blundering mess of banality. Humour. I'm not sure if they're trying to parody the genre but given this absolute poor attempt I'm more inclined to believe that the writers actually thought they were being funny. If by some smidge of chance this show is one big troll then bravo, guys, you've succeeded.
This trial of "humour" continues throughout the show in vapid dialogue that is often poorly calculated to even have the smallest effect as a punchline. A lot of the jokes passed me by as I rewinded to see if they actually did make a joke or if it was just my imagination.
In the first few episodes there was heavy foreshadowing of a villain killing Minimum Users in order to, wait for it, make more Minimum Users. Yes, the motivations of the main villain actually are that dumb. He claims to be doing it in the name of equality, when what he's actually doing is tipping the balance of inequality in his personal favour. He's a hypocrite or a liar, but either way the entire foundation of his philosophy was so weak that I was face-palming so hard as I tried not to scream at the painfully flawed logic in my monitor.
While we're on the subject of murder, this douchebag actually uses the logic that murder is outlawed in first-world countries because "weak men" (cowards) are unable to cross a line and become murderers. In conclusion, he postulates that the weak man envies the murderer for the latter's ability to "step outside of society." This says to me that he views the only valid course of attaining reformation is murder, and those incapable of indiscriminate killing are to envy those that commit a grave intrusion of intimacy, that prematurely strips a person of their life for the murderer's own selfish values.
The sane ones reading this should be as baffled as I am that the writers actually accept these ridiculously false claims as strong traits for a villain to have. The obvious thing that is wrong with this statement is that it is conditioned to ignore all the other forms of reformation that have been conducted throughout history without the need for violence. A man who fights with words is brave, while a man who commits an atrocious act as killing people for different ideologies is simply a barbarian.
I have the feeling that they tried to emulate Makishima Shogo from Psycho Pass and failed miserably. The straw that broke the camel's back was Art losing his temper after being goaded by Moral (how pretentious is that name?) with what felt like the equivalent of calling his mother fat.
Five episodes was enough for me. Save your sanity, don't bother with this aberration.
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