Hinamatsuri

Justhappydog Jun 24, 2018

8

*0% spoilers* This anime certainly had its hype for this season because of how famous the manga is for its comedy. Reading the summary and the tags will certainly give you an idea of how this anime is going to be. Superpowers, psychic powers, yakuza, gangs, OMG there is going to be a lot of action! Nope. Slice of life, comedy, seinen, Iyashikei and even childcare. Many people have been misleading themselves that this anime is going to action packed, or at the least use psychic powers as a means for comedy. They've totally missed the mark. This show is a SoL comedy of two psychic girls (there is one more girl but she doesn't have much sreentime as the other two) who come from the other world? where psychic powers exist, to this world where psychic powers don't exist. They try to get along, habilitate into the society. They learn different things, and its heart-warming to watch. Its the type of show where you get attached to the characters, and just relax. Indeed this anime had made me laugh out loud, the comedy is just too good. The comedy you get is "the clueless person does dumb things and the other person makes funny faces", like a slapstick + tsukkomi comedy, not only this, but there is also "the misunderstanding between two parties" comedy too in which they also show both the character's internal monologue. I'll explain why the first episode of this anime mislead a lot of people at the last but for now lets just move on to the : Story (8/10)The story is not so important in this anime. The pacing was just a little slow, and there are a lot of things the viewers doesn't know. For example, where are the psychic girls from? Why did the both of them end up in japan? Did they run away from their place? You dont have to know the answers for these. They are all the past. Also, the story is not only about the two psychic girls. There are a lot of other characters too, which i will be covering in the characters section. They tried to make every single moment of this anime to be funny, and I can confidently say they have succeeded in doing so. In total, dont expect an action packed story, instead sit back, relax, comfy, and enjoy the SoL comedy this anime has to offer.I don't have to explain how the story starts, just read the summary xD. Animation & Sound (9/10 & 8/10)There was also a lot of hype for the animation, since the first episode had an awesome martial arts fight scene in it. You would wish to see more scenes like that but unfortunately you are not going to get one. The backgrounds were ok, didn't impact my watch that much. The colours were not too bright and not too dull too, at the perfect scale. The Op and ED were really good, they had some minor changes throughout the 12 episodes in the video of OP and ED too. The BGMs were calm and matched with the scenes. Not much to say here. Characters (7/10)The characters play the main role of satisfying the viewers. They are funny, easily attachable.... and.. what? There is nothing else? Every one of them is unique, and every characters get their own screen time so that you can know about every one of them. Speaking of characters, i got attached to them so easily, but looking carefully, they are kinda hollow. Indeed there is a little character development, but the comedy took most of the credits, and the characters lost them. This may be to keep the comedy going, but I'm not so much bothered about it. They were funny, relaxing to watch, thats all you need. Overall (8/10)Just keep a sofa Infront of your monitor, lean back (if you want you can invite some friends), grab a drink and some snacks and enjoy. This anime wont keep you on the edge of the seat, neither breathtaking nor serious moments, just heart-warming and funny. I really enjoyed this, i looked forward to this every week. If you like non-moe SoL, comedy and just wants to relax, then you will surely enjoy this. But if you are expecting some action, psychic powers, or moe SoL, this is not the right one for you. About why the first episode mislead so many people *First episode spoilers* So the episode pops up, and we see a girl fighting, taking out guys alone with artial arts. Wow, the animation is so cool. Then we see a new psychic girl pop up in a yakuza's house. Ok... Then he uses the psychic girl to take out a whole gang! OMG! I can't wait to see what other things he is going to use this girl for. Ahhaa , he tells the girl not to use powers anymore, and in the rest of the episodes she almost never uses them. Leaving that, she could've used the powers for some comedy, for example moving the chalk on its own in the classroom to write on the board "I'm gay" as if making it look like the teacher is writing it. That would be fun, yea. But it would stop the character growth of the psychic girls. They would be the same girls who came from another world to earth and still don't have the knowledge of this modern society. Ofc,there are some times where they use the psychic powers, but people were not satisfied by that much.

Rascal Jun 22, 2018

6

AITAAA! Hinamatsuri is a very pretty Slice of Life Comedy, or as I like to call it, a SolCom, about a girl with psychic powers named Hina, and a yakuza boss name Nitta, as well as their relationship. To start off the review of this disappointment I'll admit my biases: i fully expected this anime to be primarily comedy at the beginning and make good use of psychic powers in both its presentation, and story, as well as its comedy that I hoped would be frequent and well-done. But this is not that. If you're expecting a good comedy with a quirky premise and a great story and real vision behind it, go watch something like Gintama. 2017 or Assassination Classroom. This anime is primarily a slice-of-life, and it's important to know that going into it.  The first two episodes made me laugh pretty hard, introducing the deadpan comedy and reaction faces, and silly antics between hina and nitta, as well as anzu and the group. The first episode also has some pretty amazing action which is ingeniously dealt with at the end of the series. Those are all the really good parts. The story: hina and nitta are instantly put into this situation where they have to live together in a bizarre turn of events that doesn't get explained in detail for a while, and just have to deal with it. Along the show we take a 10 episode break from this continuity and get thrust into the exciting world of the slice of life genre, involving a girl named hitomi who's in middle school but works at a bar, another psychic named anzu who gets dropped in and instantly integrates herself into the homeless community, and the episodes follow their antics which usually lead to heartwarming moments. Each girl has an "arc" with the relationships they form. I don't have a problem with that, the problem I have is that the psychic powers hina and anzu have are ALMOST NEVER taken advantage of in the comedy! They have so much opportunity for slapstick but only use it on episode 1 and episode 12, a majority of which were scenes from episode 1! It's rediculous how much potential there is wasted. The comedy: the funny moments of Hinamatsuri are sparse for me. There have been a few moments where I giggled, such as the godlike Mao segements, a few great Yakuza segments, and the famous "girly club" episode. The rest gets old fast. The reaction faces and deadpan comedy become mundane and expected as they're repeated again and again. At least the gags arent annoying. Hina's straight faced dry humor is sometimes funny, and so are nitta's reactions to things. Hitomi's reaction faces can also be great. The characters: Anzu is your sweet blonde haired girl who gets a lot of heartwarming moments, but not a lot of actual entertaining moments. So I never cared much about her. Hina is cute and funny sometimes as I said but her character arcs revolve around failing to do anything normal. Nitta is the more interesting one, as he is a member of the Yakuza, and his segments are always the coolest... of which there are about 2. For some reason although there were plenty of yakuza sequences in the manga that would have been hilarious, they decided to focus on hitomi and anzu more, anzu whose stuff is boring and hitomi whose only thing is that she's a middle school bartender. Utako is also there allegedly. The animation and sound: feel. does a brilliant job animating the characters, putting comedic emphasis on certain moments and adapting the manga's reaction faces fantastically. I loved the way this anime looked and sounded. The comedic timing was great but timing has to have some good comedy writing behind it, so timing isnt everything. It hardly ever made me laugh but this wasn't really feel.'s fault. The episode choices and the way the comedy is most of the time were to blame. Now I get to talk about Mao. *spoilers* Mao is the best character and best part of hinamatsuri for me. She appears in episodes 9 and 12 as the best girl. Her part on the island is hilarious, talking to coconuts of hina and anzu. It's tragic but great, and her arc as a member of some superhuman martial arts movement, pretending to be amazing at martial arts but really just having psychic powers is hilarious, set up well by the guitar guy early on. If they make a sequel I want it to be centered around mao. She is just charming. overall: it's a slice of life with very little comedic value unless you love deadpan comedy. If that's for you this may be worth it, but it wasn't for me, and was a bit of a disappointment.

foltor Sep 22, 2018

4

Synopsis: A young psychic girl is (literally) dropped into the life of a yakuza. Hijinks ensue. TL;DR: Nonsense sitcom, unevenly executed. Nothing really to write home about, except... SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS Hinamatsuri seems pointless and poorly executed, but it just might be incredibly subversive on purpose. The fact that the show even mentions the homelessness problem in Japan suggests that the writers are more sly than they let on. The yakuza character is just a decent guy, and the family back home he's alienated from are degenerates. The delinquent character is the most respectful and traditionally moral, the 'good girl' breaks all the rules, the secret psychic organization is disorganized and incompetent. And the psychic MC isn't interesting and doesn't do much of anything. Whether you find these reversals an interesting critique of televised storytelling or a breach of the implicit authorial contract is up to you.