Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan – First Episode Review

Episode Summary: Under the darkness of night, while running away from a couple of thugs, Chizuru Yukimura witnesses a gruesome battle involving demons and the Shinsengumi police force.  Before being murdered and consumed herself, she's rescued by members of the Shinsengumi.  They argue over whether to dispose of her as well since she's seen too much, but they take her back to their compound instead to discuss the situation further.

Chizuru has disguised herself as a boy since she's been traveling along in search of her missing father. Coincidentally, the Shinsengumi are after her father as well - a month previous, his clinic burned to the ground but no bodies were discovered in the rubble.  The Shinsengumi offer to keep her around to help with the search, on one condition; she must stay disguised as a young boy so as not to distract the others from their training.  She's then confined to her room until further notice, an imprisonment which lasts only until the other lower-ranked soldiers invite her to eat with them.  It's at that meal, however, that Chizuru gets the feeling that the Shinsengumi might be hiding a frightening secret about their organization.

Thoughts: Based only on the concept artwork and what little info there was available about the basic plot, I actually had some fairly high hopes for this series.  High hopes which were dashed the moment I realized that this was really just another otome game adaptation, rather than a historically-focused fantasy/supernatural series more in line with something like Le Chevalier d'Eon. I don't normally like to get into a habit of picking apart a series just because it didn't fall into step with my particular expectations, but there's something that truly bothers me about the watering-down of a historical setting or classic story into something meant for swooning fangirl or fanboy consumption.

One of the major aspects that suffers is the characterization because, to put it simply, the  characters don't feel much like real people.  Instead, they fill standard character roles inherent to the genre, including the "angry guy" the "guy with glasses" and the "guy who looks like he's only 12 years old."  Having characters like this in a dating sim game makes a lot of sense because these broad types can appeal to many different players who then choose to pursue their favorite.  In a form of entertainment like TV animation that is by its nature consumed in a more passive manner (setting aside for the moment the amount of doujin that's created by a select few people), the characters have to be fleshed-out more to maintain the viewers' interest, especially since it would be prohibitively difficult to only pay attention to the characters that one likes and still catch enough of the story to make watching the show worthwhile. 

This conundrum is addressed somewhat in the way the dialog is written because every character gets his turn to participate, but this solution ends up causing even more of a problem, in my opinion.  In scenes where the majority of the cast is present, the conversation ends up being spread unnaturally evenly amongst them.  Everyone chimes in to add a few words here or there in regards to the present situation, but instead of driving the action, these self-serving lines do little other than to reinforce character archetypes rather than to truly develop any of the characters in a meaningful way. Their lines seem perfectly formulated to say "I'm the angry guy" and "I'm the guy who looks like he's only 12 years old" rather than "this is why I'm important to the story and why you should care that I exist."  Even though the characters might have names drawn from history, like Hijikata Toshizo for example, it seems doubtful that the characters in this series are constructed to accurately reflect who these people actually were.

Perhaps the series' saving grace is its inclusion of an underlying supernatural plot, which might reflect some small glimmer of creativity on the part of the creators.  For some reason, even though the idea that a young woman traveling alone could fall into the supple arms of a hopelessly bishounen Shinsengumi faction seems entirely contrived and loses my interest very quickly, the fact that they may also be involved in some way with demonic beings and other supernatural happenings regains a bit of my attention.  At the very least, it suggests that the story may not be as romance-focused as being from the otome game genre may suggest.  No, romance in and of itself isn't a bad thing, but attempted romance between cardboard cut-out characters is my definition of "nap time."

The promo artwork for this show is extremely deceptive.  While the promo picture at the opening of this review suggests that there are pretty boys involved, it also suggests a certain level of artistry which is not achieved in the final product.  I certainly wouldn't suggest that the animation mimic the fully-painted and beautifully-colored image exactly, but the character designs in the show are simply too similar to every other bishounen-centric reverse-harem series that there's really nothing to say about them.  The animation itself isn't bad; what little fighting there is is rendered competently, and although the character designs feature some fine details they're portrayed consistently which, in a genre that relies so much on the look of its characters, is quite important.

I would hate anyone to think that in criticizing this episode I'm somehow making a blanket criticism of otome games as well, since I'm not; the formula that works for those games, however, is not very well suited to direct translation into anime and there seem to be so many anime producers who don't get that.  I think that the idea of combining the Shinsengumi with an element of horror is a decent premise for an anime, but attempting to give each of the characters equal screen time in order to appease fans of the game is really the ultimate folly.  I get the impression that my enjoyment of the show would be limited due to my search for a more refined approach to the story and for characters to whom I can truly relate.

Pros:

• The animation is competently done.
• The supernatural elements of the story are enough to spark my interests slightly.

Cons:

• The characterization is one-dimensional and the characters are given equal screen time for no good reason.
• The character designs are pretty generic.

Recommended? No.  It's not that the series completely lacks in potential, but the adaptation just feels completely bogged down by the nature of its source material.