While not without its flaws, Hametsu no Oukoku was one of my favourite shows of Fall 2023 and the year as a whole. A really good dark fantasy story with an interesting world. But, it’s not for everyone.
Many of you will have seen clips of the first episode of Hametsu on YouTube, IG or another social media platform and for good reason, it’s insane. It is one of the most infuriating and emotionally gripping premieres I’ve seen in a long time. The tragic ending sets up what promised to be one of the more entertaining revenge quests in recent anime. Does it live up to ... that first episode? Well, yes and no. Hametsu does indeed follow through on giving us an MC who just goes absolutely insane and tries to kill everyone in his path which I loved. We have so many cardboard cutout MCs that you could pickup and drop into another series and not notice a thing. So it’s nice to get an MC who doesn’t subscribe to the traditional moral high ground stuff. Adonis says, you know what, you take my girl, I take your world. Sadly, that only went so far in the anime.
Adonis being the disciple of a witch as a human and not a witch himself makes for an interesting situation. While he has access to many spells that only the witches would normally, he’s still a human and has to work within those confines. He’s got some very powerful magic, but he’s limited with the extent he can use it. It’s a cool way to make him strong, but not overly powerful to the point where the story isn’t fun anymore.
The main complaint you’ll hear about the story is that what starts off as an interesting revenge story turns into a more slower “boring” fantasy story. Now, in truth, that’s not entirely wrong. After about the halfway point in the series, Adonis gets a travel companion and things slow down quite a bit. While he’s still an edge lord, there isn’t as much plot development. There’s a few episodes dedicated entirely to character relationship building, world building and dialogue. This is not a bad thing to me for a couple of reasons. 1: in a long running story, there’s always going to be lulls in the story where characters have to actually develop. Otherwise this would just be God of War where Adonis goes full Kratos killing everyone without speaking or actually thinking. Which, for some people might be appealing, but I like my stories with a little more substance at this point in life. 2:I really like Doroka and her relationship with Adonis. While her being a damsel in distress can be a little annoying but at times, she’s cute as hell and helps Adonis to see there’s more to life than just his quest for revenge. If their relationship were not in the story, it would be substantially worse off in my opinion. But if constant action is your thing and you just want pure unadulterated rage, this one isn’t for you.
Now while I do unabashedly love this show, it’s not without its flaws. My biggest issues here are the production values being pretty subpar to bad depending on the scene, and frequent use of sexual assault or sexual assault bait to create villains. I’ll clarify what I mean by that in a second. First, I’ll clarify the production value situation. There’s quite a few action scenes in this that look really bad. Like amateurish. Particularly the big fight in episodes 10-11 which is meant to be one of the more hype moments of the series, yet it’s marred by animation errors, stiff animation and more. I mean at one point, the studio doesn’t even draw Doroka consistently. She’s wearing stockings in one scene and the next she’s bare legged. Not to mention how bad Adonis looked floating through the air against the antagonist’s flying hand attacks. It’s kind of odd because the art and designs look amazing, but that was lacking.
Following up on the near sexual assault point, there’s several times in the show where villains rip the clothes off female characters for seemingly no other reason other than humiliating them. I mean we as the audience don’t even get to see any semblance of an anime tiddy during these scenes, so it just begs the question what was even the point? It’s always been one of my pet peeves when SA or stuff similar to that is used to make viewers dislike a villain. I think it’s cheap and overdone. From what I’ve heard this is somewhat of a recurring theme in the manga too, which I own but have not yet read, so keep that in mind. It’s not a massive deal, but it did irk me a little.
My overall experience with Hametsu was positive. It’s not a show for everyone, it does at times feel like an edgy teenager is writing it, but I like edgy. It’s enjoyable to me and opens up some cool possibilities with storytelling. While we only briefly touched the surface of it in the anime, I believe this world and its characters have a lot of potential. It’s really only a matter of how far the author’s mind lets him go. I look forward to finding out.
Hametsu gets 8, out of 10.
Alternative Titles Japanese: はめつのおうこく Information Type: TV Episodes: 12 Status: Finished Airing Aired: Oct 7, 2023 to Dec 23, 2023 Premiered: Fall 2023 Broadcast: Saturdays at 01:53 (JST) Producers: Mainichi Broadcasting System, Nikkatsu, Mag Garden, RAY, Nichion, arma bianca, NetEase, CTW Licensors: None found, add some Studios: Yokohama Animation Lab Source: Manga Theme: Gore Demographic: Shounen Duration: 24 min. per ep. Rating: R - 17+ (violence & profanity) Statistics Score: 6.251 (scored by 66,425 users) 1 indicates a . Ranked: #86122 2 based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded. Popularity: #1369 Members: 172,732 Favorites: 900 Available AtResources |
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