Wednesday, May 9, 2018

[New][April 2018] HINAMATSURI

Someone stick a fork in me, I'm done. I'm dieing over here.


Last Seen: Episode 2

Summary: Nitta Yoshifumi is a yakuza, living surrounded by his beloved pots in his home in Ashigawa. But one day, a girl arrives in a strange object, and uses her telekinetic powers to force Nitta to allow her to live with him, putting an end to his leisurely lifestyle. Her powers can come in handy for his yakuza business... but he also runs the risk of her using them on him! Not to mention, if she doesn't use her powers regularly, she will eventually go berserk and destroy everything around her. So their life living together begins...

First Impression: It's COMEDY GOLD PEOPLE!

My Opinion: I haven't laughed so hard in a very long time. Comedy is always a roll of the dice, but this one hit a natural 20 with me. It contains so many dangerously over done tropes, but it's using all of them in such a fresh way, and the jokes are on point. I think perhaps because it relies more on situational comedy, rather than outright slapstick or gags.

The show has a serious tone running under it, which helps hold it all together, and keeps it feeling like its moving forward instead of just wasting time spinning its wheels in one place. That's kind of how I felt about Alice and Zouroku after it's big mid-season climax, like it gave everything it had, and then was just finding ways to kill time. Even though you could tell the story was still trying, it was just over-saturated with comedy, so nothing felt like it had any weight or feeling to it anymore.

Here meanwhile, this show reminds me a great deal of Kobayshi's Dragon Maid. Comedy is obviously the center, but the show has a serious side when it wants to, without feeling like it's deliberately trying to be edgy. Ah, the word I'm looking for is 'Mature'. When the show is being serious, it feels very mature, instead of like something that fell out of a teenagers edge-lord fantasy notebook.

It's only two episodes in, and I swear it felt like I had watched four episodes already. Part of that is because the story arcs were actually divided 2 per episode, but think about that for a second. I had just consumed 4 half-episode time-sized stories, but I still felt like I had watched four full-length ones, because they had that much weight and impact to them, in both comedy and honest story.

I think a lot of it can be attributed to one of the main characters, Hina, being the right balance of the apathetic/empty character trope. The show does a good job of framing it that she previously was a hollow vessel, but unlike how a lot of shows seem to think that's an end unto itself, (It's not by the way, that makes the most boring characters ever), she's already growing out of it nicely, if with comedic effect awkwardness. The bar scene in episode two killed me, all the way through, I actually had to be told I could be heard laughing from all the way outside the house.

Needless to say, this show gets a 100% pure

Recommendation
for comedy gold that's right on point. You should absolutely try it, see if the humor tickles your fancy.

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