Hitorinoshita Series Review

Overview:

Soran’s grandfather’s grave is disturbed and when he goes to investigate he meets a strange girl with long hair. Then he proceeds to get attacked by a whole bunch of people with powers.

I reviewed this week to week so if you want to know about individual episodes click here.

Review:

Right from the start I knew this show was kind of bad but the semi-interesting set-up in the graveyard with zombies kind of got my hopes up for a possible bad horror. Tragically the zombies disappear from the story fairly early on and turn out to be almost completely inconsequential to the limited plot that exists. Instead we’ll get to see ‘outsiders’ (people with random powers) all try to convince Soran that he should join their faction even though no one is really sure why Soran is all that important.

This is one of those shows where characters regularly don’t say things that really need to be said and while they come up with all sorts of contrived reasons to avoid explanations mostly it is just because they have no other way to convince the viewers that they should keep watching other than to withhold critical points. The problem is, after 12 episodes we still really know nothing and telling Soran that he might learn something by entering a tournament isn’t really that much of a carrot to get us to go back and watch any more of this given every other thing that ‘may’ have revealed something has so far revealed only another clueless character acting on their own assumptions.

So with the plot being entirely buried under half-truths and unspoken histories you would think the characters would be working double time to engage the viewer. And maybe they could have made something work except that every single character is a jerk. They are different kinds of jerks but they are all horrible individuals and not in the amusingly bad way some characters are horrible. They aren’t even endearingly horrible. They are the kind of characters you would like to see something tragic happen to but for some reason (despite the large amount of violence and blood in the series) very few people are actually killed during the run time.

That also makes it difficult to care about the current life threatening situation they have set up for Soran (in any given episode). Regardless of what threatens him, he’s fine. He’ll be right. By half-way through the series this is an absolute truth and any potential tension disappears from every situation.

Honestly though, this show is boring. How you make a show about characters with super powers having an underground war (filled with a rich history of lies and betrayals) boring is still a mystery to me but apparently the writers of this have made it a fine art.

Recommendation: Avoid. There just isn’t any point to watching. It’s an unfinished story with almost zero plot or character development and the few cool fight sequences are buried under a whole bunch of pointless ones. Throw in some truly annoying characters and bad dialogue and my firm recommendation is to not waste your time. That said, it still wasn’t as bad as Taboo Tattoo and part of me is still curious as to why anyone is wasting their time on Soran. I’m not curious enough to wish for a sequel but part of me is disappointed that I never got an answer.