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REVIEW: Hanasaku Iroha Episodes 1-7 Streaming

Hanasaku Iroha is a straight-up youth drama...

There's a wannabe tortured author who kidnaps Ohana and practices S&M rope-knotting on her...

wut

The preview guide got me interested in this series...but wacky hijinks? Really? That sounds pretty awful, actually.

They're all fairly serious breaches for a show that generally aims to be a calmer, more realistic alternative to your average explosions-and-boobs teen anime.

Ohana naturally hogs the series' cuteness, hoarding enough to destroy a platoon of moe clones.

The preview guide got me interested in this series...but wacky hijinks? Really? That sounds pretty awful, actually.

And it is. I loved the first two episodes of the show, but the third actually put me off so much that I haven't picked it up again (despite telling myself I should). The "tortured author" thread was just plain un-funny and such a departure from the tone of the show up until that point that I didn't really know what to think. It was almost offensive...almost, but I wouldn't even give it that much credit.

I feel like Carl's review was pretty accurate. I disagree that Ohana was detrimentally selfish, though; to be honest, I didn't buy her transformation as such because I didn't think that she was that awful a person to begin with-- although this might be because her circumstances were so overwhelmingly negative and the people around her so completely unlikable that she appeared to be, at worst, understandably distressed. That said, I thought it was admirable that she embraced her misfortune as a challenge to succeed in spite of everything, solidifying her role as an active protagonist and giving me a reason to actively like her. I simply became disappointed in the show itself because where I expected a Fruits Basket-esque charm I was delivered a careless and discordant plot device that threw the entire story out of perspective-- and it was far too early in the series for that kind of nonsense.

I don't believe that that is what the show aims to be. Maybe after the first episode you get that impression, but after 7 episodes I have the impression that HanaEro just aims to be another K-On (or moe tame fanservice comedy), just with a different setting. And actually K-On is more realistic than HanaEro =/

Almost all "plot points" established in the first episode are resolved (i.e. forgotten) by the third or so (what about the "hostile environment"? Not much left of that apart from Minko, and actually Minko already likes her as well. The grandma was already shown to be the "cold but actually nice mastermind that knew it all" and trusts Ohana completely).
Ohana's character is completely inconsistent, so that she can be turned into comic relief (she is stupid - and often really stupid - when she needs to be, but she is also intelligent when she needs to be in order for the creators to make a joke or a dramatic speech).

But right now I believe that Ohana's mother and Ko-chan will also simply be featured in one episode and problem resolved.

you don't seriously believe the creators to have actually read with interest (i.e. not simply as obligatory school reading) and even less seriously studied and analyzed modern Japanese literature.

And even if they did happen to be inspired by Dazai Osamu (whose suicide is kind of common knowledge after all) ... I see no undertones or message whatsoever, but they clearly only used it as an excuse to include fanservice and comedy relief and to make Ohana save a customer. Not to mention that final superficial, cheesy speech leading to a happy end, which would make Dazai turn over in his grave.

why not? simply because for now every Japanese person I met, that wasn't a university professor or literature student, had heard the names of Dazai Osamu or Shiga Naoya etc (with older people, 40+, knowing them better than the younger ones) and nothing more.

And the intended audience of the show certainly aren't literature students or a similar group, so the "satire" would be just as lost on the average otaku viewer as on the average western otaku viewer. Until I see any indication of this in an interview etc. "they just wanted to include a funny character to mess around with the girls" seems a much more likely explanation to me. This isn't Aoi Bungaku oO

Fronzel wrote:

wut The preview guide got me interested in this series...but wacky hijinks? Really? That sounds pretty awful, actually.

And it is. I loved the first two episodes of the show, but the third actually put me off so much that I haven't picked it up again (despite telling myself I should). The "tortured author" thread was just plain un-funny and such a departure from the tone of the show up until that point that I didn't really know what to think. It was almost offensive...almost, but I wouldn't even give it that much credit.

I feel like Carl's review was pretty accurate. I disagree that Ohana was detrimentally selfish, though; to be honest, I didn't buy her transformation as such because I didn't think that she was that awful a person to begin with-- although this might be because her circumstances were so overwhelmingly negative and the people around her so completely unlikable that she appeared to be, at worst, understandably distressed. That said, I thought it was admirable that she embraced her misfortune as a challenge to succeed in spite of everything, solidifying her role as an active protagonist and giving me a reason to actively like her. I simply became disappointed in the show itself because where I expected a Fruits Basket-esque charm I was delivered a careless and discordant plot device that threw the entire story out of perspective-- and it was far too early in the series for that kind of nonsense.