Based on a manga by Masao Ōtake, Hinamatsuri premiered this April and wrapped up today. It was one of the first shows I decided to pick up when I jumped into the spring season, and I think it’s going to stand out as my favorite.
Hinamatsuri follows Nitta, a young yakuza, and Hina, a pre-teen girl with psychic powers who quite literally pops out of nowhere and falls on his head. I’ll be honest, when I saw that the premise was cute pre-teen girls with strange powers being surrounded by shady adults, I was sure I didn’t want to watch it. I’m really glad I gave it a shot, because Hinamatsuri defied my expectations.
Anime has a serious problem with the sexualization of young children. I don’t think consumers of the form can ignore this or excuse it as a mere cultural difference, but I’m going to save that topic for another day. Hinamatsuri seems to consciously revoke this trend, and after the first episode, it was never a concern again.
The comedic timing in Hinamatsuri is pitch perfect, and it seems like every character (and there are quite a few) is meant to be remembered. But what I really enjoyed is that almost every character, regardless of age or role, is an incompetent goof with limited self-control and (usually) genuine good intentions.
I have to admire Ōtake’s most fundamental creative choice. Hinamatsuri‘s basic premise goes a bit further than what I’ve explained above. Hina is a super-powered pre-teen girl who has escaped from a mysterious organization and is being hunted down so that she can be recalled. She is taken in by Nitta, a young yakuza, who learns she must make limited use of her psychic powers lest she lose control, but he also has to hide these powers from the world. He struggles to both conceal her nature and learn to cope with suddenly becoming the father of a difficult and powerful child. This premise does not scream light-hearted comedy. It could have gone a lot of other ways, and those would all risk being dangerously generic action shows.
Ōtake chose to create a comedy with a recurring gag where the tongues of shocked characters are drawn in elaborate detail. That is a bold, fresh decision.
I also want to be clear that Hinamatsuri is not just light-hearted, stupid fun. All of the central character’s (maybe excluding the stoic Hina) undergo some very fulfilling character development. Super competent school girl Hitomi’s arc might be the funniest, and Anzu (another psychic girl originally sent to capture Hina) grew more in 12 episodes than some characters do in years of storytelling.
I don’t want to spoil anything for you so I’m going to cut the recap off here. If you want to check it out (you do), it’s on Crunchyroll. I’m not going to do ratings right now. I liked the show a lot. I hope we’re getting more Hinamatsuri. I might even break my decades long streak of not reading manga to read the source material.
Until tomorrow.
chasetriesagain.com 