Hakkenden: Touhou Hakken Ibun – 13 [END]
Shino is sad that he won’t get to shoot yaoi scenes with Sousuke again until summer
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It’s actually the end of Hakkenden! Unfortuantely, Miyu, the heir to my future yaoi kingdom is unable to join me in this last post because she’s pretty busy with school and all that. I’m supposed to be studying for my mid-term too, but… Oh well. Anyhow, let’s see whether the last episode ends with a bang or not. |
Living up to the rumored season two, the last episode ends the series with introduction of new characters. There is the Council of Wise Men finally noticing Shino, thanks to his careless action in red light district. Two other church characters are introduced, a pair of siblings with the sister having an obvious brother complex towards her older brother. Oh well, I would have brother complex too if my brother looks that hot in a priest robe. Finally, the “new character” is the true villain that is introduced at the last scene of this episode. From her quoting the legend Rio told Shino, it seems that she is the evil princess from the legend. The question now is whether she is actually evil or not, since anime has the tendency to screw up and flip everything upside down.
To be honest, the new characters (except the council) contributed little to the last episode. They were introduced and… That’s it. There is no case or action or whatsoever that can make the audience relate with the new characters. Sure, they are going to play more role in season two, but meaningless introduction made the episode meaningless. Filler is a filler, but c’mon man, this is the last episode. I wanted something more meaningful that will make me want to watch the second season. What’s the use of character introductions if they don’t interest the audience at all? Thanks to half of the episode that is dedicated to the characters that did so little, it ended up feeling really bland and boring.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the other half of the episode that was dedicated to the homolust between Shino, Sousuke, and Shadow Sousuke. It seems that I was right about Shadow Sousuke gathering organs for the sake of a new body, but his reasoning surprised me. His full and extreme dedication to Shino is something that I didn’t expect at all. I thought it was just a deception to trick Shino, but Shadow Sousuke is serious about him. I feel bad for poor Shino who has to choose between two different people that are actually the same. When his heart softened towards Shadow Sousuke, Shino has to face the fact that he has the nice Sousuke with him now. Going with Shadow Sousuke means that he has to leave the nice Sousuke. The question now is, what is Shino going to do? Which one is he going to pick when he knows that both of them are the real Sousuke?
The homolust scenes also made me question some things. What’s going to happen to nice Sousuke if Shadow Sousuke regained a new body? Shadow Sousuke is obviously the mental aspect of Sousuke as a whole, as it has been constantly reminded that nice Sousuke doesn’t remember much about his past. If shadow Sousuke got a new body, is the nice Sousuke going to disappear? Also, it seems that Shino’s resolution about nice Sousuke is starting to waver. I am starting to worry about nice Sosuke’s health since a character said that Shino’s strong will is the only thing keeping him alive. I don’t know man asdfghjkl… I’m starting to worry about the unhealthy love triangle between these three. I know for sure that I want the three of them to survive until the end, but I know either one of the Sousuke(s) has to go away.
Screenshots
Whew, it actually ended. Hakkenden: Touhou Hakken Ibun is one of the surprises I got last season. I thought Studio DEEN is going to screw things up, but I am surprised at the stable anime quality of this anime. Of course, it cannot be compared to some of the greatest anime of last season, but still, for DEEN quality, Hakkendedn turned out to be well-animated from episode one to thirteen. There was some bad animation here and there, but it is something common that I see in every anime, so it was fine. It is nice seeing DEEN actually putting some effort early this year.
I was also surprised at the plot of this anime. I thought it was going to be a typical shoujo anime that will not stand out. Well, it doesn’t really stand out, but I was surprised at the quality of the story. It was actually good and well-developed. Each episode built up to each other, and not a single second not related to each other. Moreover, each episode did a decent job at building the climaxes and the resolutions for each arc, not making me feel confused or losing interest during progress. Except this crappy last episode, all of the other episodes did a good job at entertaining the audience with the consistent story line that always gets interesting as episodes passed by, creating a single interesting plot as a whole from this anime. Kudos for Studio DEEN for making a decent anime after so many years, and I hope they will do the same with the second season.
Will they finally do threesome next season?
POWUH: 500-599 with 519 comments
I was really surprised to how much I actually liked this series. In the beginning I was really meh about it, it was just a show about a boy with a weird demon sword in him surrounded by other guys with strange powers. However, by the end, I felt like it developed a nice plotline and I have gotten attached to a lot of the characters.
I wasn’t too surprised that episode 13 decided to be a filler and just introduce a bunch of new characters but at the same time why? I could see it working as Shino goes to help someone else’s problem with spirits or whatever for the first half instead and save the character introductions for season 2. At least we know S2 is going to be get interesting?
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I dunno, we’re gonna have to stop dumping on Studio Deen if they keep putting out things of acceptable quality. Kore wa Zombie, Sankarea, and now Hakkenden, their last three productions haven’t been bad. We’ll see how Higurashi:Outbreak goes this season.
POWUH: Meta Team and Ringleader Extraordinaire~ with 6433 comments
I didn’t care much about new characters but DAWWWWW SHINO! Him crying like that over Sousuke’s brotherly love produced a lot of DAWWWs from me. I have to accolade Shino’s seiyuu Kakihara Tetsuya voicing this role perfectly as a petulant kid/teenager. Sometimes you really wanted to kick his ass but then there were times that he was so adorable!
Even with the lackluster last episode, I’ll be watching S2 and yeah, good job, DEEN!
For not messing up, that is.