Tag: Yumiri Hanamori

Hell’s Paradise Anime Review: Well-Animated or a Let-Down?

I know I have found a good story when I decide to read the manga rather than wait week by week to see the anime version of it.
This was my experience with the Hell’s Paradise Mappa adaptation.
I loved the first three episodes so much that I read Yuji Kaku’s manga over three days, being rewarded by a compelling story with incredible characters and inventive fights that worked perfectly with the theme of accepting strengths and weaknesses. 

It was this scene which ultimately convinced me to read the manga..

From that point on, I was watching the anime not as someone experiencing this story for the first time but as someone who had read the manga and was judging the anime based on how well it adapted the source material.
This is where a lot of complaints from manga readers came in.
I saw many critcizing the adaptation as it was airing for the quality of its animation.
To be fair, I can understand why this criticism is happening.
The animation is clearly not up to the par of Mappa’s other brilliant adaptations, like Chainsaw Man.
However, the animation is still solid, with numerous excellently animated fights, like in Episodes Two, Nine, Twelve, and Thirteen. 

While some fights do feel a bit lacking, some of them are fantastically animated, especially towards the end.

The story is also much the same as the manga, with Gabimaru the Hollow (Chiaki Kobayashi) travelling to a mysterious island with his executioner Sagiri (Yumiri Hanamori) to claim the Elixar of Life in the hope of receiving a pardon from the Shogun so he can see his wife again.
Gabimaru, Sagiri, and all of the other prisoners and executioners are well voiced and just as endearing as they are in the source material.
The themes are also well expressed, with signs of how they will eventually tie into the story in a big way in the coming seasons, how ever many there are. 

I am excited to see how Tao is portrayed in future fights.

Hopefully, the following season will have a bigger budget and more time to develop its animation so that it can reach the heights of the manga.
Again, the animation we got in this first season is very good but we know Mappa can do much better.
Although, in saying that, good treatment of their animators should come first because this was one of those anime where I heard rumors about the animators being under a lot of pressure again.
Overall, this was a good first season for Hell’s Paradise and I am anticipating its continutation.

Akudama Drive Review: You Done Good Studio Pierrot.

4 and a half stars
If I’m honest, before watching Akudama Drive, I didn’t have the best opinion of Studio Pierrot.
I only knew of them through watching their adaptation of Tokyo Ghoul, which, if you’ve seen my review of each season, you’ll know I thought was atrociously adapted in the last few seasons.
However, now having watched Akudama Drive based off recommendations, I can say that I need to give this studio more credit because, while they have made mistakes in the past, as seen with Tokyo Ghoul, they can make truly fantastic work.
Akudama Drive is one such anime, with its fast-paced, energetic action and great cast of characters. 

All of the main characters in Akudama Drive are memorable and a lot of fun.

Directed by Tomohisa Taguchi, Akudama Drive is set in a Cyberpunk Japan where the Kansai Region has been taken over by the Kantō region, and high ranking criminals, known as Akudamas, are hunted by Executioners.
Our main character is an Ordinary Person (Tomoyo Kurosawa) who, due to a set of extreme situations, has to become the Swindler and join a powerful group of Akudama, who are then hired to rob the deified Shinkansen.
Although, some backstory was sorely needed for many of these Akudama, I came to like, or love to hate in some instances, all of them.
There’s the always business focused Courier (Yūichirō Umehara), the fighting obsessed Brawler (Shunsuke Takeuchi), the big-talk, suck up Hoodlum (Sabaru Kimaru), the power hungry Doctor (Megumi Ogata), the psychopathic Cutthroat (Takahiro Sakurai), and the technologically genius Hacker (Shun Horie).
Out of all of these Akudama, I would say that my favourites of the bunch are Swindler, Courier, and Hoodlum.
Swinder and Hoodlum were both characters with fantastic character development that really made me care for them and their arcs.

Watching Swindler and Hoodlum go from newbie Akudamas to big time criminals was a blast to watch.

Courier was more of an interesting case because I was mainly indifferent to him for most of the anime, until the last three or four episodes really got me on board with his character.
It’s not just the Akudama that are great characters, though, because the Executioners are also a lot of fun, with Master (Akio Ōtsuka) and Pupil (Yumiri Hanamori) being standouts.
However, this is where my one big criticism of the show comes into play.
All of the Akudama are given fantastic endings to their character arcs, however, many of the Executioners get no ending at all.
It honestly feels like they had something big planned for some of their characters but it got cut for time in the final episode.
Now, it was recently revealed that five minutes of cut footage from the final episode would appear in the Blu-ray so hopefully this footage is the missing conclusion to many of the Executioner’s arcs. 

Even if their story isn’t concluded well though, I still found the Executioners’ role in the story fitting.

It would also be nice if a lot of the gore could be uncensored in the Blu-ray because the censorship did get a bit distracting, especially in Episode Nine.
Although, this censorship thankfully didn’t stop the action from being adrenaline pumping with a lot of hype moments, helped by excellent animation, especially in the first few episodes and the last one.
The score also helped these scenes, with it being fun to listen to. 
This also extends to the OP and ED, with the OP, STEAL! by SPARK!!SOUND!!SHOW!!, being an absolute banger that I have listened to for days on end on Spotify.  
Overall, Akudama Drive is a fantastic anime that mixes cyberpunk with anime incredibly well.
Some characters may be missing conclusions to their arcs but, if this is fixed in the Blu-ray, then this could be an all time great anime.