A Show Too Kind For The World – Hinamatsuri Mid-Season Review

You may have heard of us discussing this season and some of the gems we’ve found. My personal favorite one is a pseudo-supernatural/magical girl slice of life called ヒナまつり or Hinamatsuri. The show was sold to me by @cmdrcluckcluck as a comedy that was right up my alley. What I got was something far beyond what I expected. Hinamatsuri starts out fairly simply enough with Yakuza under boss Yoshifumi Nitta admiring his rather expensive vase collection in his rather expensive apartment. Relaxing in his chair, a metal pod magically appears in his ceiling dropping a deadpan girl rolling around. Feeling this is a dream, he ignores her pleas to press a button on her back to release her. Waking up in the morning he finds it is in fact, not a dream and proceeds to fee the girl, who he finds is named Hina.

She then displays great telekinetic power that she uses to hold Nitta’s vases hostage so that she can obtain rather expensive toys and clothes to great effect but Nitta takes it all in stride. He even pseudo adopts her as his supposed daughter and enrolls her in school at Hina’s behest in exchange for no longer using her telekinesis. After finding out she explodes when she doesn’t use her power, Nitta then takes her to a field to carry out a construction contract to her heart’s content. Upon returning to town, he offered to treat her to her favorite dish of salmon roe. However it turns out his outfit’s boss was shot and he is sent to handle the issue, even though he is nothing along the lines of a fighter and really just a clever businessman. Hina picks up on this and accompanies him and offers to handle the opponents. She does this to amazingly non-lethal results, destroying the building and swiftly defeating all opponents and alluding to the fact that she had been used in the past to such ends.

We then are introduced to probably one of my absolute favorite characters in anime, Anzu, who serves as a rival to Hina and sent via pod to obtain Hina and return her to their handlers. During a fight of rock-paper-scissors and then attempting to make the opponent look in a specific direction, Hina’s power is demonstrated and Anzu is swiftly defeated. Taking a lock of Hina’s hair, Anzu prepares to depart and is unable to do so as her pod device was damaged by being washed. We then find Nitta has been subconsciously spending more time with Hina and as such less women have been vying for his attention. He then shifts his focus from inadvertently being a great father to Hina to going out and having fun with random chicks. Hina then convinces him to take her to a cabaret club and have a blast of a time including ordering a champagne tower from a  different cabaret club, poured by Hina’s powers.

The next two episodes are where Hina and especially Anzu begin to earn their place in my heart as characters far too good for this world. Anzu starts the episode stealing from the different stores in the area and the Yakuza are finally called in to try and track Anzu down, with Nitta realizing the issue that could happen if Anzu lost her shit and went crazy. Homeless individuals finally get Anzu and begin to explain to her how to survive being homeless and help her live with them in the park. Eventually Nitta finds Anzu searching through garbage to find cans to recycle and offers her 40,000 yen, which she eventually takes to be taken from her in turn by the local bartender and friend of Nitta, Utako. The homeless comfort Anzu that they would have squandered that money on alcohol and that she can now start anew.

After this we jump to Hina’s classmate, Hitomi Mishima (not those Mishimas) is blackmailed by Utako to serve as a fantastic bartender in her bar. Nitta also explains Anzu being homeless, yet surviving and he comments that Hina switching places with Anzu would be preferable. Hina then tries to clean and be helpful but destroys the a vase and ruins parts of the apartment, leading to Nitta disowning her and kicking her out of the apartment. This leads to Hina living with Anzu for a few days and driving even her to insanity, and Nitta being berated and scolded by friends and colleagues for kicking out his “daughter.”

Of course, Hina eventually warms her way back to Nitta’s life and we find more heartwarming moments with Anzu. I’m going to basically stop on the detailing of the show and just kind of talk real with you. This show is too good for me, and this world, and maybe even you if you are anything like myself or any of the other BAYOG members. The characters aren’t the most detailed or tragic, but that’s what makes them lovable, especially with Anzu. Hina and Nitta’s life is also heartwarming and rather interesting but personally I’m sold on the Anzu train because you follow her innocence and the way she handles being homeless and living off 600 yen (about $8) a day. More things happened, especially this last episode and we grow to feel for her and the small homeless community that helped this young girl stay alive in a strange world. Other than all this, I really enjoy the show and can’t help but recommend you not take my word for it, but watch at least past episode 3. The 3-episode test on this show simply does not do it justice. It’s definitely something that has gotten better the more I watch it and not since certain arcs of Gintama have I seen a gag anime get me this close to feeling human emotion. So give it a shot and let me know what you guys think of this sweet show!