Secret Santa Review: Hatenkou Yugi

Posted on December 25, 2010 by Tom Langston

For this year’s Secret Santa review, I chose a series I’d never heard of before, Hatenkou Yugi.

Spunky and proud girl Rahzel is forced out of her house by her foster father and goes on a journey, meeting deadpan Alzeid and ladiesman Baroqueheat. All three have stuff in their past: Alzeid is searching for the person who killed his father, Alzeid & Baroqueheat (or Hi-tan, as Rahzel calls him) served in the army together, and Rahzel has something involving her parents. Each of its 10 episodes deals with them helping someone with a problem or getting themselves out of trouble and not all of them have a happy ending.

I liked this series mainly for its balance of humor and drama. The joking around parts and arguments among the characters were great for getting used to a new location or killing time (the trump game was a good example) but the drama and action-focused moments were handled fairly well, too. Rahzel is a strong character who is still a bit immature in her overconfidence and I enjoyed her retorts to her comrades. It also helped that I liked hearing the lead voice actors talk: Sanae Kobayashi as Rahzel, Sakurai Takahiro as Alzeid and Miki Shinichiro as Baroqueheat.

The final episode felt like a typical ending episode of a continuing manga with Rahzel’s father celebrating her daughter’s 15th birthday and Rahzel planning to separate from her companions but then she decides to continue to journeying with them.

This is my second year participating in the Reverse Thieves’ Secret Santa project and though I found some things to like in Texhnolyze, I seemed to enjoy watching Hatenkou Yugi more often – it was definitely more engaging on average. So, I guess I’m two-for-two in getting good recommendations – thanks, whoever gave me this one! (My other choices this year were Seitokai no Ichizon and Kimi ni Todoke. I’d heard of both before and may get to trying them in 2011, particularly since Crunchyroll recently picked up Ichizon.)

Tokyopop has been publishing Minari Endo’s manga in the US as Dazzle and I wouldn’t mind giving that a look, considering the anime adaptation stopped at a perfect place for a new arc to develop.

This entry was posted in Anime, Reviews and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

  • Pingback: Secret Santa 2010 Project Reveal « Reverse Thieves

  • http://twitter.com/hisuiRT BrainwasherDetective

    As someone who is a fan of Minari Endo I will mention that Hatenkou Yugi is an interesting adaption. The anime is actually a bunch of mini stories taken from the first few books of the manga with all the main plot line stories removed until they hint at the main plot at the end. In the original manga they lay the seeds for the main plot earlier on inbetween the little adventures that take place in the manga. They also speed up Baroqueheat’s introduction as he was a super popular character. As I mentioned in the Bin N’s Bartender review Yasuhiro Imagawa likes to do that when he adapts long manga into short TV series.

    But I always enjoyed the light interplay of the charaters as they stand in contrast to the often disturbing morality plays that the charaters witness. Hatenkou Yugi loves to be means to humans in general and children do not get any sort of free pass. It is an unusual blend that I think works in this case.

    Thanks for the review and for tackling something that was a complete unknown. While it is risky it can have a great payoff and is definitely in the spirit of the project. I hope you can participate again next year!

  • http://www.onepieceatatimeblog.com/ MikeyDPirate

    I am really glad that you liked Hatenkou Yugi. Even some of the stories that had sad endings like the circus episodes were still good watches. The series did a good job in balancing humor and drama. If you can find the manga then get it.