First Impression: Hakyuu Houshin

Synopsis

This is a story that once begin as a hero’s story of one young Taikobo finds himself in charge of the mysterious Houshin Project. It however ends in tragedy as Taikobo’s clan ends up being wiped by a beautiful demon and because of this he enters into his mission of finding all immortals living in the human world and sealing them away forever.

The Good

It’s been awhile since classic art like this has appeared and it brings a rather fun and retro look for the series. From the big eyes to the gravity defying and extra spiky hair, just the whole art and design of the episode gave a nice hit of nostalgia. Even the whole plot concept of the male lead training to defeat an evil and the even the side characters gave a classic shounen anime vibe to it.

To be honest, this writer was ready to be disappointed with the episode given that while it did have a good nostalgic vibe to it, outside of the concept, it would have turned out rather standard, not bad but something worth checking out at least. And then in comes the climactic portion of the episode. Not only was it dark, not only did it leave an impact, but the hero actually doesn’t win against the villains even after the whole motivation scenes. From the knowledge of this writer this has just about been never done before.

Sure, there are times when the hero doesn’t win in the first episode of a series, but for the most part it’s usually for underdog type characters or something hilarious. Here, he didn’t just lose, no, the guy was basically broken down and was even questioning whether he should continue on or not. This kind of thing never happens in a first episode, this is usually middle series portion material, this is kind of shocking in the best way though.

The Bad

As stated, there is a lot of classic shounen qualities to be found with the episode, especially with the characters. While there were interesting qualities given to them because of the circumstances that they were placed into by the story, the other characters seem pretty standard for the most part. Other than this, the structure of the story could have gone better since the beginning of the episode seemed to have rushed the plot and what’s more it seems like the story was pushed out all out once and left more than a few questions.

Conclusion

For one thing, the twist of the episode really brought something different to the table when it started off as a standard but classic styled work. It did give a good hit of nostalgia today when comparing to the modern shounen works but really if it wasn’t for the dark climax and the effect it had on the hero, it would have ended up as a pretty standard work. A standard work with some help needed on its plot structure but all the same. Basically, there is quite the amount of potential to be found here

Rating: 6.5/10