Hinako Note

• Genre: Comedy?, slice of life, fanservice
• Episodes: 12
• Studio: Passione

Some hot chick with social anxiety so extremely severe that she regularly seizes up physically and intellectually for hours and is kindly used by people around her as a scarecrow,  randomly decides her only wish in life is to become a stage actress, cause that seems perfectly reasonable, and to that end abandons everything and everyone she’s ever know in her little country village to go to school in the big city where they might have an acting club. She’s real cute so the brainlessness isn’t an issue, apparently…

Let me start by saying I generally enjoy these types of shows. By these types of shows I mean, comedic, light, slice of life series with mainly female casts and some playful shoujo-ai. I’ve already shared my thoughts Kobayashi and Gabriel DropOut and I have a similar level of affection for Yuru Yuri or even Sakura Trick (which, let’s face it, was a bit boring). It really doesn’t take much to get me to enjoy this formula, but it does take something. Like at least ONE thing…

Ok, ok, to give the devil his due, the show is somewhat pretty. Well, the characters are pretty. They also have that weirdly shiny finish that I first noticed in Gabriel but not as intense. The backgrounds are another story, one I could resume with the word: lazy… It’s funny how I managed to find similar animation shortcuts endearing in The Royal Tutor but annoying here. Yeah funny… Once again chibis or blank backgrounds are used a lot but even when they aren’t, the backgrounds are – well – not good. Let me try to illustrate my point with a concrete example, in one scene the girls are all visiting their club advisor in the school’s staff and faculty room. As expected, this is a large room filled with desks. These desks are sparsely littered with papers and there are stacks of books here and there to fill in the empty spaces. All the books are the exact same. Same size, same color same blank with rectangle as a cover illustration, no semblance of a title or anything. And the advisor they were actually there to see is sitting at a perfectly empty desk. I assume that she had been sitting there, immobile and staring into space for hours just waiting for this moment. No phone, no computer not a single piece of paper and she has no purse… creepy.

The story is pretty boring. I’m getting good at this reviewing stuff, don’t you think? As with any slice of life, the episodes are only tangentially related to one another but this show does keep them a bit more in line by focusing exclusively on the theater club/troupe and activities related to it. You would think that having created such a radical quirk for their protagonist, the writers would have it come into play constantly to create wacky and bizarre situations for our heroine to navigate but they decided to go another way or rather go nowhere at all . Not only is her condition rather arbitrary, even when it does kick in, consequences are limited to people around her being mildly amused and moving on with their lives. The absolute only reason to have this element in the story at all is to have an easy way to pad the runtime of episodes. It plays no role in the narrative and is useless as a set-up for jokes that never come. Oh, and the “jokes” will stretch your understanding of the word. The humor is so shallow and childish (as in innocent childish, not low-brow childish….) that you would think it was meant for toddlers. If you think jingling keys are hilarious, you will… still find this kind of boring.

But all of this doesn’t really matter because what I failed to realize is that this show is actually just ecchi. The fanservice stops just short of actual hentai. I remember watching the first episode and thinking, – well unless zombies burst out soon this is kind of a flop, and instead I got this pretty intense fanserve bathtub scene. The contrast with the show so far, was so jarring I actually woke up a little! Sadly, this isn’t even my flavour of fanservice. Not only is it completely out of place and out of context but it’s presented in that creepy way that made me feel like either a peeping tom or a sexual predator. There are some great ecchi animes out there, this is not one of them.

When you layer the simplistic humor and story, the super cute and detailed character design (kind of a must if sexy stills are your selling point), the minimal animation and the intense fanservice, I was really wondering who exactly was this show supposed to be for? 

I tried really hard to figure out who would enjoy both Teletubbies and porn simultaneously? Answer: Stoned perverts! Now I’m pretty much half way there most of the time but my drug of choice happens to be of the fermented variety so I attempted to rescue this sad little show and watch it just completely smashed, as it was meant to be enjoyed. Final verdict? There is not enough vodka in the world…..

Favorite character: I guess one of the birds?

What this anime taught me about myself: I pass out after about 4 drinking glasses of vodka. Also never ever drink 4 drinking glasses of vodka.

• Every time Mayuki says she’s not a child – Drink
• Every time Hinako is a scarecrow – DRINK
• Every time Kuina is Hungru – Drink more
• Every time Hinako comments on a girl’s body – Continue drinking
• Every time Mayuki get flustered over being called a princess – get  a refill
• Every time there’ s bobbie shot – resume drinking
  • if there’s jiggling – you know what to do
• Every time there’s lesyay – ask yourself why you’re still watching…