Anime Spotlight: Hiiro No Kakera

Thursday, June 28, 2012  Peter Salmon  

Continuing on with my Springtime Anime Spotlights, with the season finale having just premiered I thought I'd share my thoughts thus far, on this series - Hiiro No Kakera.

Brief Summary
Based on a Japanese Visual Novel of the same name, released exclusively on the Playstation 2, this series follows a girl by the name of Tamaki Kasuga who after coming to stay at her grandmas realizes she's descended from the Tamayori princess blood line. Since she has this blood in her she becomes responsible, along side her five guardians that are sworn to protect her, for keeping the Onikimaru sealed. The Onikimaru being an extremely powerful sword. At the same time there is a group called the Logos that are trying to unleash the Onikimaru, which if accomplished would destroy the world.

Pros
The biggest pro of Hiiro No Kakera that I've found, is that its got an extremely wide range of content. There's lots of fighting scenes, there's a lot of mystery, a lot of supernatural elements, and there's even some mild romance. Being set in Rural Japan, there's also plenty of nice landscape shots, and the animation in general is quite nice. Nothing special, but nice nonetheless.

Cons
To me the biggest con would be the lack of character development and romance especially in the early episodes. Although this could be seen as a benefit because it makes way for more fighting, without the proper development of characters the fighting seems hollow. In the series defence the amount of character and romantic development does pick up around episode 10, but that doesn't help the first nine. There's also a number of background characters who seem to be important, but who don't get any air time, like Tamaki's highschool friend Kiyono. They could be saving the development of these characters for season 2 though.

Bottom Line
Even though there could have been more character development in the early episodes, near the end of the season it does step it up, and hopefully the second season continues in the same way. Besides this minor flaw, Hiiro No Kakera is a very good show, with lots of entertaining fight scenes and interestingly mysterious content. There's even a few laughs (pic Related).

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