Review for Hakuoki: OVA Collection

Introduction

And with this release, MVM’s Hakuoki spring comes to an end, I hope. Not to be too disparaging to the series, but when you have one season released after another, four months in a row, the lack of variety does begin to tell. There are the Hakuoki movies of course, but since no one in the West has licensed them at this time, we’re safe for a while yet. You may detect from my tone that Hakuoki failed to ignite my ardour. It is a show that is aimed at an audience bracket of which I am not a member, its cast of elegant and attractive men really meant to appeal to the female demographic in its native Japan. Of course when anime comes to the West, it will most likely break out of the traditional audience definitions, but I still found its fantasy infused recreation of history to be a hard sell, especially with a central female audience proxy character that lacked in character and charisma. It wasn’t until the third series, a prequel, that I found something of value in the story. But Hakuoki is an extensive and popular franchise in Japan, and as well as the series, OVA episodes were produced. For the OVAs, the focus returns to series 1 and 2, back when the world of the Shinsengumi revolved around Chizuru Yukimura.


Chizuru Yukimura has come to the capital in search of her father, Kodo Yukimura, who is a doctor trained in Western techniques, and who has now vanished from Kyoto. But when she arrives in the city, she winds up being chased by a couple of crazed, demonically powerful swordsmen, and gets rescued by the Shinsengumi. ‘Rescued’ is a relative term in this case, as she’s witnessed what no one should see, and the Shinsengumi policy is to eliminate the witnesses. Vice Commander Toshizo Hijikata defers her execution though, and allows her to stay on with the Shinsengumi while she searches for her father, on the understanding that her life may be forfeit at any point. The Shinsengumi are engaged in confronting the forces loyal to the Emperor, and opposing the Shogun, yet rarely get credit for their accomplishments, and Chizuru finds herself involved in historically significant events.


But behind it all there is something more secret and supernatural at work, and it ties into the work that her father was doing for the Shinsengumi with a very unconventional drug, one whose side effects Chizuru has already witnessed. But far more ominous is Chizuru herself. Her past and her heritage aren’t conventional either, and that has come to the attention of three rather odd players in Kyoto’s politics. These OVA episodes take us outside of the main storyline for six episodes, presented on one disc from MVM. They follow one incident that occurs in December 1866, where Chizuru goes undercover as a geisha, with each episode presenting the story from a different character’s perspective.


1. The Snowy White Night Dream
2. The Winter’s Banked Fire
3. The Spear that Slices the Sky
4. A Drifting Boat
5. The Winds of Fate
6. Dance of the Snowflakes

Picture

Hakuoki is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen in PAL format. The image is clear and sharp throughout, and the character designs come across well enough, which is the big selling point for this series. It’s replete with pretty boy designs meant to elicit girly-squee responses from the female target demographic, and you don’t want to skimp on the quality control there. Having said all that, the animation is no more than adequate in getting the story across, while the world design is pretty generic for this kind of historical anime. Where Hakuoki does impress is in its use of colour and the atmospheric use of light and shadow, and it does establish an effective mood. Unlike the series discs, there appears to have been a bit of a flub in quality control with the OVAs, and they haven’t been transcribed to PAL format with the same care. As such, the disc is afflicted by a minor judder throughout, especially visible during pans and scrolls.

Sound

You have the choice between DD 2.0 English and Japanese, along with translated subtitles and a signs only track. I went with the original language track and was satisfied, if not exactly surprised by the quality of the voice actor performances. This is a show where character archetypes abound, and the voice actors fill those archetypes without straying too far from the expectations of the audience. Still, Shinichirou Miki as Hijikata is bound to be a draw. I gave the dub a try, and it’s one of those churn them out quick dubs, which stay pretty close to the subtitle translation, but you have to be a lot more forgiving than I to put up with it for long.

Extras

The disc presents its contents with a static menu screen, and there’s a jacket picture to look at in compatible players (usually Sony), when the disc isn’t spinning.

The only extras on this disc are the textless credits, one clean opening and all 6 clean closings. In an authoring goof, the closing credits are in the wrong aspect ratio, presented as pillarboxed widescreen, with the image squashed horizontally.

Otherwise you’ll get trailers for Hakuoki Season 1, Hiiro no Kakera, Mysterious Girlfriend X, Dusk Maiden of Amnesia, Kids on the Slope, and Bodacious Space Pirates.

Conclusion

It turns out that Season 3 of Hakuoki was just an upwards blip in an otherwise un-noteworthy franchise. Of course as I have stated previously, I am not in this show’s target demographic, and having to find a story to appreciate amidst its pretty boy aesthetic and audience wish-fulfilment fails to appeal to me. With these OVAs I have to put up once more with the wet-fish Chizuru acting as proxy to the audience, finding herself in a reverse harem situation, surrounded by tall, elegant and slight effeminate male characters, who do the whole chivalry, honour, and male bonding brotherhood thing. I’m in the same take it or leave it frame of mind that I had with series one and two.


Having said all that, the OVA series does pull something a little different out of its bag of tricks that might appeal. It goes all Rashomon for these six episodes, telling a story from six different perspectives. At least that’s the aim, with Chizuru going undercover as a geisha at the Shimabara inn to smoke out some rogue samurai back in December 1866. This slots pretty neatly into the first series run, the main characters have all been introduced, but the story is yet to unfold completely. Little hints and events that do occur in the OVA might come as delightful Easter Eggs to those invested in the series, and add to your appreciation. But generally the OVA episodes tell their own stories. Rashomon was a movie that told the story of an incident from several different perspectives. These OVAs on the other hand miss that opportunity, and instead use Chizuru’s undercover mission as a touchstone to link the episodes together.


The first episode takes Souji’s point of view, the second, Saito, the third, Harada, the fourth, Heisuke, and finally the fifth tells Hijikata’s story. And while the inn mission does play a smaller or larger part in those episodes, the stories are really about those characters’ interactions with Chizuru outside of the mission. How much you enjoy the episodes depends wholly on how much you invest in the characters, as the stories tend to be trivial and not meaningful in the grand scheme of things.


That’s with the exception of the final episode, Dance of the Snowflakes, which was apparently created after the OVA run, as it isn’t previewed at the end of episode 5. Instead of the Shinsengumi, it takes a look at the events at the inn from the demon Kazama’s point of view, and this is a more interesting episode. For one thing, it takes Chizuru’s mission at the inn, presented as fragments in the first five episodes, and re-edits it into a coherent narrative at the start of this longer, half-hour episode. The second thing is that it explores the character of Kazama in greater depth, and while the Shinsengumi members had more than enough character development in the series proper, their OVA episodes really just a cherry on the cake for fans, Kazama has remained more of an enigma. While all of his secrets aren’t revealed here, you do get to learn something more about his character, and I found this final episode the best of the bunch.


Still, I failed to be enthused by another instalment of Chizuru’s adventures with the Shinsengumi, while this DVD release also falls short of the technical quality established by the series discs, making it seem almost an afterthought. It is still watchable though, and there’s no reason why Hakuoki fans should deny themselves.