silverwalls

Hamatora was a show I was quite interested in prior to its airing. Looking at the key visuals, the characters looked interesting; and the preview video showed some cool superpowers with flashy and colorful animation. But you may think the synopsis doesn't really sound interesting - cool guys fighting with superpowers are an overused trope in anime, to the point where it gets cliché. But wait, Hamatora throws some detective elements into the mix! So, does that make Hamatora an interesting, outstanding watch that puts the superpower guy cliché into good use? Well, as you can see on my final score, I don't share thatopinion. Frankly, Hamatora - The Animation turns out to be a really underwhelming show that ends up forgettable quickly after completing it. Set in a city where a small group of people with superpowers - called Minimum Holders - exist, the story follows a detective agency called Hamatora, a detective group made of Minimum Holders. Each episode we follow Hamatora solving various mysteries, always caused by another human who posesses Minimum Holder powers. Art, a superintendent of the police, usually cooperates with them to solve the cases, while it turns out that there is a mastermind behind all these mysterious happenings. The story of Hamatora really isn't bad - each episode we get faced with a new detective case for our little detective group, and we follow them solve the cases and doing some fighting with their cool Minimum Holder powers. Here and there, we see some hints of an actual plot, which then gets fulfilled during the final few episodes. It could have been developed so much better though. The first half of Hamatora (with the episodic short cases) was okay in the aspect that it also presented the antagonist and gave a small development up to the final conflict. The problem here is though that the time was not used effectively. Character development was close to zero, and instead we were presented with some filler-like episodes. Like the beach episode, which was used after a quite dramatic development, which was just completely out of place. And don't even get me started on episode 5, honestly. The last few episodes focus on the actual "plot" of the series, as already mentioned. It definitely is better than the first half, as the plot thickens and the episodes focus on the main conflict. Sadly we get fed up with an extremely disappointing conclusion, which leaves questions open and brings the story down. Additionally, at some point you aren't really interested in following the story anymore and lose interest more and more as the story progresses. This is mostly due to the extremely weak characters. And this leads me to my next point - the characters, which make up the weakest part in this series. As I've said, with the exception of some backstory hints, there is no real development and we don't get to know much about them. Hell, if they weren't called names like "Birthday" and "Nice" I don't think I would be able to remember much of them. Nice has some backstory, and characters like Murasaki, Art and Three also have some hints on their past here and there. But the rest gets left in the dark. Especially characters like Koneko, Hajime and Master could have easily been left out in their entity and the story could still progress the same, as they don't play any role in the main plot. At all. Maybe they play a bigger role in the manga or the upcoming video game - at least in the anime, they are completely useless. Finally there is also our "bad guy" Moral, who makes quite an underwhelming enemy character. I felt his reasoning for being the bad guy was quite a disappointment - you would expect so much more. Overall, since we barely get to know anything about the characters - thanks to the aforementioned use of filler-like episodes - so we are presented with characters that we can't relate to or connect with at all. I think this also plays a part why the enjoyment is so little - at some point you do not really care how the story progresses anymore since you can't really feel anything for the characters. The art is one of the more positive aspects, the character design is good and as I've already mentioned, the fighting scenes in their full colorful glory were quite a please to look at. The animation was okay too most of the time, though there were some episodes with lots of quality issues present. The music was decent too, with nice opening and ending songs. But of course, some art and music don't make an anime, which now leads me to my overall opinion - Hamatora could have been a good and fun show, as the flashy visuals and the superpowers surely pique one's interest, but was brought down by an average plot and unrelateable characters. All this together results in my final score 4/10.

Asfaria

Hamatora is an anime that showed plenty of promise at first. It could have been excellent if not for one major setback: most of the anime is filler. The story is actually great when it gets down to it, but having one of the most thrilling scenes of any show this season followed up by a beach episode before returning to the actual plot just destroys the mood and momentum this show could have built up much more. That's not the only problem, but it certainly is the biggest and most noticeable one. Hamatora is an anime with a similar style to things like Persona 4or Danganronpa which are based on video games (though Hamatora's game has yet to actually be made...). It centers around a group of crime fighting, mystery solving "superhumans" called "Hamatora" and the other similar groups of people that they know. Most of the main characters have abilities called "Minimums" which allow them to use some power when they fulfill a certain requirement (ex. gain super-strength when they take off their glasses). The main characters and members of Hamatora are Nice and Murasaki who are both Minimum Holders (people who have minimums). The story begins with them just doing their usual crime solving and being dirt poor because they don't get enough jobs and a girl named Hajime spends a lot of Nice's money on food. They soon start getting job requests that interconnect and begin to reveal a much larger scale crime. But before that all happens, the show has filler. Lots of filler. Most episodes have some small connection to the plot, but that will only be just about a minute out of an otherwise filler-filled episode. Whether it's a beach episode, spa episode with sit-ups (and I mean LOTS of sit-ups), or just some random event involving the minor characters, this show just has too much filler. However, the actual story is brilliant. The show overall resembles something like Psycho-Pass and Darker Than Black in the way the world and the minimum powers work and eventually crumble into chaos. The end of the show is excellent and leaves a possibility for a second season, which I would love to happen. As for the characters, they are all interesting but none develop very much or at least get enough screen time to develop. As much as I like Nice and Murasaki, they really don't develop as much as characters in similar shows, and the show only gave small glimpses into their pasts which needed much more elaboration as they seemed very interesting. A detective named Art is also interesting and his relationship with Nice is one of the higher points in the character aspect. Hajime, a girl who hangs out with Hamatora, appears to have the potential to be the main female protagonist at first with her intense hunger driving Nice into poverty, but she ends up only having a minor role with just two big appearances (one being the intense sit-up filler episode; you'll know which one I mean when you see it). The rest of the important supporting characters (who all have random English words for names) are just as interesting as the main cast. They were also given some short backstories, but not enough screen-time either. Hopefully a second season will bring about more of the characters' pasts. However, the best character in this show is actually the villain, Moral. He's just psychotic and and the show does an excellent job of building him up. His scenes with Art and Nice are never bad and are the best scenes in the entire anime. He just wants everyone in the world in to be equal, but that means eliminating those who think differently than him. He's an understandable villain whose goals are similar to those of real life people, but he actually puts his plans into action. The animation is generally very good despite the show's obviously low budget. The psychedelic look of when minimum holders use their powers make the action scenes very stimulating to the viewer, and all of the characters designs are great (Honey is especially cute). Moral, Nice, and everyone else look cool and their designs fit their parts well. The emotions the characters show really work well especially for showing how insane Moral is (at least compared to what society considers sanity). The urban scenery and everything else looks good as well. Really all that holds the animation back is just the low budget which is especially apparent in some of the filler episodes in the middle of the show, but the creators at least did a good job of saving the budget for more important scenes. The soundtrack is also one of the better parts. It uses a lot of piano tracks with unique rhythms that speed up and down a lot depending on the mood. During the action scenes, rock songs are used. Nice's signature song that plays whenever he puts his headphones on stands out in particular. The OP is also one of my favorites of this winter season. Hamatora may have issues with fillers that throw off the pace of the story and a noticeably low animation budget, but it's still very enjoyable. Even with a poor budget, they make it count when it needs to. The characters just needed a little more development to be really good, but the soundtrack is consistently great and sets a great mood to help fix all of the other problems. Some scenes are amazing and some are just frustrating, but Hamatora is still a fun and emotional anime that better get a second season.