It has all the potential to be a fascinating supernatural show...if it can find its focus.
When I first started watching the show, the synopsis that MAL had listed made it sound like an action show to me (this synopsis is now only listed with the manga). Because of this, I spent a lot of time frustrated with this anime because I thought that it was taking too long to get to what it was about. I had expected supernatural action in a detailed fantasy world alongside character interactions that hinted at BL (basically, I was comparing the show to 07 Ghost, since a lot of things in its premiere reminded me of it). As it turned out, my guess was only partially right.
Most of my initial frustration came from the fact that the characters mostly just stood around and talked to each other while self-contained plotlines introduced someone new to the crowd. The supernatural fighting that I expected didn't occur very often, and the thin connecting through line of the plot didn't seem to have any urgency to it. It took me a while to realize that Hakkenden wasn't putting off its action; instead, the character interactions were the main concern and the best part of the show.
Hakkenden follows Shino, who is cursed with the body and mentality of a small child despite actually being eighteen because he carries inside him a demon sword called Murasame. He lives with his childhood friends Sousuke and Hamaji under the protection of the Church until one day Hamaji is kidnapped by talking foxes who want Shino to give Murasame to their master. Shino and Sousuke head to the city to rescue her, where it turns out that the fox's master, Kaname, is actually is nice guy. He and Hamaji have some Beauty and the Beast chemistry going on, so the group ends up becoming friends and decide to stay in the city. At the same time, their benefactor, Satomi, a high-ranking member in the church that can summon a giant wolf familiar, decides to give Shino and Sousuke a job; they are to gather the people who carry small orbs similar to the ones they already posses, marked with symbols representing virtues, and bring them to the city.
From my fragmented synopsis, you can see how thin the plot of Hakkenden can get at points, if it bothers to justify the plot relevance of an episode at all. The first bit of momentum the story is given (rescue Hamaji) is diffused pretty quickly, and soon after that, the show seems to forget the orb quest as well. Rather than creating a series of events building up to a specific point, the majority of Hakkenden's run is spent creating circumstances so that a character will be in a certain place at a certain time so that they can meet another character for an episodic introduction plot to occur. They also vary widely in tone, to the point where I wondered if the original manga (if it also does this) was expanding the cast as an excuse to try out different tones of storytelling to see what worked the best. The result is a bit of a mess with too much going on; with so many different characters and subplots that don't have clear connections to each other, it's no wonder that the "main" story gets drowned out.
The setting makes this problem worse; Hakkenden takes place in the increasingly popular anime backdrop of "lets take cool stuff from famous historical periods and not give any explanation why it is this way." A weapon of choice could be a gun just as easily as it could be a sword, and characters will wear T-shirts and jeans just as readily as a kimono. There isn't much rhyme or reason to the technology presented or even how the world organizes itself. The closest thing we get to a government in this show is the Church, since their reach expands to everywhere the characters go, but it also suffers from a lack of justification. The Church's architecture and the way their higher-ranking members dress is clearly lifted from the Catholic religion, but because of their association with demons and the fact that the show never mentions what the Church preaches, it feels like that look was chosen because it was pretty rather than explanatory.
But as much as I disliked Hakkenden's meandering episodes and confusing setting, by the end of the show I loved the character interactions. Humans and supernatural beings becoming tangled in each other's lives and what results from those relationships becomes the main topic of this show, and it's explored through character interaction. Nearly every supernatural/human pair in this show involves the non-human keeping the human alive for one reason or another, and whether that is a beneficial relationship for both of them or not depends on the characters' temperament. I was more forgiving of the vagueness surrounding the supernatural creatures in the show because it was made clear that the humans don't fully understand what they're dealing with, and a lot of reveals are made to the other characters at the same time as the audience. This is where the character interactions get interesting, since despite mostly being friends and aware of each other's unique circumstances, each of them still keep a lot of secrets.
And as for the BL fodder, there's a good amount of it from the blatant remarks (Genpachi openly expressing his affection for Shino) to scenes that can very easily be taken out of context with a well-timed screenshot. One character even spends the majority of the season not realizing that another character is male. Most of this falls under the banner of light shounen-ai fanservice rather than full-on yaoi however, and a lot of it depends on how the viewer interprets the subtext.
Overall, Hakkenden doesn't get its act together plot-wise until the end of the season, which would be the biggest problem with the show if it weren't for the fact that a second half was announced immediately after the final episode. This takes a lot of the complaints that I have with this half and kicks them down the path to the Summer 2013 season, so it's completely possible that all the separate plot threads that confused me will wrap themselves up in an interesting way next season. While I don't have much of a clue what the show is leading to, I am invested enough in the characters now to want to know how this ends. If you were on the fence about watching this series and enjoy character-centric series with a good dose of the supernatural, now is a good time to catch up before the second half airs. Until then, I'm putting a bookmark on judging Hakkenden until it has completed its run.
Images from Crunchyroll.com.
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