Review: Hamatora

A drink? I would LOVE one.

3ET: Hamatora

Review Scale

Warning: the following review contains SPOILERS and direction by the M. Night. Shyamalan of anime.


I picked up Hamatora thinking that its problem of subpar direction would somehow resolve itself. After all, I liked the world the show takes place in, as well as its take on supernatural powers, known as Minimums. I also liked that it was willing to look at subjects rarely seen in anime, much less given the spotlight. However, despite all that it had going for it, it left me thinking it could have been a lot better. I don't think it was a bad show (as my score will show), but I was hoping its message would be communicated effectively. Which it wasn't, as it was lost in a series of missteps that nearly destroyed the show.

Birthday thinks this egg is a vital clue to the investigation. Ratio thinks he's a moron.

It's damning with faint praise to say that the strength of the cast was the supporting characters. In Hamatora's case, I mean the damning, but here I'll focus on the praise. There are two pairs of characters who I really liked. One was Ratio and Birthday, a pair of Minimum Holders who grew up together now are private investigators. Birthday is the more energetic one, and his lightning power combines with the more reserved Ratio's power of seeing into people's bodies to make them a formidable team in battle. More importantly, they play off each other really well in and out of battle scenes, making it easy to see their close relationship. The other pair of Minimum Holders, Three and Honey, have a similar dynamic. Three, a beast of a man with super strength, met Honey when she was a child after a mercenary mission of his ended poorly. He is the basic archetype of a character who looks mean, but has a soft heart. Honey actually keeps him from being too soft, something that makes their dynamic enjoyable and interesting to watch.

One thing I have to give this show credit for is the types of mysteries it tells. They appear to be episodic, but most of them end up being part of the overarching plot by the end. It asks questions about how people who don't have any power act when suddenly given power, without having to earn it. The answer given is usually violent and brutal, and is often shown on-screen. While many of the subjects like prostitution and bullying are examined seriously, I do have a major issue with the fifth episode. In it, a gay man has gained Minimum powers and uses them to seduce straight men using his sweat. Because, yeah, that's how gay men need to be portrayed in media, ass horndog comedic effect characters. Great job, assholes. That one issue aside, and one I was quite offended by, the cultural issues are good. I especially enjoyed the woman who is too busy running an organization against media violence to pay attention to her son. He then gains Minimum powers, which in turn causes her to lead the crusade persecuting Minumum Holders once their existence is made public. That particular story ends tragically, and has couple good moments in it. So, in addition to being more mature than most, Hamatora was able to pull at my cold, dead heartstrings from time to time.

No, Nice, those bandages on your face don't make you look cool.

I wish I could say the same for the protagonist, Nice. He's one of the most powerful Minimum Holders in the show, with the ability to move at the speed of sound. Sadly, that is probably his most interesting trait. He acts lukewarm at best towards his colleages, especially his partner Murasaki. Their complete lack of a rapport is a disappointment when compared to other pairs. The only person he seems to care for or admire is a detective named Art, who graduated from a government run academy to develop children with the potential to become Minimum Holders themselves. Except Art never develped his Minimum abiliy. There were opportunities to develop Nice as a person as the show went along, but nothing ever came from them. The more interesting character is Art, especially his relationship with the show's antagonist, a serial killer named Moral.

And even then, I have issues with Moral. He starts out as an interesting villain, killing innate Minimum Holders to create more numerous non-innate Minimum Holders. He does this to fulfill his dream of making everyone into Minimum Holders, thus making everyone equal, which has a certain amount of intrigue to it. His way of dealing with the people who were cruelly harassing the Minimum Holders once their existence became public was also great. By making all of those people's location information public, it allowed some justice to be dealt; whether in the form of a Minimum Holder-turned-lawyer serving a harasser with a lawsuit, or a group of newly made non-innate Minimum Holders beating the everloving shit out of someone. He also had a nice rapport with Art, who was trying to find evidence against Moral by visiting with him from time to time. Then, he reveals that he is doing all of this to get at Nice, with whom he is completely obsessed. His subsequent murder of Art, ridiculous plot to try to get people to "voluntarily" come to him and become Minimum Holders, even more ridiculous plot to deafen everyone who has said anything about Minimum Holders are ringed hollow and like that of a moustache-twirling, Saturday morning cartoon bad guy.

When  your villain is literally conducting his evil plan while
"Mars the Bringer of War" plays in the background... I can't. I just can't.

All of this comes to a head with a series of confrontations between Nice and Moral. For two episodes, Moral forces Nice to hold off on their big physical confrontation before it all comes to a head, on a boat, during Moral's final ridiculous plan. It is the standard song and dance of the bad guy getting the upper hand through some newfound power, then the good guy finding some way of beating him back before winning. In this case, winning comes in the form of a somehow alive Art shooting Moral dead, then holding the gun to Nice's head before a gunshot as the screen goes black. It was all ridiculous, including Art being alive, which didn't have to be as bad as it was. And to get to that, it's time to talk about Kishi Seiji.

As I said in the Three Episode Test, I have liked some Kishi Seiji shows. The problem is that as of late, his direction has been hindering shows, rather than helping them. The example I'll use is Art's death and why I have a major problem with the way he directed it. Art has a great confrontation with Moral, where Moral tempts him with Minimum power to be on the same level as Nice. Art calmly declines, which Moral responds to by stabbing him in the chest. He then whispers some secret that is inaudible to the audience before shooting him several times. The thing is, Kishi shows Art being shot all of those times. As an audience, we are supposed to think Art is dead. Now, if he wanted to have some ambiguity, he wouldn't have shown Art being shot. This wasn't fooling the audience, this was straight up lying to the audience, and seeing as he knew how the show would resolve itself, it was a terrible decision. The death scene was powerful on its own, and stayed so, as long as Art stayed dead. But, the way everything resolved, the only word I have for it was stupid.

Art is just fine after getting shot like this? Who does he think he is, 50 Cent?

I don't mean to say that Hamatora is a stupid show. In fact, it's quite clever. The episode after Art dies is mostly a comedy episode that takes place in Okinawa, far from the usual setting of Yokohama. It is portrayed as a ridiculous dream sequence that has to end, which works because the reality of Art's death is something that hangs over the entire episode. It works, but the later events sort of blunt the effectiveness of it. I guess the best way to describe Hamatora is that for every two steps forward as far as telling a good story, it took at least one step back. I applaud it for its efforts, but I can't really recommend it to a wide audience. Even if I would watch a season two. Or at least a remake with a different director

Final Score: 5/10