Hanayamata: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

Hanayamata: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

So they think they can dance.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 4, 2016

Social (as in group) dancing is a kind of interesting phenomenon, even for those (like yours truly) who have a hard time walking some days, let alone moving feet in an orderly, rhythmically acute manner. Years ago shortly after I had broken up with a girlfriend, a buddy insisted that I accompany him to a square dancing fête being held in the picturesque little town (village, actually) of Vernonia, Oregon, telling me it was an easy and painless way to meet girls. Against my more intelligent impulses, I agreed and spent the night whirling and twirling with a variety of apparently available females, but ended up too dizzy to really do anything about it. But the “forced community” of situations like this or even looser aggregations like conga lines somehow builds a sense of togetherness and camaraderie which is undeniable. Prior to watching Hanayamata, I frankly hadn’t been aware of a Japanese social dancing phenomenon known as yosakoi, something that evidently evolved from an older tradition which was a mainstay of the Awa Dance Festival held in the summer in Japan. Hanayamata is another relatively slight offering built upon a perhaps unlikely foundation that delivers a gentle message of friendship centered at least tangentially around music, something that may remind some anime fans of another gynocentric offering which also focuses on music making, K-ON!: Volume 1.

Though Hanayamata’s odd title might initially seem to point to focal character Hana Fountainstand, it’s in fact an abbreviation of the first two letters of five central girls who end up forming a yosakoi troupe. Hana herself is a squeaky voiced American girl who has transferred to a Japanese school after having become intrigued by yosakoi. Hana is initially mistaken for being a fairy by the impressionable Naru Sekiya, the first character who’s actually introduced and who provides a bit of context via some voiceover narration. Yaya Sasame is Naru’s best friend who kind of comes along for the yosakoi “ride” (to begin with, anyway), but whose extreme jealousy regarding Naru creates some momentary obstacles. Machi Tokiwa and Tami Nishimikado, two school council officers, make up the rest of the quintet.

The series almost seems to be going in something akin to a “magical girl” route in its early formulation, as the decidedly “average” (in her own words) Naru becomes convinced that Hana is some kind of fairy when the two girls encounter each other at a shrine. It turns out that Hana is simply practicing her yosakoi moves at the location, though her ability to defy gravity and hop around on the tops of archways gives her a quasi-magical ambience. (The bizarre decision to animate this character with two incisor teeth poking out of the sides of her mouth also tends to give her a vampiric ambience at times.)

Instead, once Hana shows up at Naru’s school, Hanayamata settles into a fairly predictable rut that finds the various girls befriending each other and slowly overcoming various individual “issues” (typically pretty minor in the overall scheme of things) to forge a dance troupe. It’s not exactly an overly ambitious concept, but the series does a rather good job of offering distinct characters while also delivering a relatively organic development of the interrelationships. Some of the show tends to fall within fairly well defined parameters of the anime subgenre where kids try to get a school club off the ground, and it’s probably only the yosakoi angle that gives Hanayamata its distinctive flavor in this regard.

What may tend to bog down the series is its tendency to rely on too many well worn tropes, both in terms of the basic traits of the focal quintet, but also with regard to the overall shape of the story. Anime is filled to the brim with shōnen entries that exploit the kind of peculiar obsession Japanese kids have with extracurricular clubs, and despite the yosakoi aspect to Hanayamata, the series never does anything very original with this element. While the various characters can each be winning or annoying at various moments, they, too, seem cut from a somewhat generic cloth that never really blossoms into anything overly special (despite the kind of odd linking of characters to various blossoms).

Hanayamata: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Hanayamata is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is an unusually beautiful anime, one filled with a rather lustrous palette, one which exploits some deep purples and blues with special immediacy. The blossom aspect also provides some nicely detailed looks at various flowers and blooms, often with appropriately deeply suffused and saturated colors. Line detail is sharp and well detailed, and while the character designs aren't really innovative, each of the five main girls are easy to identify and retain distinctive appearances. Some of the more whimsical approaches which traffic in a near fantasy environment can tend to look a bit soft at times, but overall this is a really sharp and well defined looking presentation.

Hanayamata: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Hanayamata features lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 tracks in both English and Japanese. While there are perhaps minute mixing differences between the two, the biggest difference between the two tracks is the sound of the voice actors. The Japanese "girls" are all on the high, squeaky and dare I say screechy side at times, something that I found increasingly hard to listen to as the series went on. There's a bit more variety in the English language voice actors, though the show's tendency to feature excitable young girls makes sequences in virtually every episode means a lot of higher frequencies in the soundtrack. One way or the other, fidelity is excellent on both of these tracks, and the series' nice use of music also finds very faithful and vibrant support in the lossless format.

Hanayamata: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Clean Opening Animation (1080p; 1:32)


• Clean Closing Animations (1080p; 3:04)

Note: All supplements are found on Disc 2 of this two disc set.

Hanayamata: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Perhaps more than is usually the case, what kind of mood you're in will probably affect whether or not you end up enjoying Hanayamata. If you're feeling like relaxing with an undemanding but generally enjoyable anime, one which doesn't try to do anything too unusual while at the same time exploring an element of Japanese culture with which many Westerners will probably be more or less unfamiliar, chances are you'll find enough in Hanayamata to engage your interest. If, on the other hand, you're out to find something mind boggling and innovative, this is probably not the show you're looking for. Slight but rather sweet, Hanayamata may ultimately not be anything overly special, but it's often an eyeful and also features some winning music. Recommended.