Hiiro no Kakera: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

Hiiro no Kakera: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 17, 2013

Is it Halloween in Japan? All of a sudden American shores are awash in anime offerings that feature yōkai, those sometimes lovable but often kind of spooky spirits and demons who populate Japanese folklore. Just in the past couple of weeks alone, we’ve had Natsume's Book of Friends: Season 3 and Nura Rise of the Yokai Clan: Set 1, two shows which posited young adolescent boys attempting to deal in one way or another with these fearsome (or not) creatures. Well, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gender (sorry, couldn’t resist), for Hiiro no Kakera plays at times like a distaff version of Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan. In Nura, Rikuo is trying to come to terms with the fact that he’s inherited the mantle of leading the yōkai, despite the fact that he’s a “half breed” of sorts (and actually a “quarter breed”, but who’s counting?). Rikuo simply wants to live a normal life as a human, at least in the opening episodes of that series. Hiiro no Kakera on the other hand gives us a heroine named Tamaki Kasuga, who ventures in an enchanted forest (is there any other kind when yōkai are involved?) on her way to her grandmother’s house, only to be confronted by some mysterious beasts, at which point she’s rescued by a dashing young man named Takuma Onizaki. Tamaki is surprised to hear that Takuma was sent by Tamaki’s grandmother and that evidently Tamaki has a few magical powers of her own that she never knew existed. Much as with Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan, the grandparent holds the key to the mystery and to a preferred inheritance of royal lineage, though once again in Hiiro no Kakera’s case, it’s a grandmother rather than a grandfather. While parts of Hiiro no Kakera play like a slightly hallucinogenic version of Alice in Wonderland, the series settles into a fairly standard fight structure that might work against the show’s presumed demographic target audience of young girls.

While Hiiro no Kakera has similarities to other shows as outlined above, it probably more properly fits snugly into what is often termed a reverse harem anime, for as the series progresses, Tamaki has more and more young men surrounding her. This is probably yet another reason the show may appeal more to adolescent girls, for some of the guys in this outing are obviously meant to be “hunkalicious”, with that sort of brooding bad boy ambience that seems to attract young female teens especially. Tamaki find out she is heir to what is a royal throne of sorts, the ancient Tamayori line, and that she will be entrusted with securing a sacred relic known as the Onikirimaru. What this really means, however, is that Tamaki and her coterie of male protectors rush headlong into a series of conflicts, a gambit which tends to give the show a kind of rote feeling from time to time.

While Tamaki and her five erstwhile guardians each have various magical powers that come into play as the series progresses and gives the show some its most defining characteristics, some may find the villains more colorful and therefore more interesting. The chief baddie is a bizarre girl, ostensibly a child, named Aria, whose golden tresses, deep blue eyes and innocent sounding voice belie some rather vicious tendencies. Her assistants are all named after German numbers, including Ein, Zwei, Drei and Vier. This gang has their own magical powers which of course come into conflict with the forces of good marshaled by Tamaki and her crew. While the Onikirimaru is the main focus of the battle, there are a number of tangential conflicts which come into play along the way.

The sidebar battles all surround what are called the five seals of the Onikirimaru, more sacred relics, each of which is protected (supposedly, anyway) by one of Tamaki’s own guardians. The first major arc of the series actually deals with Aria and her evil minions attempting to purloin one of the seals, which leads to a variety of further battles as Aria moves on to more shenanigans designed to get all of the seals. A lot of the development here is fairly repetitious, and yet the series still tends to be unexpectedly entertaining much of the way, courtesy of the fine animation and decently distinctive characters.

So called otome games might not seem to be brilliant source material perfectly suited for being adapted as anime, and some will no doubt find Hiiro no Kakera too predictable to ever warrant much enthusiasm. And truth be told, there’s a certain validity to that point of view. The series doesn’t have a lot to offer other than Tamaki’s interactions with her five quasi-boyfriends, which are interrupted with fair regularity by the battles with the perhaps more interesting Aria and her hangers on. But this cursory reaction may not be completely warranted. The series has a certain mythic ambience which is helped immeasurably by some unusually beautiful animation. It’s a fairy tale, to be sure, and as such has elements that are patently ridiculous. While Hiiro no Kakera is obviously a contemporary piece, it has a certain timeless aspect that gives it a nice, lingering quality, at least if the enjoyment bar isn’t set too radically high. The show isn’t especially innovative or even dramatically compelling, but it’s strangely enjoyable nonetheless.

Hiiro no Kakera: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Hiiro no Kakera: Season 1 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is an often sumptuously beautiful anime that may sway at least a few waffling fans over who are wavering in their reactions simply by dint of its visual allure. This high definition presentation boasts superior clarity and crispness, with excellently sharp line detail and some really nicely saturated colors. The backgrounds in this series are very well rendered, with lots of quasi-3D effects, especially in some of the forest scenes, and those pop really well throughout both Blu-rays in this set. Character designs are a bit on the generic side, but offer enough distinctiveness to set them apart from other anime and to quickly differentiate the large supporting cast in this particular outing.

Hiiro no Kakera: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Hiiro no Kakera: Season 1 features lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mixes in both English and Japanese. This series tends to ping pong back and forth between quieter dialogue moments and then more intense battle sequences, and both DTS-HD Master Audio tracks handle these extremes with ease. Fidelity is excellent, with nicely rendered dialogue and effects. This is yet another show which probably could have benefited from a well done surround mix, especially with regard to some of the action segments, many of which feature a glut of nice sounding foley effects which would have only been that much better splayed around a wider sound field. What's here is quite well done, however, and few will have any major complaints.

Hiiro no Kakera: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Clean Opening Animation (1080p; 3:04) actually features two versions of the opening.


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


• Trailers for other Sentai Filmworks Releases

Hiiro no Kakera: Season 1 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Color me at least a little surprised that I was as entertained by Hiiro no Kakera as I was. The show is undeniably cliché ridden, and yet it's still kind of strangely magical in its own way. The "boy toy" aspect is obviously geared more solidly toward adolescent girls than my decidedly different demographic, but the show moves along relatively well (even if has a few too many "perils of Tamaki" for my personal taste), and the visual beauty of a lot of the series helps it to overcome its dramatic stumbles. The show does dig itself a fairly deep rut of reverting to Tamaki and her "escorts" getting blown away by Aria and her minions, only to rise to fight again another day. Hopefully the second season can find a way to get around this repetition and develop more of a link to the appealing mythology that gives this show its most distinctive edge. While this is not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, it has enough going for it, along with some unusually handsome designs, to warrant coming Recommended.