Hamatora

Title:Hamatora
Hamatora The Animation
ハマトラ THE ANIMATION
Overall:Watch
Keywords: , , , , , ,
Notables:
In the year 2014, select humans called Minimum Holders have been discovered to possess supernatural abilities. Fellow Minimum Holders Nice and Murasaki form a detective agency called "Hamatora" based in the Nowhere Café in Yokohama where they prefer to sit around all day with their friends and wait for clients. However, when they are approached by the Police Officer Art for their help in investigating a string of serial murders throughout the city, the duo reluctantly decide to involve themselves in the case when they learn of the murderer's sole target—Minimum Holders.

Hamatora is a Japanese mixed-media project. The project began with a manga series written by Yukino Kitajima and illustrated by Yūki Kodama which started serialization in Shueisha's Young Jump magazine in November 2013. An anime television series premiered on TV Tokyo on January 7, 2014

(summary from Wikipedia)


"ハマトラ" ("hamatora") = (abbr) a style of clothing popular in the late 1970s and resembling a Catholic school uniform (Yokohama traditional)
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Watch 7 7 7 5 5 5 Ggultra2764 [series:2836#1552]
Hamatora appeared to have a major issue in what exactly it was trying to be in its focus on superpowered humans called Minimum Holders. Focused on a pair of Minimum Holder detectives consisting of Nice and Murasaki, the two are involved in a number of mysteries involving ordinary humans who are somehow able to gain Minimum powers and a string of Minimum Holder murders are seemingly connected to these events.

As mentioned, Hamatora has some major issues in exactly what sort of anime it wanted to be. It starts off as a mystery-comedy with Nice, Murasaki, and other Minimum Holders going through with their everyday routines and getting into their fair share of comical shenanigans. The series was trying to pass itself off as cool and full of attitude with the antics and actions of its characters, and occasionally poking fun of elements to anime and otaku fandom in general. However, character depth is heavily lacking in the series as the majority of characters are reduced to one-dimensional archetypes and in spite of being the show's lead, Nice can usually not be the most easiest character to connect with thanks to his brash, self-righteous persona and being seemingly perfect in all his actions. Due to this, it makes connecting with most characters rather difficult throughout Hamatora's run.

By the anime's second half, it tries to become something comparable to Marvel Comics' X-Men by exploring how those with differences from others in regular society face prejudice and the outcasts wanting to be just like everyone else. However while X-Men explored this with a clear purpose and having its morally ambiguous story elements, Hamatora's approach is a bit sloppy in execution as it resorts to shallow storytelling cliches in exploring how humans and Minimum Holders react to one another at this point. Plus for Hamatora's version of Magneto, Moral is your typical anime crazed psychopath dabbling in megalomania and thinking how brilliant he believes his plans are to stir chaos up between humans and Minimum Holders. The anime tries to throw a twist for its ending to tease its second season, but this comes off feeling abrupt with how it plays out.

Visually, Hamatora's a mixed bag. It sports some slick-looking character with detailed clothing designs and sporting bright colors to stick out. Also, the fight sequences between Minimum Holders had their moments of looking pleasing to see unfold thanks to careful editing and nice fluidity in spite of not sporting a high-quality budget that TV titles like Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works or Parasyte had on hand in 2014. However, a major annoying quirk with the anime is that it gets in the habit of applying a filter of psychedelic colors to the visuals whenever Minimum Holders make use of their powers. While this seemed to be an attempt by the animators to show the abnormal nature of Minimum Holder powers, this effect often took me out of the action since the effect became the primary focus of the scene instead of any animated action that was supposed to play out in specific scenes.

Overall, Hamatora was quite a bit messy in the execution of its themes and storytelling as it suffered from a shallow and usually unlikable cast, some questionable style choices with artwork, and not seeming to have a clue in what kind of series it wanted to be with its hodge-podge elements of mystery, comedy, action, and drama. Based on my underwhelming reception to it, I would be in no rush to check out its sequel, Re: Hamatora.

Last updated Sunday, April 29 2018. Created Sunday, April 29 2018.
Unevaluated Stretch [series:2836#628]
(One episode watched):

The first sign of trouble was that a girl in what was seeming like a real-world private detective show seemed to have a tail. I was confused by talk of something called a 'minimum', and then it was made clear that these people in fact possess supernatural power--"an extraordinary power beyond the understanding of man that manifests itself whenever a specific condition is met in the form of an action" (whatever that means). But supernatural powers aren't interesting in and of themselves, no, there has to be interesting people employing them. What we have here seems to be stereotypical characters with fantastic powers instead of interesting personalities. Nobody seems really original or noteworthy. Maybe character development will come about in episode two or later, but trying to hook me with supposedly amazing powers rather than intriguing characters is such an amateurish move that I seriously doubt it. And the only decent joke was the one about the contents of the safe. Maybe I'll watch another episode, but so far Hamatora does not seem worth 23 minutes of my time.

Last updated Monday, January 13 2014. Created Monday, January 13 2014.

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