Even though this one was quite short, this show is confusing and it had trouble keeping my attention and since I've also had some other real life stuff going on, I've been kinda distracted. Hopefully after this week things will get back to a minimal amount of scheduling turbulence. But enough about me, you want to know about this show. It features a classic traveling adventure formula with magic and mayhem as a young teenage sorceress travels the world with her two male companions. So prepare your walking shoes and a teddy bear backpack. We're taking a trip through Hatenkou Yuugi
Now that I've seen it, it's understandable why the show hasn't come to the United States officially, even though the manga it's based off of,
Dazzle, penned by Minari Endo, is still running and enjoys a position in Tokyo Pop's lineup in the USA. While it was produced by Studio Deen (known for its involvement in
Ranma 1/2 and the final third of the
Rurouni Kenshin anime) this anime enjoys much less room to grow its story as it's only composed of about 10 episodes. It also only ran for a short period of time on a few networks during the period between January and March of 2008.
 |
The main cast.
From left to right, Alzeid, Rahzel, and Baroqueheat |
We begin the story rather unceremoniously with a brief introduction to our protagonist, Rahzel, a 15-year-old magic user, who lives a sheltered life with her adopted father, of whom we see virtually nothing until near the end of the series. The most we see is that as soon as Rahzel is introduced, her father kicks her out the door, on the pretense of sending her on a journey to "see the world." (Gosh dad, isn't that a little harsh?) Apparently he's so lazy as a father he won't even go out with her, and just chooses to let her wander around on her own. (That's really risky if you ask me. I mean, I've known 17-year-olds I wouldn't trust unsupervised, never mind that there are a lot of nasties out there who could take advantage of a young impressionable girl, but I digress.) Almost immediately, the plot drives her into an alley where she meets a tough guy named Alzeid who is apparently supposed to be her somewhat indifferent partner in crime on this expedition (who can also use magic). They are soon joined by another magic user, and an old war buddy of Alzeids, the womanizing Baroqueheat, as they travel through the countryside going on adventures and getting into heaps of trouble along the way.
 |
Put in prison just for standing next to someone the police were after.
Brings a whole new level to guilt by association doesn't it? |
The world in which the characters exist is very ephemeral and suffers from the same problem that the world of
Claymore had. There really isn't much of an indication of what sort of world it is, who controls it, or what the geography is. Outside of the characters you're following, it may as well be a
fog of war. If anything, it looks like a Victorian setting on an acid trip. The clothes Rahzel wears are often reminiscent of the Lolita style of apparel but you see folks in contemporary clothing or attire like it just about everywhere evenly matched up with outfits that look like they belong to a museum. The cities have a sort of anyplace fantasy kind of feel. There's always an inn or a house somewhere that will function as the group's base of operations, generally related to them having helped someone living in said household or business. There seems to be things like electricity and guns, and a military, but you never see whole armies and swordsmen seem to come out of the woodwork. Modern sciences and urban legends seem to dwell side-by-side with ancient arts and magics, creating a sense that you're not sure what kind of world your in. I'm not even sure the author of the original story knows. To further add to the confusion, the color schemes of some of the scenery gives it a kind of dream-like quality that makes the plot feel nowhere near as urgent as some of the situations that occur should have felt. But maybe that's just me complaining because the plots were confusing as all get out and kind of left me with the feeling that the author was just making stuff up as she went along. Like in episode 2, they end up in jail for no apparent reason other than because the boy the police were trying to arrest for attempting to get revenge for his father's unjust execution just happened to run to the street they were on. (Is this a common occurrence? If so, the justice system must really be a bunch of pricks.) There's also the question of how common certain abilities are. Apparently being able to use magic is supposed to be pretty rare, but they seem to encounter folks who can use some variety of it with surprising regularity. To top it all off, there isn't even an explanation of where the magic comes from or how it's supposed to work.
As far as the characters are concerned, they seemed pretty bland to me. Rahzel seems to be trying to come off as a confident bruiser who can take care of herself, but sometimes gets in over her head and has to be bailed out. Not to mention, it never gets explained why she carries around a teddy bear at 15 years old, or why it's blindfolded. It's just there to be weird. Her relationships with the other two characters are never really expanded on aside from a few things to explain their motivations (or not explain them as the case may be). It's pretty clear that Alzeid is supposed to be paired off with her as some sort of special friend/significant other type character, but he has all the personality of a doorknob, and it feels so forced. I might be more willing to buy it if I had a little more time to see him get fleshed out, but no, at least in the anime, we don't get that. On that note, Baroqueheat is constantly disappearing to go do his own thing, leaving little time to really explore his psyche that much or find some redeeming qualities in him. (One even wonders why this group stays together at all aside from by the author's will.) In fact, even the outsider characters were pretty generic. I'm willing to understand a lot of stock characters when you need to move the core group through a scene, but coupled with the other issues in this anime and you've just made things worse.
 |
So deceptively cute,
she has to be a mass murderer. |
The antagonists they face don't feel that original either. We've all seen the crazed lunatic at the circus that kidnaps children in episode 3 somewhere (though I will admit her using them for a Frakenstein monster's body parts was creepy). The evil forest from episode 7 reminds me more of an evil version of the vanishing city from that old movie
Brigadoon (instead of keeping outsiders away, it just eats them). Then there was that guy Solesta from episode 8 who was trying to convince the guys to ditch Rahzel. He was just a total jerk. None of them have anymore than a superficial level of complexity, with the possible exception of the young girl from episodes 5 and 6 who turns out to be a crazed murderer on a homicidal rampage. But that story is just depressing. Most of them, just have this overall feel of being the villain of the week, and all of them are sadistically psychotic, which I guess is supposed to make it okay when Rahzel and the guys inevitably defeat them. (By episode 3, I was totally bored, even as the body count has starting to build to ridiculous proportions. Yes, countless folks were being murdered by the villains and I couldn't find myself caring.)The only real antagonist who looks like he's actually going to be important, doesn't show up until the last episode, and then the series ends before we get to do anymore besides listen to him sneer ominously while buying Rahzel a birthday present. By that point, the series is over before the viewers even learn what his name is (unless you read the manga, but I'm only doing an anime review here).
 |
So who's this mysterious red-haired guy?
This anime certainly won't tell you. |
The plots themselves are kind of confusing to wrap your mind around, but the worst aspect of the whole thing though, was the pacing. Most of the anime feels like you're just drifting and not really engaged, until you get to a plot point and then there is an info-dump. This happened right at the beginning of the series, when Rahzel gets kicked out the door and immediately the plot rail brings the narrative train crashing into Alzeid. Baroqueheat is introduced so fast that for a moment, I got confused and thought he might not even be real, but some imaginary friend Rahzel had spontaneously conjured up before realizing that Alzeid could talk to him too. There are other plot points that happen just as abruptly. To make matters worse, some of the confusion is compounded because the story likes to jump into flashback to insert conversations Rahzel has had with the other guys before to try and make certain events more significant, which leaves the reader to wonder if such activities weren't an attempted
retcon. Then there are a miriad of things that just pop up out of no where. Like the apparently important red-headed antagonist that the party never meets and just buys presents ominously in filler scenes in the last episode. Even at the end, her Dad just comes out of no where and is suddenly all like "Okay, you're coming back now, and don't talk back to me." completely out of left field. (Gee dad, you certainly didn't seem to care about it before now, what gives?) This brings Alzeid to a place where he actually has to act like he cares about continuing to travel with Rahzel which doesn't feel genuine at all, and totally leaves the anime in a heap of confusion and profound dissatisfaction. None of the characters have really changed for the better, nothing seems to have a real point and there never was any real focus.
By the end, I was begging for this to be over. Not even "Heartbreaking Romance" a very nice opening theme that was performed by Kanako Itou, could have saved the anime. The song itself had a nice beat, and really belonged in a DDR game, but sadly, it ended up here, to only briefly lift the spirits of those unfortunate enough to have to watch this show. In closing, what I have learned from this experience is that there is a compelling reason no anime licensing company has picked this up for the the United States. It's just a waste of time. And that's the tiger's two cents.
Images taken from Hatenkou Yuugi.
