Anime: Hakaima Sadamitsu

Overall:

As every good anime seems to do, Hakaima Sadamitsu sets the mood right in the opening sequence. We are treated with an absolutely awesome opening theme – something akin to a Spanish bolero, which is at the same time a hilariously hokey and unusually badass song. While the song is playing, our hero struts his stuff in a power-rangers sort of costume, which once again is undeniably corny and oddly appealing.

The entire show is like this: a seeming tribute to the very essence of what makes action animes good. Every single aspect of the show feels amazingly dated (despite the fact that the show was made a mere 3 years ago), and somehow manages to be cool anyway. If you can manage to get a hold of this (this anime is ridiculously hard to find), I’d definitely recommend Hakaima Sadamitsu.

Animation:

I was actually expecting this to be a lot worse than it turned out. Although the incredibly obscure nature of the show probably translated to a budget the size of my college’s meal plan, the series manages to be more than passable in every respect. In the action scenes, the animation actually bumps up a notch, and becomes pretty good.

Sound:

The soundtrack is pretty small (they actually use the opening theme in the anime itself occasionally), but I didn’t end up minding. All of the songs are pretty good, and the repetition didn’t turn out to be a very large issue. Voice acting is… well, just about on par for an action anime, despite its somewhat cheesy nature.

Story:

The storyline is a surprisingly good but by no means original science fiction tale that conveniently provides excuses for a large number of fights. Although I’ve seen much better, for an action anime it’s actually pretty decent backbone.

Characters:

I liked the characters on a basic level, but certainly not for their depth. Their personalities are all pretty simple, although perhaps this is what gives them their appeal. The protagonist stands out as the best, however, with a go-get-em attitude that manages to not come across as tiresome.