Hakuouki

In 1864 Japan, a young woman named Chizuru Yukimura is searching for her missing father, Koudou, a doctor by trade whose work often takes him far from home. But with no word from him in months, Chizuru disguises herself as a man and heads to Kyoto in search of him. Attracting the attention of ronin, she tries to hide and ends up witnessing a horrifying sight: the ronin being brutally murdered by crazed white-haired men. In a startling turn of events, members of the Shinsengumi arrive to dispatch the creatures. But Chizuru's safety doesn't last long, as this group of men tie her up and take her back to their headquarters, unsure of whether to let her live or silence her permanently.

However, once she reveals the name of her father, the Shinsengumi decide to keep her safe, as they too have been searching for him. But Koudou is more connected to the Shinsengumi than they let on, and soon Chizuru finds herself embroiled in a conflict between the Shinsengumi and their enemies, as well as political tension in Kyoto.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Saitou, Hajime Main

Toriumi, Kousuke Japanese

Okita, Souji Main

Morikubo, Shoutarou Japanese

Hijikata, Toshizou Main

Miki, Shinichiro Japanese

Harada, Sanosuke Main

Yusa, Kouji Japanese

Toudou, Heisuke Main

Yoshino, Hiroyuki Japanese

Yukimura, Chizuru Main

Kuwashima, Houko Japanese

Nagakura, Shinpachi Main

Tsuboi, Tomohiro Japanese

Sannan, Keisuke Main

Tobita, Nobuo Japanese

Kazama, Chikage Supporting

Tsuda, Kenjirou Japanese

Yamazaki, Susumu Supporting

Suzuki, Takayuki Japanese

Ogura, Mitsutoshi Producer

Yamazaki, Asuka Producer

Hasegawa, Kazuhiko Producer

Urasaki, Nobumitsu Producer

Reviews

Nov 6, 2023

vanelya10

Recommended

I think people will have mixed feelings about this one.

For me, coming back with a review in 2023, I still love this one. Not because of the all male cast or reverse harem but mostly because it kept me going on at the time I saw it, when a lot of animes were low story based.
Reporting today, it may seem cringe for you and lack of character development (Chizuru's case).
My favorite out of the entire series will be my one and only Hijikata Toshizou and an entire cast of great animation scenes, fighting and action packed episodes. I love the fact that there is a ... lot of history base in the story even tough we cant say this is a very accurate hisctorical based anime. I think its a good anime to try it if you are into long haired male guys and not cringe love aproach.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Feb 8, 2021

Poppy_h1

Mixed Feelings

For me, this anime scores badly in the story, in character and in enjoyment.

I feel that the anime has the potential to be mind-blowingly amazing. BUT there was a lack of development. The first few episodes as far as plot development goes were slow. Despite it opening in the middle of a fight scene and I was sat there thinking what is going on? Are they demons?
It did pick up speed around the 5th episode.

The second season just has no plot development. The focus is on killing and the honour of death and death and more death. That's it. In every ... episode, a handful of people die or are going to die and are definitely killed. They basically kill off every main character apart from the narrator because of this I want to put it in the category of Shakespeare's tragedies. However, the interpretation of the story teases plot development but does not actually achieve development. I feel the sequels seek to develop the plot of this season and season 2 and they should have just done that from the get-go.

I also have comments for the love story. It was very bad. Originally there were two love interests and all the way through you have this back and forth like they were not too sure who to make the lover. So much so, the guy who she ended up with was I love her like a sister in the begging and in the end was like I love you like a lover. Even though there were hints that he was the love interest. It was confusing. When they decided to kill the other lover guy with TB. It was like O so they decided to go with the other guy. It was just really odd. There was no development, so no emotional attachment as the watcher. It was like... so that just happened.

I hate the ending. I am still trying to work out if the main character died at the end or what. It was so vague.

Plot-wise there was definitely room to develop friendships and the story plot could have been developed so much more even in the battle scenes.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Oct 28, 2024

eensekt

Not Recommended

SPOILERS BELOW

There are many problems with this anime but I really want to touch upon a few because I feel so infuriated after finishing this anime.

So if Chizuru was not in this story, would any of the events or situations change throughout this season? No. Absolutely nothing. She's just there to cry and be a damsel in distress just like, you know, every other anime girl? Her being there = her not being there. Every single thing that happened would have happened anyway even if she wasn't a part of it, without affecting the plot, I mean there's isn't much going on to begin with ... but you get the point.

I don't understand what is it with women in anime. At first glance when you see 'josei' or 'shoujo' the first thing that you'd expect is a decent female character. But I realised long back that shoujo is always just a weirdly love obsessed mc with bunch of male harassers around her. So, Fuck shoujo. But I never thought even Josei is like that. Because I don't have any experience with watching or reading this demographic so I delusionally expected it to have a good female character that girls can relate to since it is supposedly written for post teen and adult women lmao. And that's like the one reason I picked this anime - The ratings were not that great or anything but hey! atleast it's written for women with definitely a relatable female character! Yaay! Well fuck this anime. I am not acquainted with the visual novel so I don't know how different it is but it doesn't matter. Tbh every character sucks in this story but more or less they add something to the story. Like, if you remove Kondou from the story, it'll stop working. But what about Chizuru? She's basically a filler character. I mean we're not dying for a woman in the story, are we? If you're gonna write a woman as the same blushy, weak, pitiful, crying, soft baby then just don't include a woman, don't make her the mc. Hell, all the best written and almost all my favourite characters in anime and manga are male characters. Because the women that are actually good, you can count them on your thumb. Seinen does female characters the best inspite of being targeted towards men and I'm happy with that, being a huge seinen fan myself. Apart from countable good Seinen women, Miyazaki portrays teen and pre-teen girls the best. But sadly, I sometimes start hoping to see good women written for women and I end up making grave mistakes such as picking up this anime. Sigh. Anyway this show is such a disappointment. The story is already so bad. The characters are already lackluster. Above that the MC is just the worst. Ugh. Also did you know that the men are really hot? especially Okita (ohh good God he's so hot) but Okita Souji is beautiful literally everywhere in Anime and Manga. Oh, that's it. The men look good. Also, did I mention nothing happens in the show? Like, it's hard to understand whether there's supposed to be fighting or is it supposed to be political or philosophical and so there's going to be a lot of talking instead....? What is it supposed to be? Even in the prequel which in comparison is far better than this, they just erm.. talk. They just talk about doing stuff like 'protect the Shogun' and so they go on a mission to protect the Shogun but the protection happens off screen so there's no action, cut to them having food and then talking about attending an 'important' meeting but the meeting happens off screen so there's no tension, cut to them having dinner 'Good work today guys' okay but we didn't see them doing the good work eh? I really am interested in watching or reading about different adaptations of the Shinsengumi but apart from the historical accuracy, the plot overall falls flat. Kudos for trying to add their own zombie touch to this but it ruins the plot even more. Everything is all over the place, also the female characters(one of them turned out to be a boy and a twin) look exactly the same but I guess the generic design is for self insert purposes but whatever. Character motivations make no sense, they make stupid decisions that don't match their personality like Hijikata taking the potion to fight against the other guy which also was just for the moment and didn't go anywhere. It's overall a stupid mess. All the characters are boring, bland, make weird decisions. Don't watch it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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