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Early 2000's to 2010's were the time when many independent creators and lesser known anime production companies tried to venture into short animations. But instead of utilising major social network type Video streaming services like YouTube, these animes tended to stream on some very obscure Japan-only webcomic/mobile comic website (with geo-restriction and/or foreign currency paywall) which failed to gain popularity and some being totally lost media due to the website being shutdown and the documentation being scarce. Majority of these Anime's selling point came from hiring prolific voice actresses with the opening credits shows the VA's name way larger than their character's name.
Walpurgis Night ... Fever is a short anime which mostly falls into that (minus being lost media, thanks to the DVD being sold and vbeing streamed on Bandai Channel), a rather obscure shitpost anime short which was produced for a very short-lived Japanese phone manga website called 'Biweekly Comic! Gekkin' (only lasted an year and 4 months) which relied on popular VAs, parodies of 70's-00's manga, sport athletes, video games, Hollywood movies and Japanese TV documentaries, psst, There's an Akira Toriyama reference but no Jojo reference

...The less talked about the DVD cover art, the better.

Plot [4/10]:
The anime does technically has a very tiny Sci-fi backstory: The humanity of planet Walpurgis 3 gone extinct, with the only survivors being two girls, Crystal Crystal (Cris) and Garnet (along with Carrot the mecha-bat and the ridable robot Koutetsu-maru) and the two girls attempts to send out an S.O.S. in a form of a TV programme. The story doesn't matter much, since it's a slapstick comedy where The girls tries to set up the S.O.S. programme whilst commiting to Carrot abuse and messing up in a weird way or actively enjoying major havoc within the ruins. To keep it simply, the anime's not for the plot but for very random humour.

Art [6/10]:
The character design is cute, the 3D presentation and animation is well put together without much of the messy low budget feeling. Koutetsu-maru's mech design is well detailed, giving a good gap between the comical nature.

Sound [6/10]
The Opening theme sung by Tomoko Kaneda (who also voiced Carrot) is peak chaos, basically indicating that the creators were honest that the anime was pretty much a deliberate shitpost. Other songs are okay with some not so subtle parody songs added in here and there.

Characters [3/10]:
Typical slap stick archetypes voiced by mainline VAs. that's pretty much it.

Enjoyment [6/10]:
I did quite enjoy a slapstick nature and subtle background details which hinted how Walpurugis 3 once used be a peaceful colony which turned to ruins after having the serious and how 100s of usable tanks and missles being abandoned, but I've also though that in areas of the comedic structure, it does get a bit repetitive in areas mostly due to the previously mentioned lack of character depth.

Overall [5/10]:
I do feel that there are some parts of the Anime that I like (the world setting with potentials of digging further) alongside giving some laughs ocasionally, but I do feel that there were so much missed opportunities due to the anime's short length, minimal character depth and overreliance on TV programme tropes a bit too much. It ain't bad...but there's so many animes with simillar concepts which were able to pull better execution. Watch as a form of a 2010's comedy anime time capsule.

What happens when you adapt a late 80's action-comedy robot anime inspired by Bikkuriman, NES roleplaying games and 80's pop culture references (with the early 90's sequel) into the late 90's? You get a one with 90's pop culture references, much more serious shonen action and a rather clever social commentary on how the advancement of society has influenced people losing its kind heart to them and the others.

The story starts with a slightly older Wataru losing its 'kind heart' due to Ankokudar and starting to act like a junior high delinquent. Shibaraku and Himiko takes Wataru back to Sokaizan, stating that he need to ... save Sokaizan once again with the rainbow going monochrome again and save the civilliian and his kind heart.

Kurama, the former-bad anthro bird guy is absent from this entry (although he was mentioned once) and was replaced by Suzume, a 90's glamorous tomboy girl which rides a different bird Mashin, with a evangelion cockpit. In addtion, an androgenous wooden toy Shoryushi (Toraou) came alive as Seiju also joins the cast to find his master.

New evil characters has been introduced, the Donarukami family, who overthrowned Soukaizan. comprising of a Fire demon king, ice-cold queen, Doran the sly drag queen, Dolk the mysterious swordsman voiced by Chisa Yokoyama of Sakura wars fame and Dode, the evil kid which later befriends Toraou. Out of the recurring villains seen in the Wataru series, the Donarukami family breaks the mold of the archetypal villians of the original series and depicted as a serious, empathetic and humane characters with its own development arc and proper explaination on what lead them to team with Ankokudar and steal the 'kind heart'.

The animation has been significantly improved from the previous series, and possibly the most visually appealing one within the series. The transformation bank scene always looked great throughout this series, but this one is top-notch.
Also, it is noted that in comparison to the original (and 2), which utilised a 'world boss' scheme, Chou introduces a 'stage boss' scheme. To accommodate this, the world building is more dense in Chou, with every location having more variety. Each stages looks established and more 'realistic' and 'believable' in contrary to the absolute wacky, yet linear nature of the original series .
In the original series, the bosses did not revert back to good civillians until the world has been cleared. Meanwhle in Chou, the bosses and the 'stage' reverts back to good, after each stage bosses has been defeated.

One of the issues which this entry suffers from, is the inability to decide whether it wants to be a sequel, 90's reboot or a remake of the 1st series (although this was purposely done to avoid sequel fatigue) This entry is seemingly a remake with the focus on reverting Soukaizan back to its coloursed state like the original, but is a sequel in the sense that Wataru has already had the previous adventures with Shibaraku, Himiko and Toraou.

However, nothing becomes more problematic with the overpowered nature of Sword-King Ryujinmaru, introduced in the MIDWAY of the series, with the ability to cut ANY objects and also allow to CUT DIMENSIONS (the only thing it can't cut is the kind heart). The mere existence of this breaks the latter half of the anime into a repetitive mess, nullifying the essential struggling required in most robot animes to make the battles thrilling. What makes it worse is that the later Ryujinmaru form has been underutilised, despite the anime including a very emotional development arc with Tama, a initially comic relief cat character which joins Wataru and his friends.

From the 2020 sequel 'The Seven Spirits Of Ryujinmaru', fan states that it kinda retconned that this entry might not be fully canon and wasn't the entry which the fans of the original series wanted.

Still, this is a great robot anime which worth a check, with its emotional themes. It's flawed but quite good.

Let me tell you the three mind blowing facts about Hanoka which no-one seems to know.

1)Although the anime is produced by RAMS, the entire Flash animation, Screenplay, directing is entirely done by literally one person, Mr Aruzi Morino.

2) The anime is only a small part of a bigger story created by the creator, Aruzi Morino.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOMXsjgUA7pxkEX3d8OmZbw


3) The anime actually has a DVD version, which inserts better character and setting development, new and altered scenes and a prologue and an epilogue, which ends with a happy ending.
...
https://lostmediawiki.com/Hanoka:_The_DVD_Cut_(found_unaired/unsurfaced_version_of_flash_anime;_2008)


So, every people in a very niche anime community seems to destructively hates this anime as a 'worst anime ever made' in a similar line to Mars of Destruction and Skelter Heaven. To be honest, it's not bad as people says. The major problem of this anime is that, RAMS HAS ABUSED ONE PERSON'S PASSIONATE ANIME PROJECT AS A SHODDY METHOD TO PROMOTE THEIR INHOUSE VOICE-ACTORS.

Sure. The Flash animation seems lazy with the motion tweens, the story, characters and settings are cliched Sci-Fi War story stuff, forced ecological messages and the climax is... just plain bad. Still, the flash animation itself is technically superior to the crude newsgrounds animation and the basic narrative structure of the film is fairly okay.

In terms of voice acting, it is a hit and miss. Sakura Nogawa as Hanoka does a pretty good job. However, Momoko Saito (who is primarily notable as a loli type voice actor) as Yuuri (a shota soldier) is just horrrendous. Even in the DVD interivew, whilst other voice actors had treated the anime seriously, Momoko Saito has totally misinterpret the anime's premises as a war time version of Captain Planet. Even saying that 'I think this anime is about ecology. LET'S USE ECO-BAGS!.

Overall, it's a mediocre anime if its sawn INDIVIDUALLY. Still, if you understand Morino's Lore, you might get a whole lot better idea of this anime and enjoy more.