an-ime-goil:

man, i’m so disappointed with hakuouki. you’ve got this gorgeous cast of characters with a great art style, a reasonably interesting supernatural twist… and it’s just kinda meh. I have to wonder if the games fill things out more. the anime is just too fast-paced, or maybe it just focuses on the wrong things. you’ve got the main character, this young teenage girl through which we get to meet the rest of the shinsengumi and the plotline revolves around her (just like how in peacemaker kurogane, you had the lead teenage boy, and the show focused a good bit on his relationship with the shinsengumi and the larger plot line involved him). at first you’re just like, ew, mary sue, but later i started to realize, well, if there was a young girl around all these men, it makes sense that they’d become very doting and affectionate towards her, like a little sister.

 the problem is that the show is viewed through her eyes to the point that you don’t get much of the background of what’s going on – for example, when some of the shinsengumi members part ways, we get to see their tearful goodbye with her, but you don’t see them interact with each other as much – where’s their goodbye with the rest of the troupe? or we have her worrying about hijikata and him relying on her, but we get passing mention of other people worrying about him. it’s like all this stuff happens in the background, but either we don’t see it because it doesn’t relate to her, or her importance in it is way overblown. that chick was privy to way too many top-secret meetings, on the pretense of being trustworthy and serving tea. 

which is another thing – they tried way too hard to do that balancing act of her being the perfect girl – subservient and obedient, but also courageous and loyal – she’s allowed to attempt to draw her sword, but not to the point where she ever spills blood, because that would ruin her innocence! she never messes up, because then that would draw criticism, i guess, and she’s always worrying and caring about others. basically, sorry, but she’s kinda boring.

the pacing of the show is also meh. they often skipped forward months and even years – i suppose they’ve got years of history to cover, but i don’t really care about them relocating their bases, i don’t need that part of the history lesson. just, i dunno, everything feels so glanced over. major plot points that could have been drawn out are explained in a few sentences. saitou leaves the shinsengumi to infiltrate another group as a spy? we get a handful of minutes of him with the other group, kind of still-shots of him looking up at the sky in this new location, or overhearing the other commander talking, then the revelation of him having done that to spy on them in a 20-second clip a couple episodes later when he comes back. that’s it. it’s great for fics, in the sense that this fandom could be filled with fics that just fill in all the things that must have happened in between and elaborate on those that were mentioned. but it’s very disappointing otherwise. i hope the games are better. 

and yet i’m gonna keep watching because hot damn, look at these uniforms: 

Play the games. The games are more detailed in each of their individual routes. They have a version which is released on android and iOS so you can try that out.