First Impressions: Hana Saku Iroha & Sengoku Otome

Hana Saku Iroha

Hana Saku Iroha stood up and delivered. The story introduces our heroine, Matsumae Ohana, an overly good-natured and optimistic girl, in the bud of her life. Just as Ohana starts to think about her future, her world is suddenly turned upside down, when her flaky mother decides to move away with her boyfriend while sending her daughter to live with her Grandmother, a woman Ohana has never met. Of course when I say live, I meant to say work for in her Grandmothers Inn. And when I say Grandmother I meant to say battleaxe who doesn’t think twice about smacking her granddaughter around (literally). In essence this is what happens, yet Hanasaku Iroha has such a cheerful demeanour that you could almost be forgiven for overlooking Ohana’s mothers irresponsible behaviour. For such a limited amount of time, we already know a lot about Ohana, her personality, her life prior to moving, her wiliness to adapt to her new situation, this really is a strong and very beautiful beginning for any character. Obviously there are family dynamics at play that go beyond Ohana that it’s certainly going to be interesting to see if her presence will unravel them.

Initial Rating: 8/10

Sengoku Otome ~ Momoiro Paradox~ / Battle Girls ~Time Paradox~

Sometimes an anime is bad but there is a glimmer of potential, other times an anime is so bad that it’s like watching a car crash, no matter how hard you try you just can’t look away. Unfortunately Sengoku Otome or Battle Girls (your first clue is in the name) is neither. It’s just plain bad. The premise revolves around a teenage girl, Hide Yoshino, inexpiably being transported to 16^th Century Japan. Not exactly a new or original concept, so it falls to Sengoku Otome to pull something quite interesting out of the bag in order to be worth the watch. Or they could go with boobs, one or the other. Of course they went with boobs. Sengoku Otome decides to do a gender-bender on historical Japanese figures, an excuse to have the primary female cast strutting around in impractical warrior underwear. Its second mistake is to make its heroine into a shallow, clumsy, blithering airhead, who is such a retard that she still hasn’t worked out where she is. And here I was concerned there would be too many animes to watch this season!

Initial Rating: 3/10