20130804: Anime Series Review--Hakkenden

Hakkenden: Eight Dogs of the East

1. Japanese anime series, 24 minute format, premiered 20130105.  Hulu+ streamed this in 'High' quality.  The episodes are sub-titled; spoken language is Japanese.  Supernatural goings on are par for the course during the series, as are fighting and confrontations.  Church property and church personnel are prominent in the series; so are excessive wealth, entrenched poverty, and references to plague.  The historical era seems on the feudal side.  There is no wide use of electricity or modern medicine, but I did see a revolver and an old style automobile.  So there are some industrial era elements.  Horses are still ridden.
2. The first series ran 13 episodes.  A second arc is to premiere in the summer of 2013.
3. According to the IMDB stub initial report this is the beginning of a remake of 108 episodes of a series that started in 1993.  The writer of the stub was considerably unhappy about the remake.
4. The current review is about the first arc of the 2013 version.  I have not seen the 1993 epic.  Even so, I would say that the 2013 version has more than enough 'Beautiful Men waving their swords' for my taste.  If I can get access to it, I'll attempt the 108 episode version from 1993, since it sounds more interesting.  But 108 episodes?  Hope it's good.
5. The story concerns eight half brothers each of whom hold a special bead with a word written inside it, such as 'devotion,' 'duty,' and so on.  These are about the size of marbles, are clear, and have different colours.  The brothers have been scattered to the winds by events in the past.  In the first 13 episode arc, they start to come together again.   There seems to be some importance to reuniting the beads as well as the brothers.
6. Many of the principal characters have losses to deal with, such as memory loss, loss of the ability to age, loss of half of one's soul, the loss of one's parents and friends, and so on.
7. The first 13 episodes seem devoted to character introduction, drawing together the 8 brothers, and filling in back story.  Wikipedia does a reasonable job summarizing episodes.
8. Taking this context forward in the next 13 episodes is still reasonably interesting, and might resolve some of my objections to the writing so far.
9. I rate the series as three stars of five for the first arc of 13 episodes.

One line summary: First 13 episodes of the remake of the 1993 fantasy classic.

Art: 9/10 was often excellent, but was sometimes pedestrian.

Sound: 8/10 was a plus for the most part.

Subtitles: 7/10 may have been a little off, judging from actions versus words in English.

Characterization: 5/10 left me a bit cold.  What do the characters remember?  This changes from one moment to the next, and from one lie to the next.

Screenplay: 5/10 too many flashbacks, too many unexplained characters and situations.