Geekatana Anime Review: Hidan no Aria

I'm not a big fan of action harem but I can say that there are some that I actually like and I find as guilty pleasures from time to time. Not to mention some of them have really good story and characters.

Just to throwback, JC Staff has some really good animes to its name like the Slayers Series, Maid sama, Zero no Tsukaima, Toaru kagaku no Railgun series and Toradora. So you can tell that I got high hopes when I found out JC Staff was doing Hidan no Aria.

To battle crimes in Japan created Tokyo Butei High where folks are trained to become mercenaries to fight these crimes. This is the setting where Kinji Tooyama comes in a Butei who has the ability called Hysteria Mode and Aria Kanzaki meet up to hunt down the infamous "Butei Killer" The series is also known as Aria the Scarlet Ammo.

The plot of Hidan no Aria was decent for the first few episode and yes l agree that the idea of Hysteria mode being triggered due to Kinji being aroused is stupid as it sounds but the story was decent from the get go and the actions was exciting until they introduced the idea of Espers and things got out of hand.

I guess the problem of the plot was it tried to introduce a lot of new stuff that the idea of Butei being a mercenary group ala a school where they train James Bond like characters turn out into your generic action harem thats been done before and better by other anime. Personally Id prefer they stuck with the mercenary side of the story with just guns and swords.

They set up Aria as this descendant of some famous detective but barely if ever did some actual detective work that warrants the idea. You think this would be in the lines of the anime Deathnote in terms of a cat and mouse hunt but we get was the typical harem scenes here and there.

The artwork is decent but minimal that the only time you feel the show is getting good is when they do the slow mo action scenes where they do mix 2d and 3d render but the character is an mandane as any action harem that this is probably one of the few saving grace of this anime as each one falls into their individual cliche

The loli tsundere, the mc who finds himself in pervy situations, the stoic kuudere. characters tripping over themselves. Sure its expected but I think this series could have used a little less of that and more story and character development. The only time you think some story character story arc is being explored its nearly at the end of the series itself.

Despite the lack of character and plot I have to credit it as having some decent and impressive action sequence that I really did enjoy and the bgm that plays during this action scenes are catchy and adds to the intensity of these scenes but sadly its not enough to cover for its shortcomings.

If you like the typical action harem and don't mind the lack of character and deep plot then Hidan no Aria is a good anime to watch. Its not a bad anime per se as an anime type that's been done again and again. The action scenes are the series best parts hands down. A good anime if you got nothing better to do or during a rainy day.