I have the same sort of reaction whenever my cats do something particularly nasty just before I go to bed:
So begin the deadpan comedic stylings of Hinamatsuri, when a strange cylinder is dropped on the head of Nitta, an up and coming yakuza. Ignore it as he might, the next morning the cylinder is still there and once he opens it, turns out to contain a little girl who calls herself Hina. Demanding clothes as she’s naked, Hina isn’t slow to display her psychic powers and destroy three of his prized vases when he isn’t quick enough to produce them. Which sort of defines their relationship at first: she wants things and coerces him into providing them with her powers, whether it’s a stuffed animal or the chance to go to school. They quickly fall into a routine, living together and it’s not long before Nitta wonders why he feels like a care taker.
Nitta is a decent chap, but the true draw of the series is of course Hina. Deadpan and expressionless for the most part, she’s as adorable as she’s mischievous in the use of her powers. There’s of course a back story there: psychic girls don’t come just falling out of the sky like that. But all that is for later. For now the focus is on Hina and Nitta building a family together of sorts. When it turns out that Hina needs to regularly discharge her powers or they explode, Nitta takes her to help with a job of his: get a building site cleared.
But when Nitta gets a bit too enthusiastic about how Hina could help him, she remarks she’s seen those sort of eyes before. Which makes him understand she had been exploited before and that he wants to be different. So when he has to rescue his boss from the clutches of a rival gang and Hina wants to help out, he reacts as above: why should you have to do that. In the end she still has to rescue him though. But it’s this little scene that solifies their relationship into something like a family.
A somewhat dysfunctional family. As a first episode this was solid. I like the humour and while I find it a bit too brightly coloured compared to the original manga, this is only a minor quibble. There is clearly going to be some sort of overarching plot to this series, but for me just the day to day adventures of the yakuza and the psychic girl is enough to keep me watching.
No Comments