Common Name: Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens
Score: 4/10, 2/5
Length: 12 Episodes
Genre: Action, Slice of Life, Comedy, Drama, Sports
Summary: At a first glance, the prefecture of Fukuoka might not seem like anything all that special. It's a typical industrial city on a river with a highly active nightlife. So, it's understandably difficult to believe the rumor that at least 30% of the city's population is made up of contract killers. A member of one of the local mafias that support this questionable industry, Xianming Lin has been tasked with killing a private investigator who is looking into the corrupt dealings of the city's mayor. Since the mafia isn't willing to pay Lin, however, he's opted instead to contract himself out to his would-be victim, Banba Zenji, as a bodyguard. Luckily, Lin isn't the only person whose got Banba's back. Having worked in the city for a number of years, this wannabe baseball player/cop/hitman has developed quite an extensive network of contacts. Rumor has it that one of them might just be the deadliest contract killer of them all--the hitman of hitmen, the Niwaka Samurai.
Review: At it's very best, Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens is a fairly intriguing mystery show with so many different perspectives and motives to consider that it bears some similarities to well-known and well-liked series like Baccano! or Durarara!!. Unfortunately, this show is only on it's A game for roughly one episode. Beyond that point, however, it becomes an interesting character action drama with a focus on the grays of right and wrong in the pursuit of vengeance. Once again, however, that only lasts for about one episode. By this point, though, it's pretty clear what this show is actually trying to be--assuming that it actually wants to be a jumbled mess of a show with no consistent theme, plot, or purpose. If that wasn't the intention, then I'm utterly lost in regards to what I was meant to get out of this show. I mean, it's not all that great of an action title because the action is pretty much always solved the minute Banba makes his appearance or whenever Lin suddenly decides to get his shit together and act like a contract killer. It's not a great drama because, well, pretty much every issue in this show is resolved by some miraculous and cunning deus ex machina the characters engineered from the start without ever hinting to that fact. Frankly, the only good thing this show has going for it is the comedy that runs throughout the show as the cast somehow manages to cunningly bumble their way through each and every story this show has to tell, of which there are six, I think; I kinda lost track and stopped caring after a while.
Oh, did I forget to mention this is also a sports anime? Yeah, don't ask why. I think it was justification for a deus ex machinas at one point.
With such a mishmash plot and no consistent tone or message to this show, it's difficult to really know where to begin. I mean, normally, I'd be more than happy to just outline the nature of this show's massive cast of characters but, to be totally honest, very few of them actually matter. The best any character, other than the main duo, can hope for is a chance to be the target of some assassination attempt or a walking, talking deus ex machina that bails out the leads when things start to look bleak. Even in that case, however, their role remains roughly the same in that they are somehow affiliated with Banba and he just magically has the ability to call them up and pull them out of whatever job they're doing at the drop of a hat. To be blunt, there are only actually two characters that have any amount of say or sway over how this show works. Too bad I hate both of them.
It actively pains me that some of the show's most interesting cast members
are relegated to the role of being conveniently on-call support.
So, as much as I don't want to, let's talk about this show's main cast, starting with the unkillable god character, Banba Zenji. Now, I say he's "unkillable god" but it might be more accurate to say he's basically this show's equivalent to Jesus Christ, in that he is technically mortal but he's just too perfect to actually be killed. The show does a lot at the start to pin him as a kind of genius savant Sherlock-esque detective character as it starts with him poking and prodding the sides of a case he's been asked to look into by the police. No sooner does it establish this idea of Banba basically be a Japanese Sherlock that it kicks his already absurd power level up a couple dozen notches. While it dances around the idea of Banba somehow knowing Fukuoka's most deadly killer, the Niwaka Samurai, for all of five minutes, it becomes plainly obvious that Banba and "the hitman of hitmen" are one in the same, surprising no one when the reveal actually hits during the second or third episode. So, as it turns out, Banba is basically just an untouchable god among men. Not only is he a savant when it comes to everything he tries, but he's also a killer that can apparently make hardened criminals piss themselves just because they catch a whiff of his murderous power. In spite of how stupid that character concept sounds, it actually does get worse because, whenever Banba isn't out sleuthing or killing, he's just some happy-go-lucky, jokester schumck who has a billion friends who always have his back because reasons.
Dude can freakin' line drive a shuriken back at an attacker with a katana.
I'm pretty sure that's just the textbook example of a Marty Stu.
Now we come to the character of Xianming Lin/Lin Maomei, the Chinese cross-dressing hitman with more edges than the aforementioned shuriken. Alternatively, if you want to consider him in the functional sense, Lin is the center of most of this show's drama. Reckless to the point of being suicidal, Lin starts this series off by laughing in the face of the mafia he owes money to as he sides with Banba (a solid choice in hindsight) and somehow manages to become even more reckless from that point on. Granted, there's kind of a history there, what with selling himself at a very young age to an organization that specializes in training child killers that are then contracted out to their partners across the globe. Still, throughout the show, Lin's role mainly sticks within a single role--the damsel in distress. Either because he feels some innate need to prove his manliness while still being a cross-dresser or because of some insane need to one-up Banba, Lin spends most of this show bitching about his useless he is or actively being useless because he has, yet again, managed to get kidnapped and nearly killed because of his arrogance.
Funnily enough, as if to both contradict and reinforce his edginess,
the weapon he mainly uses is a knife that is also a gun.
Ok, I say that being the show's constant damsel in distress is all Lin does over the course of this show, but that's not entirely accurate. Whenever he's not risking his life, the lives of others, or just being outright useless, Lin spends a lot of time being this show queerbait love interest, and I am not using that word lightly. While nothing ever comes of it and in spite of Lin's insistence that he's not into dudes, Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens puts a lot of effort in portraying Lin and Banba in a kind of cutesy kiss/kill relationship as they live and work together as contract killers. Even members of the support cast actively ship the two of them as they make it very clear that Banba is probably bi-sexual. This being a Japanese anime, though, it comes as no surprise that the show would play with and screw up this idea in the most insensitive and offensive way possible. I mean, from the word go, this show basically has no idea of how it wants to portray Lin. One moment he'll definitively be a dude in drag--kicking ass in a school blazer and skirt. The next he's portrayed as weak as he practically swoons into Banba's arms during a rescue only to scream "No homo" to the heavens a few moments later. Look, no matter how poorly portrayed he is, I'll never feel qualified enough to actually peg down what Lin is supposed to be at the end of the day. I am, however, pretty confident in saying that at least one of the people responsible for this mess of a show was even less qualified to attempt this nonsense in the first place. Yet, what baffles me most of all is why this baiting needed to be in the show in the first place, given the decent amount of representation this show already had to offer.
Granted, that kind of idiotic and thoughtless mistake is pretty much the bread and butter of this show.
As much as I wish I could say I had reason to like this show, I just don't. Its story is a garbled mess. Its characters are inoffensive at their very best. There's just zero thought put into this show that might have been at least tolerable if anyone had paid even a little attention to their work. What we got instead was something I would have expected to see come out of a studio like Hoaliners. Granted, I don't think even Hoaliners would be thoughtless enough to have two Chinese characters speak to one another in Japanese while they're in a Chinese child soldier training camp. In the end, this show is just kind of a disappointing failure. The comedy makes the show tolerable but, in retrospect, a lot of what I considered comedy was just me laughing at how terrible it is. If you want a real trip of a show to watch, look no further than Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens. If you want something actually good, though, look literally anywhere else.