English Dub Season Review: Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens Season One

Oh Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens, what are we going to do with you?

Anime is in a peculiar place right now, to say the least. Anime has never been more widely available and popular than ever, with each season bringing us endless amounts of adaptations and sequels. However, while the proliferation of anime has given us more selection, anime quality as a whole has diminished, with the apparent strategy of the industry being “Quanity over quality.” More than anything else, name recognition seems to be the only important value in greenlighting production of any prospective anime. Caught up in this depressing environment is Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens, a show which, while it might have been good in a different anime environment, is just another example of a good property caught up in a toxic industry, dragged down into a pit of mediocrity.

The setup is one I rather enjoy: a city in Japan named Fukuoka serves as a facade for all manner of underground, unscrupulous activities. Assassination, revenge, body disposal, and other delightful criminal undertakings are the norms here. Deep in this world is Zenji Banba, a friendly private investigator who’s friends with all sorts of quirky criminals. By fortuitous circumstance, he meets a cross-dressing assassin named Lin, and the two become fast friends. Together, they take on all sorts of troubles that threaten their friends and their peaceful life in Fukuoka, and play some baseball together along the way. It’s a fun concept, blending the mundane lifestyle of Banba and pals with the dangerous and violent world of the criminal underground. I can’t speak for the light novels, having never read them myself, but unfortunately, this curious set up doesn’t really work in anime form.

The main thing dragging Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens down is, unfortunately, the animation. Without embellishment, Hakata‘s visual expression is so plain, so milquetoast and completely devoid of style that its a wonder why this story was made into an anime at all. Scenes are animated for efficiency, with characters spouting exposition to each other for minutes on end without any kind of artistry or excitement to liven up the scene. The color palette exists entirely in the world of earth tones and light pastels, making this criminal metropolis feel more like a Japanese suburb. And while one would hope that the fight scenes present in the show could inject some fun into this oatmeal affair, they’re not terribly well-done either. To be frank, it feels half-assed and boring. Anime must have strong and inviting visuals, period. If a studio can’t make something enticing in a visual medium, then they shouldn’t make it all.

That’s not to say, however, that this anime is insultingly bad; there are nuggets of a good story in here. Banba and Lin have a nice dynamic, Enokida was enjoyable, and Shunsuke was a cool foil to Banba’s “Niwaka Samurai” persona that generally made things interesting when he was around. Certainly, it is a testament to the quality of the light novels that even despite my criticism there are some fairly interesting stories here. But so little of it goes explored in this anime; the focus is so heavily put on Banba and Lin that most of the supporting cast doesn’t get a lot of time to be explored and developed. The same goes for the city of Fukuoka itself, which I have no strong image of in my mind because the show never really gives you an image to hold on to. It doesn’t feel like a real place, but a place where the walls are made of cardboard; a thinly veiled setpiece that doesn’t feel real and thus carries no real consequence to the characters or to me. Nothing about this anime feels actually alive.

There are things I liked, of course, bits and pieces scattered around the series that I thought were cool or interesting, but all of it falls short, and that’s what I think is so frustrating about Hakata. This isn’t the kind of bad like “Black Clover,” where everything is so contrived and ridiculous that it’s obviously terrible from the outset, but a bad that’s more disappointing than anything. As a story, its functional, but it fails to really elevate into anything special. Perhaps in a different industry environment, this could have been the next Durarara, but everything about it feels cheap and poorly done. It’s obvious to me that this wasn’t a work of passion, but a work of deadlines and weak budgets. Just another light novel adaptation to be thrown into the anime industry meat grinder. Like so many others before it, Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens will quickly be forgotten and thrown away, making way for another pointless adaptation to come along and try to make a quick buck.