Dog Warriors #1

Pioneer

125 minutes
English/Japanese
English Subtitles
10/09/2001

I don't know whether I should totally hate Gamestop or love them. On the one hand my returns today of a broken arcade stick and Castlevania Chronicles (not the cool game I expected it to be) went absolutely painless and they even gave me cash back. At the same time, the arcade stick I bought from them THIS time works like shit and I'm gonna have to return it again. That's just retarded. Now I'm sitting around waiting for a shift change so I don't have to walk up to the same employee with my tail between my legs. Fuck that shit, this happens every time I buy a third party item. Sony could get off their ass and make a halfway decent stick, but until then never buy anything Pelican related. You'll regret it.
In the same way I wasn't really sure what I should think about Hakkenden. It's interesting in the fact people blow up and are cut in half on a regular basis. You'll never find any complaints from me when we're talking about that kind of subject matter. All the same, it's got so many flaws you wouldn't be able to swing a cat without hitting one. Unless it was one of those small cats... like a hairless one.

As the story goes, the Satome and Ansai clans are at war back in 15th century feudal Japan. Satome's getting their asses royally handed to them because the Ansai clan is lead by some jerk-off who made a deal with the devil. Yeah, that's real cool guy. In jest the leader of the Satome clan offers the family dog, Yatsufusa, his daughter's hand in marriage if the faithful pooch can bring back the head of the demon possessed Lord Ansai.

And wouldn't you know it the canine pulls through. Don't ask how he does it because they fully don't intend to tell you. Of course, now the dog wants his reward in full, and it only takes a little bit of convincing before he and his new bride move off into the mountains to start their joyous love affair. Thankfully, we're left blissfully unaware of the events that transpire in that mountain cave. Sometime later a man (I have no idea who he was) kills both the dog and woman accidentally and the eight beads from the woman's necklace fly off into the sky.

Now this is where it gets really stupid and confusing. As astute viewer Bear points out, the beads fly off and go into the mommies and the mommies have the babies. What babies? The Hakkenden, or dog warriors, eight ferocious kids that seem to always end up getting the short end of the stick. I swear. So far we've been introduced to five of them and they're all orphans. Regardless of whether their father committed suicide or their mother perished in the snow, they're all alone. It seems like most of them end up getting taken in by evil aunts and uncles that are cut right out of Snow White without showing the least bit of shame.
That's the problem, the characters in this show are such stereotypes that it's like watching a bunch of cardboard cut outs walk around giving lines. Hey there's the big guy who's a pacifist! There's the sinewy guy who's all wild and crazy! There's the funny looking guy who's evil and waggles his tongue around and laughs a lot! It pisses me off that shit like this can get by people. There's one with a sense of honor even though he seems evil! Come ON! The feeling of "How many times has this been done?!" alone made me not want to watch the show.

Another problem is the storyline itself. After the first episode it's almost impossible to understand what's going on just because the sheer amount of names they throw at you. I'd imagine someone more familiar with Japanese history would be able to get this a lot more readily than I do, but only if they were majoring in rocket science on the side. You're expected to remember just about every name you're given because they just might come up later and believe you me the show ALWAYS assumes you know who it's talking about. Considering there are eight main characters you'd think they'd cut us some slack on the secondary ones.
The animation is the final snagging point. The show looks excellent sometimes and piss poor at others. And it's not even sensible points. Like they don't always use the suped up animation for the fight sequences. And by the end of the disc the animation tricks to save on budget are so blatantly obvious that it becomes more unnerving to watch than a striptease given by Skabla's mother. While I'm not usually one to put the hate on a show because of animation, more often than not the broad shots look like they're color-by-number pages ripped out of the coloring book of the director's son. Hakkenden should've been given a bit more time to get things right I think.