The Summer 2016 Anime Preview Guide

hitorinoshita The Outcast

Chulan Zhang only planned on making a short trip to his grandfather's grave, but when he arrives, he learns the entire graveyard has been mysteriously desecrated. On top of that, the police inform him that the grave recently had another visitor - his own older sister, who he never knew existed. Put out by all these revelations, Chulan heads off to fix his grandfather's grave himself, only to promptly meet his new sister, get smacked in the head with a shovel, and almost get buried alive. And that's before all the zombies show up. hitorinoshita The Outcast is based on a web manhua and can be found streaming on Crunchyroll, Saturdays at 9:30 AM PST.

Rating: 1.5

As far as I can tell from this first episode, hitorinoshita is doing a fine job of imitating the zombies that it so prominently features. It shuffles aimlessly from one plot point to the next without any real sense of urgency or emotion, somehow missing that spark of liveliness that makes a series worth watching. I get the impression that just about any of this season's other titles could run circles around it without breaking a sweat.

None of the characters seem particularly happy to be here, either. Chulan is the very embodiment of a bland protagonist, and he does very little in this episode beyond underreacting to the supernatural craziness going on around him. Baobao goes through the motions of being a mysterious girl with a dangerous past while displaying a slightly narrower range of emotions than the zombies she mows down. Even the supporting cast comes across as stiff and tired, and I'm at a loss to point out any minor character who actually caught my interest.

This episode also appears to be undecided on what sort of tone it's going for. The zombies aren't scary enough for it to qualify as a horror series, the fighting is too uninspired for it to work as an action show, and the attempts at comedy are more dull than amusing. There's no real gore or fanservice to speak of, so it doesn't even have a reasonable claim on the trashy, self-indulgent angle. Character designs are unremarkable across the board, and the animation is vaguely competent at best.

The only reason I can think of to watch hitorinoshita is if you're in search of a “so bad it's good” experience, and even then I imagine it'll be a disappointment. The show isn't absurdly bad or stupid in the way that good train wreck shows tend to be. It just seems ambivalent about its own existence, and it's awfully hard to care about a series that's so devoid of ambition.

Rating: 1.5

I'll say this for hitorinoshita - the show sure does know how to make a zombie attack feel really, really boring. The show's zombies stumble aimlessly across the screen, the camera maintaining a flat, passionless angle as Chulan's fake sister Baobao cuts them down with a cleaver. And even Baobao doesn't seem particularly excited about this exchange; after fighting off a handful of zombies and briefly protecting her not-brother, she promptly declares that this is pointless, and runs away.

Baobao isn't alone in that sentiment - in fact, it doesn't really seem like any member of hitorinoshita's staff is all that happy to be here. The show's premise is all fairly basic setup for what will presumably congeal into a standard monster-fighting squad, with Baobao, Chulan, and their various allies fighting off bargain-bin baddies with their own special powers. But we don't really get to that here; this episode focuses almost entirely on Chulan and Baobao futzing around with Chulan's grandfather's grave, as Chulan very slowly reacts to all the standard fantasy tropes around him.

All of the plot beats here are typical, but their execution is just much slower than you'd hope or expect. Chulan figuring out Baobao is presumably his sister takes a good twenty seconds, and Baobao admitting that her ID was faked takes a handful more. When Chulan decides the zombie attack must be a dream, the show slows down so that both Baobao and the zombies can stop and stare at him, before Baobao declares he's an idiot. And that most reliable of first episode stingers, the “I'm glad that's all over with except whoaaa the fantasy girl is in my class now” special, is here given a good minute's worth of aggravatingly obvious slow-rolling. Hitorinoshita's premiere is a very typical first episode played at half tempo for no obvious reason.

The show's aesthetics unfortunately don't make up for its slow pacing and obvious storytelling. There are lots of clear animation shortcuts in this first episode, and Baobao's fight with the zombies isn't particularly exciting in either a framing or animation sense. The show's style embodies the general fatigue of its overall execution.

Ultimately, I can't really find anything to recommend about hitorinoshita. The show isn't uniquely terrible or anything, but it's a bad articulation of an obvious thing from top to bottom. A very easy skip.