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#i'd say even ranmaru and juka in f-ran have more character developement than some of the guys in hk
animecreator3000 · 1 year
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Every time I rewatch some episode of Boueibu HK I wonder again how the staff even planned this season. Like. Almost nothing meaningful happens with the characters
TLDR the characters with the most developement in HK are the monsters
Kyoutarou is there as a complete contrast to Yumoto while keeping the battle speeches so his characterization doesn't make much sense. Nanao is mere fujoshi bait. Taiju and Taishi have random bits of dialogue that hint at possible arcs for s2 but not enough to tell us what it really is. Maasa has an unfinished arc in his episode, where supposedly he's putting fatty butter in his cookies to make everyone else overweight because he resents Ichiro not defending him when they were little, but then his friends tell him it's fine and then he can move on??? This would work with Ichiro's theme of not wanting to be immature or dense anymore, except they only ever used this theme as a gag (misunderstanding the meaning of whatever the others have said) or to straight up humilliate him (ep4) and continue treating him like a stupid baby. At the end of the season Maasa and him have made peace somehow and that's it. Ata gets in my opinion the closest thing to a complete arc, even if it's just staring angrily at Kyoutarou for ten episodes, then explaining his problem while fighting him and finally getting his apology and reconcilliation. At least it's something. And poor Ryouma is just there to be the butt of a few jokes about how he lets Nanao and Kyoutarou use him, be in a couple of cute shippy scenes, and also for Ata to completely dismiss him from the flashbacks to the point where if they had first met in high school nothing would've changed.
The relationships barely have developement either. Love had anime episodes and manga chapters dedicated to the different close friendships solving their conflicts and becoming closer. There were also many instances of seeing how close the Hakone brothers-defense club and Beppu brothers' relationships were, and even though they didn't have any conflict between themselves, they made them strong sides for the final fight. Yumoto didn't get a character arc but through the entire anime he was revealed to be strong, considerate, forgiving and mature, willing to kindly befriend the Beppu twins for his brother but not let them walk all over him; contrary to how he was presented in the first episodes, like a stereotypical magical girl protagonist. Anyway in HK there's no meaningful conflict between any of them besides Kyoutarou and Ata. Taishi and Ichiro argue constantly but don't show to genuinely like each other after all like IoRyuu or EnAtsu did. Ichiro and Maasa never make any progress to be together again, Maasa hints once at liking Taishi and nothing comes from it, and Nanao and Taiju have the most artificial friendship in the cast that I just do not understand. They just ran an ice cream shop once with again unexplained success and make sassy remarks at each other ever since. And I guess Karurusu and Furanui had a bit of developement thanks to Kyou and Ata in ep12. Idk about the aliens, this time it's like they didn't do it completely well but also not as bad as with the rest of the cast. Maybe bc they didn't appear as much as the humans in most of the episodes
I'm realizing now that a few of these complaints are related to Nanao acting weird
Idk where to put this but I'd like to point out Kinshiro's principles of halting the fight with the Battle Lovers as soon as he finds out that the s1 conflict was set up for a reality show and actively defending them from an attack because they're Binan students, despite still not having received his apology from Atsushi. Ata might've done the same if the HK finale's events had gone in the same order (travelling to Honyalaland to fight Wao, then Kyoutarou apologizing to Ata), but he doesn't feel as a character as deep as Kinshiro in that sense bc they didn't really show him to be in other ways.
Love feels more like an actual group of people while HK feels like they were filling in friendship group roles or something
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