Anime: Hidan no Aria

I am terribly torn about Aria The Scarlet Ammo. It’s a fun anime with tons of great action and laughs. The problem lies in the fact that the story is really weak. And when I say really weak, I mean it. Aria The Scarlet Ammo is based off of a series of light novels and covers the first three books in the series. While at it’s core the concept is fairly generic (a high school for detectives, because in Japan, there is a high school for everything), it’s execution is well done. Not well done in a “God, this is amazing sense”, more like “God, this is entertaining”. And Aria will appeal to those looking for flash and entertainment over substance. Hopefully this review will shed some light on this fun, yet broken, ride.

The story of Aria The Scarlet Ammo is very basic. Kinji Tohyama goes to a school for butei, or as we like to call them detectives, and he ends up being targeted by the Butei Killer who tries to take him down by attaching a bomb to his bicycle and sending killer segways with machine guns attached to them after him. As you can tell, this anime doesn’t take itself very seriously. He meets a pink haired girl named Aria and together they go on wonderful adventures in order to clear the name of Aria’s mother, who has been sentenced to jail for thousands of years because she has apparently been pinned with the murders of every person in the world. The mother part is never fully explained and makes no sense whatsoever. As the series progresses we meet Shirayuki, a girl in love with Kinji and jealous of Aria; Riko, an insane girl who seems to do a lot of sexual advances on Kinji; and Reki, a rather quiet sniper girl. The show is divided into three story arcs over the course of it’s twelve episodes, four episodes dedicated to each book.

The story, as you can tell, is not too good. It’s like a summer blockbuster film in that it has a very loose plot that is just there to provide for tons of action and adventure. And Aria does deliver in the action and adventure department, but for those wishing to have something to think about or wishing for a more story driven adventure, this isn’t where you want to go. It’s like the Transformers of anime, only with less explosions, less giant robots, and less Shia Lebouf.

There’s this subplot about Kinji���s brother that we never hear much about, and something about an ex girlfriend or something that is hinted at during episode eleven, and shown in episode twelve. The problem is, these things are not resolved and in order to get the resolution I’ll have to read the books which you can read a translated version of thanks to some fans, but it is not the tightest translation and the books read more like a script trying to be a novel.

The animation of the show is beautiful and you can tell that most of the production funds went into the animation (though the story was already in the book, so they didn’t need to fund writers as much I guess). The animation is perhaps one of the shows strongest suits. From the beautiful backgrounds to the well drawn characters and fluid action scenes, the animation is great.

The sound is good. The opening is a typical J-pop piece but it’s not at all bad. The ending song is also typical, nothing stands out there. The voice actors are good and add to the comedy and few emotions displayed throughout the series. The sound is another good point of the series, but there has been better music in anime before.

I’m going to get flak for this, but I enjoyed all the characters. They were not totally fleshed out, but they each had their own quirks and silly things about them that made them more likeable despite some of the genericism. Kinji is a very typical anime male surrounded by a bunch of girls, he’s bashful and denies everything concerning romance. His quirk is the fact that when he pops a boner, he goes into Hysteria Mode, when he is super suave and can fight like crazy. It’s a silly idea, but I thought it was quirky and funny. Aria is Kinji’s main love interest and she’s the great great grand-daughter of Sherlock Holmes. She is searching for a Watson and finds Kinji. She’s a slave driver and comes across as bitchy but she is scared of lightning and thunder and I guess she’s a typical teenage girl if you gave a bashful teenage girl two pistols.

Shirayuki is in love with Kinji and is a priestess who can do crazy stuff with her sword. She’s very bashful yet is always trying to bed Kinji. She’s always fighting Aria and when Shirayuki interacts with Aria, it’s always funny.

Riko is the great great grand-daughter of Arsene Lupin and she has this weird quirk where she can use her hair as a weapon. It’s stupid, sure, but it doesn’t not fit in with the rest of the series. She’s the only character that you can feel any sympathy for because of a childhood problem we learn later on, and she also is the only character that has any sort of development. It’s not a lot, but there is some.

Reki is a quiet sniper girl. She has very few lines and doesn’t do too much in the series, though I would have liked to see her more. She was the only truly badass character in the entire series. The rest were kind of badass, but they also came across as funny and silly so it negated the badassery.

There are three bad guys in the series. One of them I’ve already described. The other two are not well developed at all, and are just bad guys. Nothing much to them, just something to shoot at.

Aria the Scarlet Ammo is, in movie terms, a popcorn movie. It’s got little substance, but a lot of flash. It looks good, it has great action, but it’s bad guys aren’t that exciting and the characters are all there to be complete opposites of each other and provide comedic relief and some tension during fight scenes. That’s not to say it’s not good. I loved it. I liked all the characters in some way or other, I liked the action sequences; everything but the story.

It’s frivolous fun. It contains a lot of juvenile humor concerning boobs and boners, it has that typical anime thing where we get lots of shots of thighs and cleavage for no reason but fan service, and it has fun action sequences. It’s fun. It’s not something for the guy looking for story, it’s not something for the girl looking for meaningful action and romance. It’s frivolous fun that, if gone into with the right mindset, can be a good way to blow a few hours. If you go in expecting something with tons of substance, then you’ll be disappointed.

As I’ve said before, it’s tough to rate different types of anime on the same scale. This is not something I want to rate on the same scale as Ghost in the Shell because they cater to two different audiences and are two completely different types of anime.

Okay, I'll try to put it in words.
For a description of the basic setting just read the other reviews.

In my opinion, the anime is split in two. The first 5 episodes seem to be from a not-too-bad action/romance anime. I rather liked those five. The setting is rather interesting and I really grew to like the characters. At this point the story is also quite interesting. True, as another reviewer remarked, Kinji's Hysteria Mode has a quite ridiculous trigger. True, some parts are a bit random. But still, I started to like the anime.
Then the other episodes followed. These fit a horribly generic harem anime, as rather suddenly every girl is after Kinji (of course without any explanation as to why), and fanservice scenes follow each other without any logic or reason.
And worst of all, it's difficult to say which character is most annoying.

True, Aria is voiced by Rie, and I really like her other tsundere characters like Shana, Taiga or Louise, but Aria's voice gets really annoying after some time. Her terrible stuttering each and every time a fanservice scene approaches, happens, or just happened doesn't help.
Riko just got on my nerves from the start, but I guess I just don't like her "look, I'm super cute, now let's do something naughty" attitude.
I can't help but just hate Shirayuki...
Reki was the only girl with a little more than an filling role who did not have one of those bad quirks. But then, she is actually not after Kinji and also just a minor character. And she is a perfect specimen of silent, emotionless characters with shorter hair (exactly like Nagato (from Haruhi series) or Minami (from Lucky Star), but with way less importance in the storyline).

Rating:
Art&Animation: I give it a 5, because I found it neither bad nor great. The art style is rather predictable and standard for many of today's anime. Some (like me) like that style, others hate it.

Sound: This receives a 4. There are some rather unfitting sound effects, there is the problem with Aria's very annoying voice. At some points I liked the music though, but most of the time I didn't notice it.

Story: I'm in a pinch here. Should I rate the first part (1-5) which I found good, or the later part (6-13) which I found horrible? Rate both and take the average? For the first part I would rate the story a 7. It has some new story elements, it has a bit of thrill. Downside is that absolutely useless reference to certain famous fictional characters.
Episodes 6-13 I can rate only with a 3. The story is rather predictable, some episodes lack a storyline almost altogether, the story makes no sense and so on. Reference to famous fictional characters reach a new low with
7+3=10, divided by two would be 5. I reduce this to 4, because the bad part is longer and I felt very disappointed with it.

Character: The characters are mostly okay in the first part and way worse later on (see before). They seem to have a background story (at least some of them), but those are neither credible nor good. I rate this a 5.

Value: I think one can do very good without this anime. Low value of 2.

Enjoyment: That's a bit better, because I really liked to watch the first part, and once I found out that the later part stays bad, I could get a laugh or two out of each episode. 4.

My recommendation would be: Are you looking for a mediocre story that is rather unrealistic but takes at least it self seriously (at least to some extent)? Then watch opening, episodes 1-5 and the ending.
Are you looking for a fanservice-laden harem anime? Then leave out OP, ED and episodes 1-5 and just watch 6-13.

Hidan no Aria is an action/harem about a guy with a split personality in a high school meant to train mercenaries that are for some reason called detectives. The series is hard to judge as on one end (character development) it sticks strictly to the books while on another end (plot/setting) it is so radically implausible that it is hilarious.

I found the series fairly average though your mileage will vary. There's some decent action sequences and a bit of ecchi. The harem aspect isn't too terribly strong and the plot continuity breaks apart towards the end of the series. If girls and guns (or Rie Kugimiya) is your thing, then I'd try a few episodes.

Animation:
The animation is Aria is fairly good. I like the color scheme and the gun fight animation sequences, and the character designs are cute. There are definitely ecchi sequences including some white fog though some if it is more intentional rather than accidental (Riko *cough*). The series can be summed up as fruit salad including a bunch of guns and explosions and lots of girls on top of the main lead.

Sound:
I really dislike the singer in the OP, which totally ruins the otherwise somewhat dark yet fast-paced song. The ED is a rock piece with a decent main melody but a bit too slow-paced. The BGM is fair and consists of a wide variety of instrumental guitars and a few electronic pieces.

As for VAs, we find Rie Kugimiya in her typical short-girl with a tsundere personality. Despite what some other reviews posted, I didn't have any problems with voice acting in this series. Definitely special props to Mariya Ise for her role as Riko (combination of cuteness + sexual suggestiveness... man).

Story:
This is where the review gets tricky... this series in innovative in how it puts a whole bunch of radical ideas together, yet utterly plain in adopting tsundere behaviors and following harem traditions. It does a good job introducing the wacky setting but like many other series ends up losing its way near the end of the series, in both going overboard in adding even more random and weird concepts/characters and through random adoption of making antagonists turn into supporting assistants.

The overall plot takes an arc-based approach with each arc culminating in a showdown with an antagonist. These arcs build on each other and the show ends with a hilarious battle that doesn't really resolve much.

This is definitely one series that was probably better in its novel form as there are lots of teasers and references that will not make sense unless you read the novels or you wikipedia all the details. Not to mention a lot of plot holes and unanswered questions.

Character:
As with the story section, you have a lot of strange characters. The school has lots of students that are apparently descendents of well known figures such as Sherlock Holmes and thus they "inherit" special/supernatural abilities. Our main character, for instance, has an ability to go into "cool-guy" mode when he is aroused by women, a mode in which he somehow becomes ridiculously good at shooting/thinking/lock picking, etc.

The character development is fairly muted, as more of the focus is on just character interactions, i.e. an increasing number of girls fighting over our main lead. These interactions are fairly humorous as it often involves cat fights with guns/swords but otherwise follow a typical harem progression.

Value:
Despite the series using a bunch of cliches and some other strange elements, this was a decent watch, if just to laugh at the hilarity of it all. Rie Kugimiya does her typical job and you even get a few nice action sequences. And I agree with 8thsin, Riko is definitely what you'll remember and probably enjoy the most in this show.

There are times when I am forced to doubt my own taste. Aria the Scarlet Ammo is widely hated (even by its own subbers), and I can see why. The plot is telegraphed, the unoriginality is staggering, and the series seems to revel in its implausibility. And I loved every minute of it.

The opening episode makes an effort to be clever and self-aware, talking about the implausibility of its clichéd beginning (a girl falling from the sky) - but by now this itself is just another cliché. From there the plot advances at a reasonable pace, with a shadowy organization making attacks on our heroes and their classmates. But in truth there's little logic to the choice of targets, and one early episode seems to leave several dangling threads which are never picked up. The second half is better, with a more tightly directed arc sweeping around to a fitting conclusion.

In fairness Aria is more about the character relationships than the plot, and here it remains firmly on course. Male lead Toyama's interaction with the titular Aria is conventional to a fault - indeed, they hit every tsundere cliché in the book. With every show I watch in this genre I find myself more appreciative of Toradora, which managed to portray tsundere-ish behaviour but had a realistic take on the negative consequences of it. Aria goes for cheap laughs over realism every time, and there's only so many times a girl attacing an innocent guy for an imagined slight will amuse. Even so, the relationship has its moments of tenderness - though Aria has all the subtlety of a brick in delivering them - and there's some charm to be found in watching it develop. The emergence of another character as a kind-of-but-not-really rival for Toyama's affections is similarly charming but conventional. The one innovation is Toyama's "Hysteria Mode" - when aroused, he turns fantastically competent but also insufferably smug (in a way the ladies swoon for, but he himself hates). It sounds - and is - ridiculous, but it provides a great way to make combined romance/action scenes actually make sense. And the silliness barely registers against Aria's general background.

Aria seems at first to revel in piling absurdity on absurdity. A school for police-types makes some sense; making their uniforms bulletproof is a good trick if you can do it, but giving minor characters psychic powers seems entirely gratuitous (they're not even relevant to the main plot). However, the ending makes up for a lot of this; it brings together all the sillinesses of the previous episodes and not a jot more, allowing a really satisfying sense of closure. Sadly we can't say the same for the character subplots; while Toyama/Aria concludes as such things must, an earlier love rival seems to have been simply dropped. It's a disappointing level of disorganization in a series this short, along with the aforementioned dangling character plot.

I'd like to say the series would be better if it dropped both characters from early episodes, giving more time to focus on characterization of the lead three. But in truth each is so utterly archetypal that I don't think there's any more depth to reveal. So perhaps Aria is right to have what are practically filler episodes, and certainly they never bothered me while I was watching them.

Action is the other important element of Aria, and here it goes from good but depressingly conventional to simply good. The series deserves praise for keeping its gunfights interesting and varied, something much harder than the same task for swordfights. But with good use of location, team balance and the occasional supernatural power, Aria pulls it off beautifully. The series can also boast a fantastic opening tune, and very good music generally, with some nice recurring motifs around the fight dynamics. General animation is perfectly decent, if nothing special by modern standards, and voice acting was generally convincing - though Aria's absurdly high-pitched sound seems a bit cheap.

So: all-round good presentation, wayward plot and setting salvaged by a very elegant conclusion. Woefully stereotyped characters, with no surprises anywhere in their interactions. I can't fault anyone for hating Aria the Scarlet Ammo, given the breathtaking unoriginality of the character-driven side of its story. Nor can I in good conscience recommend it, given what the reaction elsewhere has been. But personally I found it the most enjoyable show of its season (notwithstanding the ongoing Steins;Gate).

This is bad, guys. I mean, it's really REALLY bad!

'Hidan no Aria' has just about every cliche harem elements in the book. The premise focusing on a special occupation to try to be unique, the characters strip and trip randomly for fan service, violent retribution for accidental infringement, archetype heroines, obvious tsundere stuttering, ordinary high school student with special powers, protagonist is surrounded by girls who are crazy about him for no reason... I can go on and on.

The core premise is somewhat interesting. It's set in a school that trains mercenaries, and the students undergo various lethal training and get credits through actual missions.However, there are also a lot of stupid concepts going on, like all them being "butei" (combat detectives), the Hysteria Mode, and the fact that almost every character is descendent of a famous historical and fictional figures - Lupin the 3rd, Sherlock Holmes, Joan of Arc, Tooyama Kinshirou, Himiko, Count Dracula... it gets embarrassing after a while.

The story is a long sequence of one improbable event after another. The character and villain actions rarely make any sense. It gets so bad that a good guy would point the gun at the bad guy and say something like "there's no escape now", and the bad guy just runs without getting shoot. I had no idea why this series needed to be about "detectives" as there were almost zero thinking going on. This show is more like charge ahead and see what happens next. It's also pretty absurd all the characters were carrying the gun and shoots around in the school campus, and of course, everything is bullet proof so no one gets hurt. The jokes get repetitive, with the protagonist getting into ecchi situation with random girls, and seen by one of the yandere/tsundere heroines and gets "kaza-ana".
Worst of all is the protagonist's "Hysteria Mode", which gets triggered from sexual arousal. This is the stupidest activation trigger I have ever heard, and serves only as a tool for fan service.

Art in this series is decent. The female characters are attractive, though extremely generic design. Character movement is very stiff and apparently low budget, but there are some nice slow motion action scenes that it's at least average quality in terms of animation.

The voicing for Aria is absolutely horrible, a stereotypical tsundere voice with zero distinction. Not only that, it gets seriously annoying after a while. Other characters' seiyuu were average at best. BGM is quite insignificant, and OP/ED were average.

There is nothing in 'Hidan no Aria' that sets it apart from hundreds of other harem series. It's obvious why a certain fansub group would trollsub a series like this, and in fact, the sound effects guys in this series started trolling in latter part of this series, like inserting sheep sounds at the mention of 「執事」, a word meaning "butler" but has similar pronunciation to Japanese word "sheep".

Admittedly, Riko's character was extremely hot both in design and personality, and ecchi in this series was decent. It's one of those series you watch to kill time, and see how bad it gets. B-But it's not like I enjoy watching this series or anything! Baka!