Himiko-Den is your usual time/dimension slip anime, not outstanding but clearly enjoyable.
Himiko-den is based off a Playstation game similar to Sakura Wars, part role-playing game, part dating simulation. While starting off pretty chaotic in the beginning of the first episode it fastly can find its pace.
The animation is ok, though it could have been better considering its age. Backgrounds are detailed, there's no use of CG and the motion scenes are well done. I liked the character design (Himiko, Imari and most of the other girls are hotties), especially the outfits.
The music is Himiko-Den's greatest point. I've heard the opening, Pure Snow done by Yuko Sasaki, some time ago in a Card Captor Sakura AMV and liked it immediately (the AMV is still one of my favourites), so I was pretty surprised when I heard it again in this anime. The song itself is outstanding, though I admit the sequences could have been better chosen. The song changes between a slow and a fast tune and has a somewhat melancholic feeling, fitting to the background. The ending, Change the Color of the Moment by Mika Okudoi, is good as well. It's fast and has a nice beat. The background music is most of the time fitting and the pieces don't appear too often and give variety to the show.
The voice acting in this anime doesn't disappoint, all seiyuus do a good job. Masahiko's voice is done by Tomokazu Seki who already has a lot of experience (some of his known roles are Touya Kinomoto from Card Captor Sakura and Sousuke Sagara from Full Metal Panic), Himiko's seiyuu is Tsubasa Otomiya, she's pretty unknown but still does a good job. In other roles we see seiyuus like Atsuko Tanaka (Motoko Kusanagi, Ghost in the Shell) and Yuko Mizutani (Mihoshi Kuramitsu, Tenchi Muyou).
The characters are good and believable, the greatest deficit is the number of characters for such a short series, there's just not enough time to give them all a proper background and development. While the main characters, Himiko and Masahiko, are well developed and have a lot of screen time, other characters are cut short. Like the two princess candidates Tadami and Koran who only appear in short comedy sequences throughout the series. A bit disapointing was also Imari's role, who had a great part in the first episodes but was getting less and less screen time as the series went on. On the other hand I didn't really mind that, since I didn't particularly like the relationship between her and Masahiko. ;)
The story idea was not new, but the way it was done was refreshing and the shortness of the series did a good part too. The pace of the series was nicely done and the main character pair was something not often seen in such animes. The last two episodes though weren't too good, it seemed for me the writer thought this would be the standard 13 episodes series and so did he plan the script. Too much goes on in this last two episodes and some actions/happenings are reduced to the minimum and not all of them are wrapped up, there are also too many subplots going on and most of them are only mentioned but not explained or shown (the case of suffering from a game's plot). The very end on the other hand was nice, the only thing I missed was the "chuu" scene. ;)
Another good point is that this anime actually ends, something that not often happens in such animes.
Overall I enjoyed this anime a lot, it started off a bit chaotic and weird and past the first half of episode one I already thought the opening would be the only good thing in this anime, but I was wrong. At the end of this episode and the beginning of the next my attention was caught. Himiko-Den has its weaknesses and not too less of them, but the music and especially the two main characters make up for them and make you want to see what happens to them.
If you like animes like El Hazard, Inuyasha and Fushigi Yuugi you should check Himiko-Den out. Once you've seen it, you won't really think about watching it once more, but for the first time it's enjoyable and with 12 episodes not too long. And one thing you at least should do is getting the opening, it belongs on every j-pop/anime music playlist.
Explanation by dasic on Thursday, 02.01.2014 11:44
Same procedure as every year...