Reviews of yesteryear: Bakuretsu Hunters

If I had to describe Bakuretsu Hunters in one word it would be: mediocre. The story is the cliche of a villain trying to destroy and recreate the world. I’m sure that you can all think of several anime and JRPGs with the same premise, Bakuretsu Hunters is nothing special in that regard. The characters can be described in tropes. That’s right, they’re all cliches who rarely show any more depth than that. There’s the shrinking violet, the childhood friend action girl, the boisterous bruiser, the smart guy and the crazy pervert. To be fair they all occasionally show more depth than their defining tropes, but it really doesn’t happen often. The art is middling, for its time, in the present it would be called dated. The mostly comedic atmosphere with occasional seriousness doesn’t quite work in Bakuretsu Hunters. It isn’t bad, it just isn’t done as competently as it is in an anime like The Slayers. The comedy is generally hit or miss. There are some genuinely funny moments, but there are also some painfully bad attempts at comedy.

There are only a few aspects of Bakuretsu Hunters that aren’t mediocre. Let’s look at what they do well first. The voice acting. All of the voice actors are competent, but a few stand out with truly excellent voice acting. Madono Mitsuaki, Mizutani Yuko, Tamagawa Sakiko and especially Hayashibara Megumi. They just do a great job. The other aspect of this anime that’s really good is the music. To be specific, the themes. The opening is an ensemble with the entire cast. The ending is a duet, very well done.

It does an equal number of things poorly. The first is the fan-service. This is one of those anime where they like to show their female characters half naked frequently. It’s even worse in the final episode where they actually wear bondage gear, and no, I’m not kidding. The other big problem I have with it is the love triangle. This is one of those anime where two girls, both very attractive, are interested in a plain looking guy with no redeemable qualities.

There is no yuri in this anime. So don’t watch it hoping to find cute yuri scenes. So who should watch this anime? Well there are only two groups who I would recommend this to. 1. People who love the “villain trying to recreate the world” plot and will watch anything that uses it. 2. People who are huge fans of one or more of the seiyuu and will watch anything that has them in it, like I will with Hayashibara Megumi. Otherwise you can find the music pretty easily and you can see the cast in better anime. You can also see much better comedic fantasy anime like The Slayers or Mahou Senshi Louie. In the end I give Bakuretsu Hunters a 5/10.

Ah yes, my first review. You’ve probably noticed the format is quite a bit different from what I use these days. You’ve probably also noticed that I don’t mention the ho-yay in general, just the yuri. That’s because I originally did this on a forum where I was known as the “head of the yuri fans.” So I talked about yuri because I was always getting asked about it. When I left that board in favour of WordPress that connection didn’t really exist anymore so I broadened that segment to talk about all ho-yay. Nowadays I’d discuss how Gateau seems to have a thing for Marron. Still, as much as my format has changed, I do stand by the rating.