Better late than never for this season’s stand out slice of life adventure.
What They Say:
Episode #1: “Barakakodan (Spirited Child)” – A calligrapher is sent to an island after causing a commotion. There he meets a young girl who would inspire him to a world he has never seen before.
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Barakamon is based on the manga by the same name by Satsuki Yoshino, published originally by Square Enix. Yen Press has picked up the manga for release in English, making this one of the few recent slice-of-life genre series which we won’t have to say goodbye to when the anime reaches a conclusion. The anime is brought to us by Kinema Citrus, a studio which you don’t hear about very much, but they’ve also done Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 and Black Bullet.
A delay in materials meant a delay in the Funimation simulcast of Barakamon, leaving many people frustrated that it was streaming on Crunchyroll for other territories before we got a chance to watch it legally. Rejoice because the wait is over!
The story opens with our lead, Seishu Handa, a pen name of course, punching a senior calligrapher who criticizes his work in the face. To say that there are egos at work here is putting it lightly. The next thing we see is Handa arriving in the Goto Islands, which is quite a shock to his system as that’s basically the ends of the earth. The lack of amenities or taxi services sends him scrambling for a ride to the place he’ll be staying at and ends up taking a tractor part of the way.
When he arrives at his new digs he finds them very rural, with old style plumbing and no help from the mover with his boxes of stuff. He also discovers that a local girl has been using the place as her own personal fort, and she has no intention of leaving just because because some ‘cool boy’ showed up.
Right away you notice that the little girl, whose name is Naru, appears to be voiced by an actual kid. She’s obnoxious is a way that only a kid with no limits can be, and the village elder doesn’t seem to take Handa’s annoyance into account even after he throws the little girl out several times.
Handa, for the most part, just wants to practice his calligraphy and reflect on what went wrong. It was his father who decided he needed to get away from the city and reflect, on a lot of things, like how to be a decent human being. His friend, in flashback, calmly points out to Handa that he punched an old man with a cane and that he should apologize.
Amusingly, Naru points out the same thing that the old man did, that Handa’s work looks like a text book. That’s the last thing Handa want’s to hear. He sulks around for a bit on his own by the ocean before Naru tracks him down to apologize. She hands him a copy of his work, which is pretty good, and once again points out that his work is textbook. Unsurprisingly, she ends up getting tossed in the ocean.
At this point it’s pretty easy to see the path the story is going to take, with Handa learning to slow down and learn from life rather than a text book. A trip up a seawall with Naru to see the sunset gives Handa a moment to calm down and see things her way, only to be met with a slew of neighbors arriving to help him unpack his things at the end of the day. We get to meet a few of the other island kids and residents briefly, all of whom have taken to calling Handa ‘sensei.’ Despite the mixed welcome and Handa’s prickly manner, everything is off to a good start.
Make sure to stick around after the lovely end credits for the hilarious stinger.
Episode Grade: B +
On to Episode 2…
Kate O'Neil
http://www.fandompost.com/author/sonicbug/
Kate has a long history of leaving pieces of herself all over the internet, alighting upon fandom after fandom to briefly taste of its nectar before flitting away. She has accrued a collection of manga so large she believes her home may now have structural integrity issues. She also watches anime, plays video games, and occasionally writes and draws. You can also listen to her on the Fandom Post Radio podcast, available wherever fine podcasts are streamed.