With the spring 2014 anime season winding down, now is the perfect time to sample stuff that you may have missed before, especially if it didn’t have any digital distribution. Such is the case with Hyakko, a fun little thirteen episode series released by Nozomi Entertainment on DVD back in April 2013. The show is now expanding its digital footprint through a partnership with Manga Entertainment parent company Starz which gets them placement on a variety of services, including landing on both Hulu and YouTube, which you can see from the first episode below.
Based on the manga series by Haruaki Kato which began back in 2007 and has six volumes to its name so far as it’s still ongoing to this day, Hyakko is a thirteen episode series that aired at the end of 2008. The show didn’t have a ton of material to work off of so it has an interesting mix of original and adapted pieces here since it goes with the different length segments to work with. What’s really interesting is that when we get the episode titles throughout the series, they include a number with many of them which indicates which chapter of the manga that it was taken from. The show works out of order when it comes to these chapters – the last episode does a prequel story of sorts as well – so Hyakko becomes a show where it’s best to just enjoy the characters and the situations of the moment rather than look for anything substantial story wise.
Plot concept: Ever have a crazy best friend? The kind who jumps out of windows, makes robot clones of herself, and (accidentally) punches teachers in the gut?
Torako does all these things and more. She’s a force of nature, and thanks to her, nothing at Kamizono Academy ever goes quite as planned. Looking for the right classroom turns into a comical case of breaking and entering. Sketching fellow students in art class turns into a racy photo shoot. No one can predict what Torako will do next, but wherever she and her friends go, laughter is sure to follow.
Yes!