Anime Reviews (2010-2019): Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens (a Neo-Tokyo Anime on Blu-ray Review)

The anime adaptation of Kisaki Chiaki’s award winning light novel was well-done. For those who enjoy their anime with a bit of violence, action and comedy, will definitely want to give “Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens” a chance. Recommended!

TITLE: Hakata Tonkatsu Ramens

DURATION: Episodes 1-12 (300 Minutes)

BLU-RAY INFORMATION: 1080p High Definition, English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and Japanese Dolby True HD 2.0, Subtitles: English

COMPANY: Funimation

RATED: TV 14

Release Date: March 5, 2019

Originally Created by Kisaki Chiaki

Director: Yasuda Kenji

Series Composition: Yasukawa Shogo

Character Design: Inoue Hidenori

Anime Production: Satelight

Featuring the following voice talent:

Kaji Yuuki/Daman Mills as Lin Xiaming (Hayashi)

Ono Daisuke/Josh Grelle as Zenji Banba

Kobayashi Yusuke/Stephen Fu as Saito

Namikawa Daisuke/Aaron Roberts as Jiro

Yuki Aoi/Amber Lee Connors as Misaki

Fujiwara Natsumi/Anastasia Munoz as Reiko Asakura

Ohsaka Ryota/Austin Tindle as Yusuke Harada

Hamada Kenji/Ben Phillips as Shigematsu

Nakamura Yuichi/Chris Gardner as Shunsuke Saruwatari

Hamazoe Shinya/Dallas Reid as Shinohara

Touchi Hiroki/David Wald as Munakata

Matsuoka Yoshigitsu/Eric Vale as Yamato

Koyasu Takehito/Ian Sinclair as Shotaro Harada

Hamada Kenji/Jeremy Inman as Shigematsu

Yamamoto Shota/Jim Johnson as Ivanov Hisashi

Ono Kensho/Kyle Igneczi as Enokida

Welcome to the seedy underbelly of Fukuoka, where hitmen are a dime a dozen. Among all the oddballs in this lucrative business, one man stands above the rest—a legendary killer of professional killers. Good thing detective Banba is on the case! This pinch hitter never shies away from a curveball, not even when a cross-dressing assassin gets reeled into Banba’s hodgepodge team of hitmen. While others may run from this city of sinister professions, this strange bunch calls it home.

It was back in 2016 when Kisaki Chiaki and illustrator Ichiiro Hako created the Japanese light novel series “Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens”.

Published by ASCII Media Works, the light novel won the Grand Prize at the 20th annual Dengeki Novel Awards and a manga adaptation was serialized in Square Enix’s “G Fantasy”.

In January-March 2018, an anime adaptation by Satelight aired on television and now the 12-episode TV series was released on Blu-ray courtesy of Funimation.

The series revolves around a crossdressing hitman from Kunming, China. He has come to Japan to look for his sister and pay off a huge debt incurred by his family.

Lin Xianming is deadly and because he looks feminine, uses it to deceive people he is targeting. And the Kakyu Association has him to assassinate a worker at Club Miroir and we see him kill the man’s girlfriend (or wife) and then the man. Once he achieves the kill, he receives a call from his boss Zhang and that is an assignment to kill a police detective.

As Lin goes for the next kill, he finds out that the detective was already killed. As he confronts his boss to discuss his pay and attempt to claim the detectives death as his kill, Zhang tells him that the kill was by another hitman. Lin is then given a new objective, to kill a detective named Banba Zenji, who owns his own detective agency, Banba Detective Office.

But upset about his pay, Lin goes directly to Banba’s detective agency and offers to protect him because he is on strike and tell Zenji that his assignment was to assassinate him.

But Lin does not know that Banba is actually the infamous assassin known as the Niwaka Samurai. And Banba is well-connected as he works with the skilled computer hacker Enokida, the former baseball player turned hitman, Saitoh Kazuki, a hairdresser/hitman Jiro and the caretaker of an elementary school student named Misaki.

And now Lin forms an unusual partnership with Banba and others, but will it lead him to his sister? And who is this mysterious man from Lin’s past?

For those not familiar with the name “Hakata Tonkotsu Ramen”, it’s the style of ramen that is very popular and was born in Hakata, Fukuoka. At first, I was thinking, “is this a cooking anime series”?

Immediately after you start seeing people getting killed, you start to realize that this is a story about the dark and violent life of hitmen. And as for the title, it has less to do with ramen, but is the name of the baseball team a group of hitmen play for. Also, it’s one of the things that protagonist Banba Zenji loves eating.

While food does play a part (more for what Banba Zenji lives for), the storyline actually focuses on various characters, primarily Lin Xiaming, a boy from China who volunteered himself to become part of a violent (only the toughest survive) upbringing among other young people trained to become assassins in order to help pay for his family’s debt. Unfortunately, in the process, his sister was taken and he goes to Japan to make the money to free her.

When his bosses don’t pay him enough money, in spite, the man he is supposed to kill, a detective named Banba Zenji, is the man he tries to protect. But Lin Xiaming doesn’t know that Banba is actually the infamous assassin name “The Nikawa Samurai”.

Despite Lin Xiaming being hot-tempered, Banba Zenji and his hitmen/hacker friends welcome him into their circle. He doesn’t understand why the kindness, but Banba trusts Lin for wanting to protect him from the Kakyu Association and as for Lin, he starts to see a man that actually inspires him but also discovering something he has not felt for a long time, a sense of having a family.

The animation by Satelight is well-done and definitely respects the original work by Kisaki Chiaki. Everything from character design, action-driven animation, character dynamics and overall story, “Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens” is no doubt an entertaining, exciting and enjoyable anime series.

As for the voice acting, both Japanese and English dub soundtracks were well-done. Dialogue and music is crystal clear and the anime series looks vibrant and wonderful in HD!

If I had one issue, it’s the fact that this Blu-ray release is barebones. Aside from textless opening and closing songs and trailers (which I don’t count as special features), there is no audio commentary, nor is there any other featurette included.

But you do get both the Blu-ray, DVD and Funimation Digital Copy of the series included.

Overall, the anime adaptation of Kisaki Chiaki’s award winning light novel was well-done. For those who enjoy their anime with a bit of violence, action and comedy, will definitely want to give “Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens” a chance. Recommended!

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