Hanoka: The DVD Cut (found unaired/unsurfaced version of flash anime; 2008)

From The Lost Media Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search
Hanoka logo.jpg

The anime's logo.

Status: Found

Date found: 01 Jan 2018

Found by: Anonymous

Hanoka is a 2006 Japanese flash animation which was the first broadcast as a 12-episode mini-series for the Anime informational programme "Anime Paradise" on the Anime-based Japanese Broadcast Satellite/Cable channel "Kids Station" during August 7th-October 22nd. The plot involves Hanoka, the 7th "Majin" (Demi-God) getting involved in a war against the Aliens "Hoshi no Tami" (The Star Peoples) along with his new human owner, Yuuri Kaminoza in the deserted planet, Tokinea.

Production

Whilst the series is produced by RAMS (a now-defunct Japanese Voice actors Agency), the series is actually entirely created (planned, screen-played, Animated and Directed) by Aruzi Morino,[1] a slightly known pioneer of the Japanese Internet Flash animation movement during the early 2000s and notable of creating dramatic, emotional Flash Animations such as Tukinoha Shizuku, YUKINO, Majyo no Imouto (The Mage's Sister) and Etora's Wings (Sora no Etora).

However, due to the creator, Morino's nature of constant falling of health (resulting to the overall drop of animation quality compared to his other independent animations) and RAMS' lack of backup support (treating the anime as promotional material for Sakura Nogawa instead of treating it as a proper anime series), the anime ended with many plot holes and unsolved elements.

Reception

On Myanimelist, The TV version of Hanoka met mediocre to negative reviews. Some even consider it as one of the "Worst Anime of All Time" along with the infamous Mars of Destruction and Skelter Heaven, mostly due to the low-quality flash animation, bad narrative and cliched characters. Even Mr. Aruzi Morino, the creator of the series strongly dislikes the final product, stating on his Twitter that "Hanok... Um, That anime. I wanted to make a compelling war story of an old man and a bionic girl, but RAMS demanded me to change the protagonist from an old man into a young boy. I think that RAMS' countless requests resulted from the final product to become generic and uninspired."[2] Many reviewers do criticize this anime as a Saikano ripoff. However, that is not true because Mr. Morino actually never read the manga nor watched the anime adaptation during the creation of Hanoka, as stated in his Twitter feed.

Availability

In 2008, Hanoka was released on DVD in Japan (region 2) with 2 Volumes with 2 bonus features. Vol.1 features the Voice Cast's interview [3] and Vol.2 features the Unaired Episode 13.[4] The DVD version of the episode includes numerous numbers of new additional scenes/new scenes for Episode 1, 2, 4, and 12 to deepen the narrative, character development and cover the plot holes frequently seen in the TV version, (newly created by Morino Aruzi in 2008), replace several dialogues with newly recorded dialogues and most importantly, a DVD exclusive prologue and epilogue (which is generally miss-considered as "Episode 13"), takes place after "Episode 12", the final episode, changing the entire resolution to the anime. Strangely, the mass media report did not mention the differences between the DVD version and the original broadcast version. The key 4 DVD episodes are now uploaded to MEGA and YouTube [5][6][7]

Trivia

Hanoka was created as a spiritual sequel/remake to Morino's independent flash animations, 'The Mother Mars' (The 1st trailer and the pilot episode released in 2000, Episode 1 & 2 released in 2004-2005, and a cancelled manga adaptation in 2016-2018) and 'Ao -Blue-'(2003). The link between 'The Mother Mars' series is subtle, with both series featuring metahuman species called 'Majin' as a key character and Hanoka (Majin No.7) and Captain Kaori (Majin No.1) resembling LA-LA and YU-LA, the Majin which appears in 'The Mother Mars'. Meanwhile, 'Ao -Blue' shares a larger connection with Hanoka, to the point where 'Ao' could be considered to be a prototype of Hanoka. Also, the DVD version of episode 1 recycles the animation of 'Ao' with altered color pallets.

External Links

https://myanimelist.net/anime/1812/Hanoka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanoka

References