Hitomi (2008)

"Dance is life."

"Hitomi" is the 28th asadora that I've completed. I'm being generous with my rating because this is an asadora and I spent 156 episodes with it. However, like the comments below, I also thought "Hitomi" was boring....

My main problem with "Hitomi" is its obvious identity crisis. Does it want to be a story about hip hop dancing? Or does it want to be a story about being a foster parent in a sort-of old fashioned town? I would've been fine with either premise, but "Hitomi" tries to do both and doesn't succeed at doing either well. I believe that the asadora was hesitant to commit to hip hop because the target audience is usually middle-aged or older women. I personally think if it had really committed to hip hop it could've developed a cult audience like "Chiritotechin."

Eikura Nana is fine as the title character Hitomi. I particularly liked her delivery of "Shut up" in English [lol]. Sadly though, Hitomi's personality is not able to really shine in this asadora. At the end, I came away feeling that I only understood Hitomi maybe 50%. I wish the asadora had devoted more time to developing Hitomi as a character instead of focusing on random side stories. Also, this is the only asadora I've watched where the heroine doesn't have a love interest but I think this would have actually benefitted from her having one. It's not like she had a career or anything. She didn't really even know until near the end what she wanted to do with dancing. So, if she had a love interest, there would've been something else to invest in as an audience.

The supporting and side characters are also just fine. To be honest, no one really sticks out to me as being particularly great. There were a couple that annoyed me more often than not, such as Yuzo (played by Yasuda Ken). Hitomi's grandfather Katsutaro (Nishida Toshiyuki) was too stubborn at times. I was able to understand his emotions, but part of me still thought 'It's been like 18 years, get over it!' And worse, his arc with Hitomi's parents isn't even resolved until the very end. I also wasn't much of a fan of Hitomi's friends Yuka (Tano Asami) and Junko (Mitsushima Hikari). They're always fighting and take forever to commit to do anything. I honestly didn't think it was fair that they got to debut as dancers with their bad personalities. I really liked the foster children at first, but the asadora gradually focuses on them less and they then become generic good-tempered children.

So why watch "Hitomi?" At the end of the day, I really liked the atmosphere of this asadora. From the opening theme, it really gives off a relaxing vibe. It only covers about two years of Hitomi's life, giving it more of a slice-of-life feeling than other asadoras. And Hitomi is still a likeable heroine. Watching her did not make me miserable for a second, which I can't say for a certain other asadoras... So, I still liked "Hitomi" even for all of its boringness and problems, which is also why gave it a generous rating of 8. However, because of the aforementioned reasons, I can't really recommend this asadora unless you really like Eikura Nana.

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