Hakubo is a boring movie, that is basically the TL;DR of it. It was an attempt by a director who wanted to do some good after slagging off the Koreans, Chinese, and anime fans that ended up being nothing more than a boring, and at some points really awkward movie focused around a disaster that happened nine years ago from when the movie was released. It is a boring romance film that feels more like the last gasp of a director who has gotten himself basically black-listed in the industry for his incendiary and racist rhetoric and needed to make money than a proper film.
If you want to see a train-wreck of a person, look no further than the director of this film, Yutaka Yamamoto. Having worked as the chief episode director on The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, being the person responsible for the dance in the ED, and working on the first four episodes of Lucky Star, he was fired from Kyoto Animation (as to what got him fired, just looking at his Twitter history probably gives some ideas). He then went to co-found Ordet, and then got promptly fired from the studio, probably for the same reasons. After getting fired from Ordet, Yutaka kind of meandered for a bit before announcing in 2017 that he would be working on a new movie, Hakubo.
Yutaka though is a very inflammatory person, and by inflammatory, I mean hella racist. On top of saying that anime fans all have mental disabilities and slagging off his former co-workers at Orbet and KyoAni, he was also super racist towards Koreans and Chinese anime fans (all of which got him a temporary ban from Twitter). He also has threatened to quit doing anything in anime six times at this point. Yutaka's words and comments have basically gotten him black-listed from the industry, and its very likely his rhetoric is what got him fired from both KyoAni and Orbet. Without many career prospects, and probably a dwindling financial situation, Yutaka got crowdsourced funding for Hakubo, marketing it as a way to fund-raise for the people who still suffer hardships from the 2011 Earthquake. However one has to ask where that money is going since during the making of Hakubo, a court in Tokyo filed for bankruptcy against Yutaka, and it was reported that the proceedings would not impact Hakubo's creation.
In general, Yutaka is a very unpleasant and probably very racist director, and who's story is way more interesting to look at than the film he created. Also I should mention this before continuing, he actually has plans in the work to make a magical girl movie inspired by the tragic KyoAni fire of 2019... you know... the arson attack on the studio he got fired from and had a massive grudge against which killed co-workers he slagged off on Twitter? This past March it was reported that he couldn't get enough funding from crowdsourcing, probably because everyone with a brain and an understanding of Yutaka and his relationship with KyoAni probably correctly assumed the movie was going to be the most insensitive and disgusting anime film to ever air and saw lawsuits out the damn ass with it.
Anyway enough about how terrible a person Yutaka Yamamoto is. We gotta separate the art from the artist after-all! Let's talk about his film!
Hakubo is the story about a girl violinist living her life questioning her hobby, and a boy painter who she sees painting in the country one day and how they basically fall in love.
Real quick before continuing on, I want to address how the 2011 Earthquake plays a role in this film. Basically the characters are where they are now cause they had to flee their homes when the Earthquake and Tsunami struck. Now, I understand that even a decade after the events, there are plenty of people who still have trauma or damage from the disaster. Yet, for a movie that prides itself as a fundraiser for the victims, besides being the reason the characters are where they are, the Earthquake plays a very small part in the film. Honestly, it is such a minor point that you can forget the movie is supposed to be a fundraiser for the victims and could have easily swapped it out for a random disaster. If the goal was to show how the Earthquake still affected the lives of survivors years after, then it fails at that because the character's barely are affected by it. They just mention it as the reason why they are here or have it be a motivation for some aspect of the characters. Basically, it felt like it was chucked in for exposition purposes and that was it.
The characters themselves also aren't really special. Main girl is a violinist, main guy is a painter. That's it, those are their characters. There isn't anything interesting about them besides the fact that main girl is not as gun-ho about the violin as before (which from my recollection was not because of the quake). The guy paints and does so cause the quake rattled him and he likes to capture still things. The plot is that she falls in love with him, finds out he painted a girl he knew prior, gets upset, and then the guy suddenly pulls a 180 and goes "Actually I like you now", roll credits. That's the plot. Oh and she learns to like the violin again?
Oh and for some reason just out of the blue the main girl strips naked. Like I am no stranger to random unwarranted fan-service but this had no explanation, had no reason to happen, and felt like it was thrown in there to appease someone rather than actually have some deeper meaning, or any meaning for that matter. Also they just randomly kiss at the end. Like, I am a fan of not wasting time with romance but that also felt random and out of the blue.
Basically, the plot is a super straightforward, generic, and boring, and the characters stand out in no way whatsoever. Visually though, the movie does have some nice moments, and there is one scene where main girl plays the violin and it actually was very nice. Sadly, the visuals are this movie's strong suit, and not even then is it that enticing or even memorable.
Hakubo is a boring film. It is a fundraising attempt by a black-listed director to look good and ended up falling flat as a boring and unexciting film. It is a film that pales in piquing the interests of the audience less so than the racist and deranged ramblings of its director. In fact, the only thing that I can say is intriguing about this film is how utterly unhinged its director is online
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