For the sake of leaving no seasonal unreviewed.

The Vexations of a Shut-in Vampire Princess (or Hikikomari for short) is an anime that, based on its premise, I expected to enjoy far more than I actually did. The biggest draws for this series are its cutesy character designs, its GL-baity atmosphere (no actual romance here, sorry to disappoint), and the “gap” between the previous two elements and its always-at-war setting. However, I feel that this anime failed to follow through on what could have been a quite enjoyable anime to the extent that it could have.

The premise of Hikikomari is that Terakomari Gandesblood, a chronic shut-in vampire who is entirely unable to drink blood, is tricked into serving as a commander for the Mulnite Imperial Army, one of seven “Crimson Lords”--incredibly powerful vampires, each controlling a just-as-fearsome army--warring for candidacy to become the next empress of the continent. As commander, she is expected to constantly and consistently lead her army to victory in battles against the other Crimson Lords. However, since she’s unable to drink blood, Komari (I will refer to Terakomari as such for the rest of this review) is extremely weak: unable to use magic, she must rely on trickery to keep her troops loyal to her, as any one of her soldiers would attempt to overthrow her at the first opportunity, for the possibility of becoming a Crimson Lord themselves. This “always-at-war” premise is given a bit of a “cutesy” (for lack of a better word) twist towards the end of the first episode that I will not expose here for the sake of keeping this review 100% spoiler free, and the rest of the execution of the premise follows a similar “cutesy” route (much more similar to Handa-kun than Talentless Nana). This path could have been pulled off far worse than it was, and there were only a few issues I had with its execution as a whole. There is a reveal towards the end of the first arc that causes viewers to scratch their heads a little bit, as it causes a disconnect between the viewers’ and Komari’s perception of herself and also takes one aspect of the drama out of the series as a whole (and this disconnect is never really addressed, so it just leaves the audience shouting at their screen most of the time).

One would be able to pretty easily imagine a template for each of the episodes of a mainly comedy anime with such a premise, and they wouldn’t be too far off. There are twists and plot points introduced further down the storyline that prevent the premise from stagnating for too long, and the comedy is generally funny enough to pass. Vampire powers are introduced not too far along, and they soon become the main force driving conflict in the story. With all of that said, I feel like this is where the anime meets its first big stumbling block.

The story of Hikikomari, despite existing just enough to allow the comedy to breathe a little bit, fails to do much more than that. Given how much time I had to devote to explaining the premise (this AND MORE is explained to the audience power-point-style within the first five minutes of the first episode), one can surely imagine the author’s propensity for introducing complications that, more often than not, end up muddying the comedy/slice of life elements that are Hikikomari’s true strong point. Despite all of these plot twists and story developments, large sections of Hikikomari’s story still manage to be uninteresting. By the end of episode 10 or so, I was forcing myself to make an active effort to invest myself in each new plot development, and yet I still found myself out of it more than once before the anime concluded. Had the world building been done in a manner that felt like anything other than a poorly adapted infodump from the light novel source material, it might have even been praiseworthy. However, it doesn’t do the best of jobs at communicating information to the audience efficiently, either infodumping with tremendous amounts of dialogue or expecting the audience to pick things up through context. After reading brief portions of the manga adaptation, I can say that at least the opening portions were handled slightly better, and it felt a bit more enjoyable and smooth as a read, but this isn’t a review of the manga, nor have I felt the need to devote the time to fully reading it either.

The comedy, as mentioned above, gets a passing grade most of the time. Story (and a single character that I'll cover in more detail in the next section) aside, Hikikomari generally manages to pull its comedy off quite well. Despite being one of the most prominent aspects of the series, it hardly gets in its own way, allowing its characters, plot, and art to shine (as well as they can, that is.) This is not to say that it doesn’t have its own issues, however. Far too often, Hikikomari’s comedy involves one of the many of the characters around Komari being infatuated with her, which usually leads to the punchline being sexual harassment (mostly verbal, not physical, thankfully) of some form, but the audience is expected to find it cute instead of creepy because they’re all girls.

The characters of Hikikomari are probably one of the best aspects of the series. If you’re looking for thoughtful character development or empathetic and heartbreaking decisions, however, you’re in the wrong place. What you will get out of this anime are characters with standout, but (mostly) not overplayed “gimmicks” that manage to be funny enough in their own right. It works quite well with the slice of life elements of the series, and managed to get a chuckle out of me at least a few times. With Hikikomari’s crowded cast, each of these characters are generally kept from being on-screen enough for the audience to tire of them or their gimmicks. That is, with the glaring exception of Villhaze. Being Komari’s personal attendant means that she’s present in almost every scene with Komari (ergo, just about every scene in general.) This would be fine, were Villhaze either thoughtfully constructed or complex in any way. Instead, she has exactly two character traits: First, a frightening infatuation with Komari that goes past “star-struck admirer” and falls square into the camp of “straight up stalker.” Second, a complete lack of personal shame and boundaries. These two traits add up to Villhaze sexually harassing Komari at just about every chance she gets. How okay Komari is with this treatment is, of course, never directly addressed, but her reactions it’s clear that she’s mildly uncomfortable with it at best, and at worst only able to put up with it because of how essential Villhaze is to Komari’s functionality as a Crimson Lord. Your own mileage may vary with how funny or tolerable you find this portion of the anime, but I found myself sighing far more often than laughing when it came to these “jokes.” It’s also worth noting that Villhaze isn’t the only character who harasses Komari, nor the only one infatuated with her, but she’s by far the worst offender, and no other characters repeat their behavior to the point of causing actual problems like Villhaze.

Another aspect of the anime somewhat worth mentioning is the drama. I didn’t expect Hikikomari to have as much drama as it did, but I don't think it was particularly terrible either. At some points, I even felt it melded quite well with the direction and art, helping me understand and empathize with characters and their emotions. However, these moments were relatively rare. Far more often, one or all of these components didn’t properly line up and much of the emotional impact missed its mark, making the whole thing feel just a little bit “off.”

This brings me to discussion of the direction of Hikikomari. Although I'm not particularly knowledgeable about the world of direction, or particular directors’ quirks, habits, strengths, etc, I hope my amateur opinion can help you get a general feeling of what to expect. There were certainly moments that I felt the direction positively impacted my watching experience (as briefly mentioned in the drama section), but there were certainly moments that felt “off.”

Another thing I noticed while rewatching portions of this show for this review was just how much fanservice Hikikomari was able to fit into each episode. It wasn’t completely absurd, like some anime where the fanservice was suffocating enough to cause issues enjoying the other aspects, but it was still noticeable. It would be quite difficult to accept “oh we just wanted the characters to look cute” as an excuse, given the jokes, settings, camera angles, etc that were used far too conspicuously to be simply for humor or stylistic choices alone. The reader can decide whether or not this is a positive for them, as everyone watches anime for different reasons. If you enjoy fanservice, you might enjoy this show more. I don’t feel that it elevated the experience, however. I should note that, despite the all-too present trope of vampires looking 12 but being 3000 years old (more often than not used as an excuse to objectify characters that look uncomfortably young), Komari the vampire is actually 15 years old (with no disconnect between listed age and character design), but this isn’t worth praising when she ends up being objectified and consistently put in fanservice-y shots anyway (do i need to mention the whole sexual harassment thing again?)

The soundtrack and the voice acting are both of similar quality. Both are adequate, rarely conflicting with the direction that the rest of the anime goes for. Both also consistently fail to impress, with just as few standout moments as failures. Further discussion in this section is practically fruitless, so I’ll move on.

The final main aspects of the anime that I will be discussing in this review is the art and animation. The art style of Hikikomari was actually one of the things that drew me to the anime - the character designs and the rest of the art looked nice enough to warrant a watch, and they mostly delivered. Hikikomari’s character designs, backgrounds, and expressions are generally well done, complimenting the other aspects and combining to create a generally solid-feeling production.

The animation is admittedly worse than the art, but it’s still decent. With that said, this isn’t a very high budget anime, and the directorial choices made to reduce the tax of animation at the expense of visual information communicated to the viewer (particularly during action scenes, the slice of life moments feel more well done) are obvious. This does allow for a few visually impressive scenes here and there, but the audience is left wondering if this was for the best.

Overall, I’d say that all of these aspects combine to create a slightly below-average anime that, while consistent, leaves a lot on the table. If some aspect of what I've mentioned above appeals to you, or if you feel that Hikikomari is something you’d enjoy anyway, then feel free to watch it. Fantasy/SoL-ish anime are hard to come by after a while, so it may be worth watching for those aspects alone. With that said, I don’t think I’d give this anime a strong recommendation. If you’re on the fence about watching it, or if you have reservations, I can’t really assuage your concerns or recommend this show to you.
I’d give Hikikomari a 5.5/10.