Stop!! Hibari-kun!

As a trans lady living in 2021, when I heard about Stop Hibari-kun, I had to watch. Not gonna lie, this series is one of the more complicated (for me) animes I've watched yet. It was equal parts awesome and dreadful. As far as characters go, Hibari-chan is amazing. She's everything a trans girl aspires to be and more. She reminded me so much of our generation today. My character rating for this review is ONLY of Hibari. Every other character deserves a 3 or below. Literally everyone else in the series was either passively transphobic or outright racist (including Hibari's father and thefamily bodyguard). I was not expecting to see the racism and that was very hard to look past when looking at the series as a whole. Also, I kept hoping I'd see a payoff in the final episode of her family finally acknowledging she is a girl. That didn't happen, this was made in 1982. The director may have been an egg and this was his attempt at reconciling that, idk. I rated the overall story for this review, as a 3. Only because it felt like the entire point of the series was transphobia. I gave it a MAL rating of 6, but only because of Hibari. Otherwise I'd probably rate it a 3 or 4 due to the problematic nature of the other characters. I wish a sequel would come out showing Hibari a few years later, who is now goth, and how she was traumatized by her racist family and upbringing. I would watch the hell out of that. If you are strongly bothered (like most of us) by racism and transphobia.. I'd pass on the show. I watched it for um, science, but would never recommend it.

|TL;DR| Stop!! Hibari-kun! has an interesting and unique premise, and an acceptable approach to it, for 1982. The comedy is absurd and full of references to pop-culture, similar to other gag-manga of the time, which would be cool if it didn't overwhelm the show, overshadowing the possibilities of developing *anything* of the relationship between the protagonist and Hibari, which stays limited to funny skits until the last episode. Which is especially bad since this anime has the average-length of 35 episodes. |Review| Stop!! Hibari-kun!'s premise is quite cool (considering this is the 80's in Japan): the main character suddenly has to live in the house of a (comical)Yakuza boss that lives with his 4 daughters: however, one of them, Hibari, the most beautiful one, is actually a boy. Hibari is labeled as a "crossdresser" in the series, though it can be considered transgenderism by today's standards. The main premise is that even though Hibari is a "pervert" (that's how his father calls him), he is so beautiful and awesome that people just have to accept him the way he is. He publicly acts like a girl and nobody outside the family knows he's a boy. The main character of course rapidly falls in love with him (not knowing he's a boy), and when he discovers that Hibari is actually a boy he tries to negate it. Throughout the series he keeps trying to convince himself that he's not attracted to him, even though he definitely is, and Hibari always teases and flirts with him knowing this. Again, considering the spirit of the time, this is an acceptable approach to the subject. This is a comedy anime after all, and nothing is taken seriously. And this may also be the biggest flaw of the anime: even with interesting characters, like Hibari's other sisters, the classmates at school, and a cast of other comical yakuza employed by the family, these characters aren't explored how they should - considering this is an average-length 35 episode anime. Most episodes just consist of random comedy situations with a fair dose of surrealism and references to pop-culture greatly inspired by other gag-manga of the time like Dr. Slump (which was publishing at the same time and being a hit). I'm a great fan of this type of humor, but it starts getting repetitive and boring once the show is going on, and nothing is actually happening. Some characters receive more episodes focused on them, while others, for some inexplicable reason, are almost ignored. It's really unbalanced. And this is especially worse considering Hibari and his relationship with the main character is basically *never* developed in *any* way. Things always fall down to shallow comedy skits of Hibari flirting with the main character and him getting flustered or embarrassed, until the very last episode. Actually, the last episode happens just like any regular episode, like the show was abruptly cut in half. It makes you feel there was wasted potential in this series.

Probably the story that I saw with the most quantity of subtle, serious sub-subjects while still going all out on a "comedy" running gag show! Which (the "comedy" running gag show) is obviously a materialization of the two main characters trying to cure themselves from inner frustations of the rejection of what they are, but that are stuck in facing the crude reality that people around are stuck in repressive stereotypes that don't want to evolve and care around. So why would they care about living along the decorum while everybody are being socially decided to be worst?! I think this the message of thisvery descriptive masterpiece series! Insanely great from the start until the last of the 35 episodes as even the musics are real bangers.