One of the more overlooked anime of the past few decades is the rather sweet Hotori, and now it’s finally remastered on Blu-ray.
A short one-off short story, Hotori tells the tale of the titular Hotori, who has a condition where she is losing her memories, and Suzu, her friend, who’s also a robot that is being implanted with memories of a dead boy.
The anime starts with Suzu walking to meet Hotori holding a gun with ominous intent, only for the story to go back in time and show how the two originally became friends.
Obviously, I’m not going to spoil how this plays out, as much of the exposition is directly relevant to how the anime concludes. However, it is a surprisingly poignant tale and one that deals very directly with the theme of loss, both through death and the importance of a person’s memories.
I remember seeing this back in 2005 and finding it quite moving, but I felt that it could have had a bigger budget and slightly better character designs.
Not that the character designs are bad, but from the side, they look a bit odd and flat. This is a minor gripe, as the anime itself isn’t really impacted much by this.
It’s also a noteworthy anime as anime creative veteran Ryosuke Takahashi was involved as a creative producer.
‘Hotori’ was originally released back in 2005.
AnimEigo
This is a strange role for him, as he normally just writes, directs, or produces. However, once you’ve seen the anime, you can certainly sense his gentle deft hand in how the characters interact and the nature of the story.
While Hotori does feature robots and advanced technology that depict how a person’s memories can be stored, this is still very much a world away from Takahashi’s other mecha anime, such as the dark and bleak Armored Trooper VOTOMS.
However, if you know much about Takahashi’s career, and how he started out working for Osamu Tezuka on Astro Boy, the simpler and more evocative types of anime such as this are not uncommon for him.
As for this release, while the animation isn’t that big of a deal in a technical sense, the picture quality is excellent, and the audio is very clean.
This release also features a new English dub, but I only watched the Japanese version with English subtitles, which were handled well.
Overall, this is a solid release of a lesser-known but still important little anime, and as always, AnimEigo has done a lovely job of bringing it to Blu-ray.
Hotori is available on Blu-ray from the mediaOCD store for $19.95.
Disclosure: AnimEigo sent me this Blu-ray for the purposes of this review.
Follow me on X, Facebook and YouTube. I also manage Mecha Damashii and am currently writing regular columns in Japanese about mecha games and mecha anime for both Game*Spark and Automaton.
