For the sake of leaving no seasonal unreviewed. The Vexations of a Shutin 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 GLbaity atmosphere no actual romance here sorry to disappoint and the gap between the previous two elements and its alwaysatwar 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 shutin vampire who is entirely unable to drink blood is tricked into serving as a commander for the Mulnite Imperial Army one of seven Crimson Lordsincredibly powerful vampires each controlling a justasfearsome armywarring 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 shes 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 alwaysatwar 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 Handakun 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 Komaris 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 wouldnt 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 powerpointstyle within the first five minutes of the first episode one can surely imagine the authors propensity for introducing complications that more often than not end up muddying the comedy/slice of life elements that are Hikikomaris true strong point. Despite all of these plot twists and story developments large sections of Hikikomaris 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 doesnt 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 isnt 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 Ill 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 doesnt have its own issues however. Far too often Hikikomaris 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 theyre all girls. The characters of Hikikomari are probably one of the best aspects of the series. If youre looking for thoughtful character development or empathetic and heartbreaking decisions however youre 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 Hikikomaris crowded cast each of these characters are generally kept from being onscreen enough for the audience to tire of them or their gimmicks. That is with the glaring exception of Villhaze. Being Komaris personal attendant means that shes 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 starstruck 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 its clear that shes mildly uncomfortable with it at best and at worst only able to put up with it because of how essential Villhaze is to Komaris 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. Its also worth noting that Villhaze isnt the only character who harasses Komari nor the only one infatuated with her but shes 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 didnt expect Hikikomari to have as much drama as it did but I dont 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 didnt 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 Im 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 wasnt 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 dont feel that it elevated the experience however. I should note that despite the alltoo 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 isnt worth praising when she ends up being objectified and consistently put in fanservicey 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 Ill 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. Hikikomaris character designs backgrounds and expressions are generally well done complimenting the other aspects and combining to create a generally solidfeeling production. The animation is admittedly worse than the art but its still decent. With that said this isnt 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 Id say that all of these aspects combine to create a slightly belowaverage anime that while consistent leaves a lot on the table. If some aspect of what Ive mentioned above appeals to you or if you feel that Hikikomari is something youd enjoy anyway then feel free to watch it. Fantasy/SoLish anime are hard to come by after a while so it may be worth watching for those aspects alone. With that said I dont think Id give this anime a strong recommendation. If youre on the fence about watching it or if you have reservations I cant really assuage your concerns or recommend this show to you. Id give Hikikomari a 5.5/10.