Hipira – review

Director: Shinji Kimura

Release date: 2009

Contains spoilers

Based on a book written by Katsuhiro Otomo and illustrated by Shinji Kimura, Hipira is a short anime series of short episodes, each coming in at the 5-minute mark. As such it is a difficult one to review as the entire series is actually so short.

That said it boasts some wonderful, stylised animation and is worth catching – though perhaps not at the price the DVDs are being sold at through Amazon. It is also worth noting that the DVD does not have English subs.

Salta

The animation takes place in the town of Salta – a place of perpetual night. Where this land is located is not revealed but it is worth noting that references are made to the human world as a separate place and in one episode a meteor hits the city but, in entering the night sky, it opens a crack in the night that allows sunlight to come through (as though the town is under a canopy?)

ready to cause trouble

The series centres on the eponymous Hipira, a precocious vampire child. He is not yet old enough to be able to turn into a bat and fly (though most of his classmates can). The vampires clearly age in this as we later see the quite doddery Count Dracula, who is the oldest of the vampires. Whilst there is a nod to the vegetarian vampires of (Western) children’s media, and talk of drinking blood orange juice, it is also clear that these are blood drinkers – with a blood cake at one point and a section of the town going on an all you can drink trip to the human world (we are told about this rather than see it).

soul

Hipira has a best friend, which is a human soul called soul. His school teacher tried to make a spirit by processing a whirlpool of souls but the process was interrupted and he created soul, rather than a spirit. He suggests that to drink the blood of a spirit means the vampire will go to Hell – which for a vampire is Heaven. Soul is able to radiate a powerful light and discovers this when Hipira is threatened by vampire zombies (actually more like zombies with no obvious vampiric/zompire side).

vampire zombies

The stories have that touch of Japanese strangeness – such as a giant toad blocking a river, who got that way because of the river water flowing into his ass and bloating him. Hipira and a schoolfriend are rendered as sketches in a witch’s book at one point and a dip in water should restore them – but it is actually a dog peeing on them that does this. Yet it is the strangeness, coupled with the irrepressibility of Hipira’s character, and the beautiful animation, that makes this worth a watch. 6.5 out of 10.

At the time of writing I couldn’t find an IMDb page.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK