Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
LinoTheOne
Second or third time watching Heike Monogatari. Always a delightful, insightful, refreshing anime telling a tragically beautiful story through astonishing animation.
Through Heike Monogatari, we are brought to the last years of the Heian Period. And we, as spectators, are actually put into the story through its pseudo-protagonist, Biwa. Let me explain: the Tale of the Heike as we know it today is a compilation of an oral story sung by biwa players, poets, and singers. In that sense, we are Biwa as she's a narrator and spectator with zero influence on the course of history. With Biwa, we know each Taira, their feelings, their ambitions, their beliefs. Like Biwa, we suffer and rejoice by their side, we cry when they cry and sing when they sing - but we have nothing to do with their happines…
Read at the sourceKikukahiko
Personal Opinion
This was definitely Yamada-sensei stepping out of her comfort zone by taking on a new kind of genre and honestly, she pulled it off pretty well.
The core of the story is centered around a real historical event, focusing on the dynamic between the winners and the losers. What I found unique is that Yamada chose to tell the story from the perspective of the losers, which you rarely see in media like this.
Another thing I really liked was the passage-style storytelling. It felt straightforward, but at the same time… not really?
Like, (it’s direct if you want it to be, but you could read into it in other ways too.)
The storyboarding really backed this up very deliberate, very effective.
The downside for me was that the pacing and storytelling felt a bit too fast, and some…
Read at the sourceKiyoharu820
A SPOILER FREE REVIEW OF HEIKE MONOGATARI BY A JAPANESE STUDIES ACADEMIC
As someone who has studied and read much of the Heike Monogatari, and has a very deep interest in Japanese art, history and culture, I can confidently say that this anime is a celebration of the past thousand years of Japanese art. It is artistically very unique, preferring to be faithfal to traditional arts rather than modern styles of anime that the director, Naoko Yamada, normally does.
Unlike the hard defined outlines of most anime, the character outlines are thin, imitating the styles present in Japaneses crolls. Instead of unique hair, facial, and body design present in most anime, the distinguishing trait between characters is their kimono or armor, as was typical in Japanese traditional art. The series continu…
Read at the sourceHydre_Ito
This is an adaption of an ancient Japanese tale about a war between two great clans that ruled the country during the 12th century. The plot mainly entails the different battles that took place and the gradual downfall of one of the clans, with an anime original protagonist and supernatural aspects that didn’t add much to the story; her and another character inherit abilities to see into the future and see souls of the dead respectively.
After tragically parting with her biological father, Biwa, our protagonist (apparently) meets the compassionate leader of the Hieke (Taira) clan, Shigemori. He decides to take her in as he feels responsible over what she had to endure. In the first few episodes, we witness a wholesome relationship between him and Biwa where they both relate to eachother…
Read at the sourceMury0kush0
This anime made me question whether I have prosopagnosia (face blindness) Lol. As someone with no background knowledge whatsoever this anime was very very very confusing….11 eps also took me more than an year to finish mainly because I didn’t catch up after a few eps while it was airing and then I forgot the storyline and my second rewatch took me couple of months and now I’m just confusion. I love historical genre hence I didn’t drop it but if you aren’t into the genre then just skip it. If I speak about the art, then some characters look really alike and there are these two baldies whom I couldn’t differentiate when either of them appeared. The characters name are your typical historical names like taira-no-shigemori, Fujiwara-no-narichika etc…and it was so difficult to follow who was wh…
Read at the sourcedograzor
There are some powerful visuals and moments throughout, but there is a noticeable dropoff after the first few episodes, and it quickly becomes a narrative and tonal mess in the middle section in particular before recovering somewhat in the last couple of episodes.
This is only partially explained by the show's assumed knowledge of the events depicted, which in any case could be covered by an hour or two of familiarization, as the narrative becomes bogged down by repeated exposition that goes nowhere and seemingly irrelevant side plots along with poor characterization work with little in the way of nuance or narrative tension developed.
What is great is the Biwa playing, this is the absolute highlight of the show, as is the visual presentation, although some of the montage sequences were…
Read at the sourcegrr_mal
A beautiful anime, wasted on a crap story. And no, I don't care for the excuse that it's a "documentary" for actual history or whatever. Keep it in the history textbooks instead of putting it on my screen if you don't want me to be critical of it. It simply does not work as an anime, or any form of entertainment for that matter. It is full of stupid people following stupid leaders and doing stupid and illogical things. For a while I thought it was a bearable amount of stupid, but the last episode pushed the limits beyond the acceptable.
There is no character whom you can empathize or root for, or at least understand their situation and reasoning. The minute you may start to think there is, they go off doing something stupid and leave the story. Even the "main character" is just a "storyte…
Read at the sourceinim
13th century tragic epic about the fall of the house of Heike in the Genpei civil war (1180-85), marking the begin of Japan's middle ages and samurai rule. The jaw dropping beautiful images and cinematography focus on the period's flair and character emotions. Think: Shakespeare rather than detailed history lesson.
The camera work is fantastic, Naoko Yamada didn't fall into the trap to give us more of the same such as her trademark leg shots. Her new shticks are asymmetric image composition, super-closeup into faces, and objects (pots, pillars, ...) between the camera and the scene. And the occasional leg shot nevertheless. This comes on top of her new employer's (Science SARU) sophisticated CG. Screw you, Mappa and ufotable, this is better. More impressive details include the art directi…
Read at the sourcesimonitro
It's really hard to not try to dislike some Anime shows because there are so much effert when into it and try to appreciate what its worth, however, I cannot really lie to myself and tell how I feel about "Heike Monogatori" or "The Heike Story".
At the beginning of this show, it had so much potential to enjoy because of its unique art and animation style. It doesn't look like your traditional Anime in the sense... big eyes, big expressions etc... and that's what made it to stand out and make me want to follow through but besides that, it gets quite confusing the more you keep on watching.
So, we're introduced to the main lead, Biwa, who her father get killed by the the Heike which is a clan. One of the members takes her in and start living with them, she can predict the future because e…
Read at the sourceIcarusxIcarus
Heike Monogatari is an anime adaptation of the 13th century historical epic, “The Tale of the Heike”. It is a story that serves as a cultural touchstone to the Japanese as the Bible does in the West. For a text as important as this, an adaptation into animation would seem a very arduous task if one were to attempt a totally faithful adaptation paying attention to the minutiae of the story. However, Naoko Yamada and the staff at Science SARU had something else in mind…
I greatly appreciate the alternate approach that they took to adapting this epic. Their addition to the story, the character of Biwa, serves as a fairly ethereal figure who exists outside of the story, as well as inside of it. I find Biwa’s addition to be a very nice touch, as she essentially justifies the fact that this is,…
Read at the sourcetabarnhart
It's hard to give any show a 10, but I find I can't give Heike Monogatari anything but. It's not perfect, but it's just so damn good.
Many shows start well then fizzle; others build to an anticipated climax that goes thud. HM never builds in that way; too much history and too many characters are coming and going for that kind of suspense. But each episode's story is a gem that works to make the too-short series hold together well.
And I imagine rewatching them without the week's delay will make it even better since characters can be better kept in mind.
The ending was amazing. It was heart-breaking, and the music underscored the pain. No surprise it reminds me of the ending of Eizouken ni wa Te wo Dasu na! Both came from Science SARU and the director was one of KyoAni's greats. We knew…
Read at the sourceonespankman
Heike Monogatari is a 2021 adaptation of a 2016 translation of a 14th century epic account of the 12th century fall of the Heike clan, and it's as epic as that history suggests.
The story can be a little hard to follow, often long blocks of exposition are given about characters we haven’t met. Massive story beats come and go as if inconsequential, and multi-year time skips pass without mention. Each episode feels far longer than its runtime.
This results in a very distant perspective for the audience. This perspective is dry, and loses some emotional impact, but feels a grand, epic, tale.
I can say with confidence that there’s no other anime like it. The closest point of comparison I can find is War and Peace.
While the story is presented from a third person POV, our perspective share…
Read at the sourceumiygm
"Tomorrow. The next day. After this. In the future. Far in the future. Even farther. One day. Now I can look up for the future. Good things happen too."
How do we overcome suffering and how stories that have been told over and over again through generations can help us accept the nature of life, it's ups and downs?
The director Naoko Yamada was one of the survivors of the arson at Kyoani studios in 2019 and her first big work after this awful trauma is the retelling of what is arguably the most famous story of Japan, and the way I see it, this has everything to do with the events of 2019.
The Tale of the Heike (Heike Monogatari) is a work of historical fiction describing the events of the Genpei War during the end of the 11th century, but these facts are know to anyone nowadays. Just l…
Read at the sourceHarisrox
Naoko Yamada never fails to surprise me with delivering projects better than her last ones, it's like everytime she works on something, she levels up.
This time rather than her usual genres, she took on historical genre and gave it a refreshing narrative through a short girl with weird eyes named "Biwa". Heikei Monogatari is a popular story in Japan (which tells the story of the rise and fall of the Taira clan during the Genpei War) due to that the series had very fast pacing like it was intended to skip stuff which would turn out to be unimportant to the whole narrative, which makes me sad that even Yoshitsune didn't get much screentime as the story ended.
And I loved the visuals... as always... took 650+ screencaps. The colors were vibrant, the style was consistent and the details we…
Read at the sourceFlexySpagoot
This show is one I'm not really sure how to recommend, as when I read through the already-written reviews to look for common criticisms and compliments from other people that I can either support or refute, I found that there were 2 main problems people had with Heike Monogatari. Which is that it a. was too confusing, and b. that the protagonist Biwa that was original to this adaptation didn't really add anything and just took away screen time and exacerbated the previous problem.
I personally agree with the second issue, from what I have heard and found online the real Heike Monogatari was quite the long tale, with one of the earlier translations spanning 800 pages. There was no damn way they were going to fit all of that stuff into their quaint 11 episodes, and I think this was the main…
Read at the sourceDramaddict
While many people were kindly disheartened by Naoko Yamada’s departure from KyoAni, I see it as a logical step forward in her already auspicious career. Yes, KyoAni is unquestionably an industry leader, pushing the envelope on how visually marvelous anime can be, but at the end of the day, KyoAni still caters to a broad audience—they wouldn’t be as successful as they are if they didn’t. With her latest films being “A Silent Voice” and “Liz to Aoi Tori,” Yamada has been dipping her toes into more experimental media for some time now, and with that requires creative freedom not as easily available at that beloved studio. So her transition to Science SARU—one of the most experimental anime studio to come out in recent years—serves as an exciting foray into the world of arthouse; and adapting…
Read at the sourceSingleH
I love Yamada Naoko, and the last thing I expected this to be was a disappointment. Think about whether or not you'd be excited to watch a light novel adaptation because its fans swore by it. Now replace “light novel” with "14th century epic chronicle,” and instead of getting an adaptation which enlivens the story, you get the screenwriters reading the SparkNotes summary of the original text out loud while periodically inserting their own headcanon at the most inopportune times and reinterpreting the setting in a similarly jarring fashion. A historical text of this nature had simply too much ground to cover, and an eleven episode TV anime didn’t give them nearly enough time to do so. They had to juggle the half-baked emotional lives of the Taira Clan, the manufactured backstory and narrati…
Read at the sourcePennisland
Heike Monogatari is the newest work from the iconic duo director Naoko Yamada with music composer Kensuke Ushio, who were most famous for their work on Liz and the Blue Bird and a Silent Voice. Personally, I have loved most of their work together so I was extremely excited to see what was in store for this anime.
This may be the duo's most ambitious project to date. First of all, this is the first historical adaptation of the Tales of Heike Japanese epic. Second of all, the duo is working with studio Science Saru instead of Kyoto Animation. I was even more intrigued by what would come from this duo.
Don't be mistaken, this is unmistakably a Yamada Ushio production. From the beautiful musical passages narrating the events of the story sung by the protagonist Biwa to the signature legs sho…
Read at the sourceKANLen09
The Heike Story, Heike Monogatari, or more objectively documented in Japanese history books as: The Tale of the Heike. No matter what you call this show, I see it as 3 words: a cult following.
It's so pleasant, fresh and refreshing to watch a historical work like "The Tale of the Heike" which was already very well documented in the history books throughout centuries as an epic account throughout its many translated derivatives, and the well-known 3-person team of director Naoko Yamada, scriptwriter Reiko Yoshida, music composer Kensuke Ushio who were once stationed at KyoAni making "A Silent Voice" and "Liz and the Blue Bird" before the well-beloved studio's unfortunate-and-fateful arson tragedy, came together to produce this show being adapted from Hideo Furukawa's 2016 work of the same…
Read at the sourceSpirit_Chaser
Heike Monogatari is a beautiful series rich of meaningful emotions that the viewers will come to experience. It feels like a dream that slowly turns into a nightmare. It's a series that feels it has the same spirit Odd Taxi and Sonny Boy had. That being that it's a passion project trying to sincerely write a good series that doesn't use the cheap types of tactics mainstream anime uses to pull in viewers. I love anime that take risks, though they become the highlights of the season, the dedicated viewers have to accept that hardly anyone will watch them or appreciate what they tried to do. This series has flaws, but what frustrates me more is the mob of people who have lost touch of what writes even a decent series. Thus, trash like Mushoku Tensei and 86 become the most popular ones; the on…
Read at the source