Name: Love Hina Again
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Episodes: 3
Released: January 26, 2002 – March 27, 2002
Based On: Love Hina manga by Ken Akamatsu
Director: Yoshiaki Iwasaki
Produced By: XEBEC
US Distribution By: Bandai Entertainment

Major Japanese Cast

Naru Narusegawa: Yui Horie
Keitarou Urashima: Yuji Ueda
Kanako Urashima: Natsuko Kuwatani
Mitsune Konno: Junko Noda
Shinobu Maehara: Masayo Kurata
Kaolla Su: Reiko Takagi
Motoko Aoyama: Yuu Asakawa
Haruka Urashima: Megumi Hayashibara
Mutsumi Otohime: Satsuki Yukino
Sarah McDougal: Yumiko Kobayashi

Major English Cast

Naru Narusegawa: Dorothy Melendrez
Keitarou Urashima: David Umansky
Kanako Urashima: Tina Dixon
Mitsune Konno: Barbara Goodson
Shinobu Maehara: Ellen Arden
Kaolla Su: Wendee Lee
Motoko Aoyama: Mona Marshall
Haruka Urashima: Jane Alan
Mutsumi Otohime: Jean Howard
Sarah McDougal: Julie Maddalena

Scores

Animation: 6/10 (x 4 = 24 pts)
Story: 4/10 (x 4 = 16 pts)
Music: 6/10 (x 4 = 24 pts)
Coherence/Story Arc: N/A
English Dubs: 6/10 (x 1 = 6 pts)
Gut Score: 3/10 (x 5 = 15 pts)

Total: 85/180 (47.2%)

Review

This is how you get Love Hina Again: Take Love Hina, completely erase the progress made by Naru and Keitarou in their relationship at the end of the series and in the specials and take the ridiculousness found in Love Hina and double it. If Love Hina was one of the biggest waste of resources ever in anime history, Love Hina Again probably contends for most brainless anime series ever created, ever.

The series starts when Keitarou breaks his leg on the first day of classes at Tokyo U. and, for some reason, has made him unable to attend classes. As a result, he decides to go after his life’s dream and go on an archaeological trip with Mr. Seta (how is going on an archaeological trip any easier with a broken leg?). Upon returning from his trip at the end of the first episode, nothing more is said about Keitarou’s supposed life dreams until the very end of the third episode when Mr. Seta saves him and Naru from the rampaging tenants of the Hinata Apartments.

While he’s gone, Keitarou’s step-sister, Kanako, arrives and announces that she is the new manager of Hinata Apartments. Kanako’s ultimate goal is to drive Naru away and having Keitarou for herself. How Kanako knows about Naru and Keitarou’s relationship, I’m not sure since Keitarou himself says that he hasn’t written Kanako. The rest of the series seems to be about Kanako not being able to make up her mind between trying to run Naru off and taking Keitarou for herself or trying to get Naru to profess her love to Keitarou which the creators of Love Hina Again apparently forgot she had already done previously in the franchise.

Throw in a magical closed down hotel which enforces romantic promises made within it’s premises (how did Naru and Keitarou break the spell the hotel put on Keitarou and Kanaka anyway?) and a flying and talking cat (so now we have flying turtles AND cats) and you get a story even more ridiculous than the series it is based on.

There is no appreciable improvement in the dub, music, or animation from the Love Hina series. If you were a fan of the original Love Hina, you may like Love Hina Again. However, if you are looking for Love Hina to redeem itself in this final OVA installment, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

First Watched: December 2005
Do I Own: No
Do I Recommend: No

A convincing twin of Darth Vader stalks the beige cubicles of a Silicon Valley office, complete with ominous black mask, cape and light saber.

But this is no chintzy Halloween costume. It’s a prototype, years in the making, of a toy that incorporates brain wave-reading technology.

Behind the mask is a sensor that touches the user’s forehead and reads the brain’s electrical signals, then sends them to a wireless receiver inside the saber, which lights up when the user is concentrating. The player maintains focus by channeling thoughts on any fixed mental image, or thinking specifically about keeping the light sword on. When the mind wanders, the wand goes dark.

Where have I seen this before? Oh yes! From Angelic Layer. In fact, this technology works almost exactly has it is displayed in the anime series. There may be other anime or other shows that have similar things, but thats what I think of first.

Here is a link to it: http://www.calculusman.com/angelic/

Consider this post a place to put your comments about the design or whatever else about the website.

You can now listen to my podcasts directly from this blog via this flash player:

Or you can still download it from here or from iTunes. (18.4 MB)

You can also download or add my podcast-only RSS feed to your favorite reader:

http://www.joshsanimeblog.com/podcast/podcast.rss

Enjoy!

What’s a cellphone?
Time to do some work!	I’ll Help!

The episode starts out with Suzu and Ikuto eating breakfast and getting ready for the day. Ikuto digs through his backpack and finds his cellphone. Of course his cellphone doesn’t work on the island (or at least I’m assuming he’s tried it) so it does him no good. Suzu, on the other hand, has no idea what a cellphone is. Of course, Suzu points out that, if you want to talk to someone, it’s better to talk to them in person anyway.

After breakfast, Suzu heads out to the well to get enough water to use for the day. Ikuto, feeling like he’s just dead weight on the island, says he’s going to help out too. Of course, fetching water isn’t as easy as Ikuto believes, struggling to carry two buckets of water back, and mentions that the type of manual labor that has to be done in such a primitive environment (no power, running water, or convenience stores!) must be hard on an island with only girls on it.

Manual labor is hard work.	Rin the Superwoman
Ikuto refuses to lose!	Yikes!
Mikoto loves her older sister Rin

At that moment, Rin passes by carrying a huge bucket of water. Suzu explains to Ikuto that Rin is the stronger person on the island. However, Ikuto doesn’t like this fact, wanting to be #1 in everything he does. Ikuto recklessly runs towards Suzu’s house with both his and Suzu’s buckets of water and, not surprisingly, runs right by her house and then promptly trips and spills all the water he was carrying.

Rin asks Ikuto if he wants some of her water. When he refuses, she says that he’s stubburn, but “that’s still fine too” (in a lovey-dovey way). This prompts another girl to sling shurikens (ninja throwing stars) at Ikuto, barely missing him while he’s on the ground. As one would expect, Ikuto is rather taken aback at almost being ripped through by such a weapon.

Suddenly a younger girl (I’d say early teens) show up in front of Ikuto, Suzu, and Rin. She promptly smothers Rin (who almost drops her huge bucket of water). Suzu explains to Ikuto that the girl is Mikoto, and is Rin’s younger sister and says that she loves Rin and thus won’t have any interest in Ikuto.

Mikoto then tells Ikuto that she thanks him for pulling those “other people” away from Rin (I’m guessing the other girls on the island that had been hitting on her) but that if he lays a finger on Rin, that she “won’t let him off easy.”

Washing clothes is hard
Suzu cleans the floor…	…Ikuto nosebleeds all over it again

Ikuto’s adventures don’t end there. Next, Suzu washes clothes in the river by stepping on them to rub them against dull rocks in the water. Ikuto tries to copy her, but trips and hits his head on the rocks and gets washed down the river. Next, Suzu cleans the floor in the traditional Japanese manner (running down the floor while pushing a clean, wet towel along it). Of course, seeing Suzu do this from behind causes yet another massive Ikuto nosebleed.

Ikuto next tries cutting wood, promptly being pelted in the head by a piece that, after he cuts it, flies off, hitting the house and ricocheting back to Ikuto’s head. After the housework is over, then it is time…for work in the town.

Chopping wood is hard…and painful.	It’s time for more work! Yay!

Suzu and Ikuto go into town to help everyone else work. As Suzu explains, her job is to help those who are busy and need more help. Suzu and Ikuto’s first stop is to help pull up sweet potatoes. Ikuto, who brags about “being the champion” of digging up sweet potatoes in kindergarden, takes his hand at pulling them up. Suzu warns him that it’s impossible for one person to do, but, as we saw earlier in the episode, Ikuto doesn’t like to lose, and tries to pull it up until he collapses.

Suzu then helps Ikuto pull them up, and when the sweet potatoes emerge, they reveal themselves to be tremendously huge (think compact car sized). In the end, all the vegetables that the islanders grow are huge (carrying a single carrot on your back, having to cart away a single onion, etc).

I won’t lose to no sweet potatoes!	That’s one big tater tot
Time to sheer the sheep!	Don’t make the sheep angry

Next on the agenda is sheering some small and very spherical sheep. However, these are very particular sheet – ones that will attack you in groups if you make them angry (such as by accidentally catching the skin of one of them when trimming).

Next is fishing, where Ikuto impressively catches a large sea creature, which decides to take a bite of him as well. Then comes milking a cow, which apparently Ikuto can’t do well either as the cow fell on him.

Finally, Suzu and Ikuto meet up with Yukino and Chikage to go mushroom picking. But not just any mushrooms – mutsutake mushrooms which, because of a recent rain have grown to a rather considerable size (taller than the group going to pick them) and must be picked before they get too big.

However, another thing about mutsutake mushrooms is that there is a certain type of carnivorous plant that hides itself among the mutsutake and which look like mutsutake, but which eat you (and, at least if you are a human, throws you back up) if you try to pick them.

I’m not too sure about the shape of these mushrooms…	Isn’t it usually the other way around?

In fact, Ikuto is so poor at picking the real mutsutake (despite Suzu’s help) that he ends up picking all the fake ones on the island without even one successful pick. This causes Ikuto to wonder out into the forest depressed.

There he runs into Rin again, who, based on her mother’s advice that men are depressed, women will be able to get them easily, tries to flirt with him saying that Danna-san (which is what she calls him in Japanese) which, in the usual manner she uses it, means “master” can also mean “husband” and after fumbling around with flirting, she takes the more direct root of just grabbing Ikuto’s hand and putting it on her breast. This, of course, immediately leads to another massive Ikuto nosebleed.

Chance!	You’d think he’d get used to it after a while

Yukino finds them and gets angry that they’re “flirting.” At this point, one of the earthworms tha that the duck Yukino is riding is carrying with it (yes, she is riding another animal) approaches Rin. This causes Rin to roil in terror, as she strongly dislikes insects.

Yukino then proceeds to throw earthworms that she is with at Rin. Ikuto comes and saves Rin by catching the earthworms coming towards her and tossing them aside. This, of course, makes Rin all flushed.

At the end of the day, despite his earthworm heroics, Ikuto still laments his uselessness compared to the girls on the islands, and especially compared to Suzu. Suzu assures Ikuto that he’s not worthless. Suzu tells him that she’s the only person who lives alone on the island, and that, before, she was envious of the other girls who were able to go home and eat and talk with others when she was alone, and that Ikuto makes her feel that she has family too.

Attack of the Giant Earthworms	Ikuto isn’t scared of any earthworms!
I’m Home!

This episode was a welcome break from the girl-chasing that made up the bulk of the first two episodes. This episode mostly explored the life that the girls live on the island, but also the quirkiness of the island as well, such as huge vegetables, round sheep, and carnivorous plants that disguise themselves as giant mushrooms.

One thing that I may say is disappointing so far is that, while I do find the series rather humerus so far, there haven’t been very many burst-out-laughing moments as of yet. Like I said last episode, this series hasn’t distinguished itself yet, but it hasn’t fallen into fan-service driven harem hell yet either. I’m still looking forward to see exactly where this series goes.