Interim Review: Love Hina

[jeriendhal]

Just finished watching DVD #4. I'm not sure, but I think the writing quality compared to the previous episodes has slipped a bit. The first three episodes on the disk had a rushed quality to them, sticking in plot points suddenly without any real transitions. This is complicated by the fairly routine Boy Meets Girl, Boy Accidently Gropes Girl, Girl Pounds Boy, Boy Whimpers and Nosebleeds romance being hitched to the "magical" aspects of the show, such as the flying turtle, Su's wierd transformations, and the seemingly unending series of mysterious tunnels underneath Hinata House. The animators look like they're trying to stick too much in 24 minutes, instead of perhaps extending the storylines into two-parters.

Also, Keitaro really must be dain bramaged if he can't remember finding a talking mechanical doll underneath his grandmother's house when he was ten years old. Sheesh.

Comments

[jvowles.livejournal.com]

The pacing for the anime on that disk in particular is a bit weird; it makes a bit more sense in the manga where the episode length is less of an issue. Remember that like many anime, this is based on a very successful manga and the chunk of stuff around disk 4 is kinda where the creator did some fanservice -- little storylines for the side characters, mostly. I think that there was a point at which the anime actually got ahead of the manga and filler material was created that later wound up in the manga too (though I may be confusing it with other anime/manga). Things get back on track for the next two disks, and then there are a few disks worth of OVAs and specials and movies -- basically stuff that ties up the rest of the manga storylines. In some cases, it's pretty compressed in the anime. But between the anime and the manga, at least this series brings some closure to the storyline--even if the manga, IMHO, handles it better.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

I didn't see the fanservice, aside from the ep focusing on Su and her relatives. I can see what you're getting at with the story compression. Reading the manga, the whole Kyoto holiday took up most of a book, while it was stuck into (two?) episodes of the anime (never mind the added on nonsense of the Godzilla attack going on in the background.) Sounds like the whole thing got rather confusing there for a while. I'll stick with the anime through the end of the first series though. I heard "Love Hina Again" isn't that great though.