Love Hina
Director
Yoshiaki Iwazaki
Production
TV Tokyo, XEBEC, Yomiuri Advertising
Country of origin
Japan
Format
Series
Running time
24 episodes
Year
2000
Love Hina volume 4: Love Hurts
By otaku_kei
3rd Jan 05  Welcome back to the Hinata Apartments home to a classic collection of misfits and oddballs that make up the cast for this fantastically amusing harem anime. When we left last time Keitaro and Naru were still in a will they/won’t they situation, and the other residents were also running through their own crazy adventures. Shinobu, Su, Motoko, Hiruka and Mitsune all return along with bit-part players like Kentaro, but the big cast addition in volume 4 is Professor Saito – Naru’s old tutor who she had a crush on. Can the path of geeky love never run smooth? So put in the disc and settle back for 2 hours of more of the same. That is the beauty of Love Hina; its episodes are already so familiar that even when watching for the first time you can tell exactly what is going to happen. That is also one of the reasons why this show has a love/hate relationship with the fans. Many people, myself included come to another volume of Love Hina expecting no more than the same as last time. This id basically the same attraction as most sitcoms, a carte blanche to do what you will for 30 minutes and all will be forgotten by next week. Some people cannot seem to stand Love Hina for that same reason – nothing really happens! I for one appreciate this lighthearted comedy as a welcome respite from plot or philosophically heavy anime. The problem I had with this volume was that it wasn’t ‘wacky’ enough! After the parodies of other anime in volume 3, these stories of financial strife and old flames returning did not interest me as much. But at least at least these episodes did develop the relationship between Naru and Keitaro, or at least all the strife and violence that the love affair represents. And for the fans that want to see more of the crazy parody episodes we get mystical martial arts pastiche of shows like Monkey! Well after the enjoyment of the last volume this volume was for me a bit of a letdown, purely because it does not play to the episodes that I personally enjoyed the most. But this show still remains one of the most consistently amusing regular releases hitting UK shelves at the moment. The characters remain fun to watch ad it is still nice to see Naru and Keitaro getting closer, before getting punched very, very far apart. So for those of you who have enjoyed the show so far it remains essential viewing, but I’m glad that these episodes were not earlier in the series or it may have switched off my interest to all the crazy goings on at the Hinata Apartments. 6/10
R2 DVD Notes
Features: English 2.0; Japanese 2.0; English Subtitles; various extras
Release information: 10th January 2005
Notes: Once again the animation and audio are great, no problems that I noticed with either sub or dub. The extras I haven't checked out yet so will update this when I have...
-- otaku_kei 3rd Jan 05
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