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 5: Summer By The Sea
By otaku_kei
14th Feb 05  Once again we return to the Hinata Apartments to catch up with our favourite harem comedy characters - Keitaro, Naru, Motoko and all the others. By now I'm sure everyone is familiar with the set-up of this series: college wannabe Keitaro is booted out of home and goes to stay with his grandmother, who promptly leaves him as manager of her apartment building - an all-girl dormitory! Of course Keitaro has a long hidden secret to one day meet up with a girl from his childhood and be together at Tokyo University with her. Could one of the girls at the Hinata be the one he made that promise to long ago? Now this is almost it as far as Love Hina goes, with only one more volume to go after this surely we must now start to get a bit more pace to the romantic developments between Keitaro and Naru. And we certainly do get that relationship, if not moving forward exactly at the very least in a vaguely diagonal direction. For the last several volumes there has been very little movement in the dynamic of this relationship, but since Seita's appearance in the last volume we have seen several advancements in the tentative courtship between the two central characters as they dance around the main issue - will they get together or won't they? 4 episodes on this disc and finally we seem to have come to a happy balance in the show between the wacky situational comedy, the slapstick and then the serious moments for character development. Once again we have a couple of episodes that focus on some of the girls from the apartment, first up a ghost story that focus' on Motoko as she tries to exorcise an evil spirit but the rest of the Hinata gang get in the way. Or another episode that features Su in a central role as her 'Big Brother' comes to Japan to see how she is getting along. Then we also get a great festival episode that brings out Naru's jealous side as Keitaro dotes upon Shinobu. And rounding off this disc is an episode with a living doll, a plaything from Keitaro's childhood that helps to demonstrate exactly why Keitaro is so committed to fulfilling his promises from when he was a child. We can clearly see in these episodes an effort by the creative staff to wrap up some of the minor plot threads, prior to the culmination of the main story of who exactly Keitaro will end up choosing to be with. All in all this has been one of the best volumes of Love Hina released so far with a great mix of comedy and romance. A volume that helps to revitalise a series that has at times been mired in a stagnant plotline that appeared incapable of moving forward. I'm glad that this volume came out as it has helped to renew my interest in a series that has had its ups and downs but is possibly the best comedy on the UK anime scene to date. Strange to think that the next time I'll be writing about Love Hina it will all be over, but its been an enjoyable show whilst it lasted and this volume proves that.
R2 DVD Notes
Features: English 2.0; Japanese 2.0; English Subtitles; Character Photo Gallery; MVM Trailers
Release information: 7th February 2005 - OUT NOW
Notes: Another quality release from MVM where the picture and sound quality is great, with no noticable problems with subtitles or mistimed audio tracks.
But once again the extras are nothing to write home about, although it is nice to see MVM changing a few of the trilers for some of the bigger releases coming our way in 2005.
The menus are fine, and the main menu of all the Love Hina titles so far has had the opening theme tune playing on loop. I could just sit there for hours listening to that ridiculously catchy j-pop tune.
-- otaku_kei 14th Feb 05
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