Site Index | Blog What's New? Review List Stuff Review Outline Why Hate Anime? Wheat RoD: The TV Haibane Renmei Teen Titans Chaff Akira Legend of the Overfiend Black Heaven One of the problems I have with anime is the availability issue. It isn't like I can just pop down to Hollywood Video and rent the newest episodes of whatever the hot show is at the moment, even if I wanted to. I guess I should count myself as lucky that there are several places in driving distance that have stacks and stacks of the stuff for sale (including the Animenation warehouse over in Tampa), but "sale" isn't really what I'm after here. I generally buy DVDs of movies I have already seen and know I enjoy, not "well the cover art is pretty so I might like it". "Hon, you got the Ritalin for the kids' stockings right?" "Yes dear." But, it's Christmas. Christmas means many things to many people, but to me it generally means fat stacks of gift cards. Target, Barnes & Noble, Olive Garden, Borders, AMC Theaters, Best Buy... wait, Best Buy? They have anime there, don't they? This is the dilemma I found myself in tonight, standing in Best Buy, already holding $50 worth of movies I know I'll dig. Technically, this gift card isn't my money; if I spend the remainder of it on this DVD here, and hate it, it's just the same as getting a bad gift. And since I've traditionally never been one to return or exchange gifts (my unwanted stuff just lays around taking up space until I eventually give or throw it away), it's really not a wasteful purchase. And in the event that I do enjoy the movie, it'll be no different than having received a good (and pleasantly surprising) gift - something I didn't even know I wanted until I had it. And so, I justified my purchase of the Love Hina Christmas Movie ($29.99 plus tax). "After all," I told myself. "It'll be seasonal. A Christmas anime getting reviewed at Christmastime." And, to Love Hina's credit, the box art is very pretty: a gaggle of cute girls dressed in Santa gear winking at you amidst a snowy backdrop on semi-transparent ice blue plastic packaging. So was it a Charlie Brown Christmas miracle? Or a National Lampoon Christmas disaster? Ho, ho, ho... Characters: Not having seen any of the Love Hina series, it took me about thirty seconds to realize exactly what kind of cast this was. Love Hina is one of your "nervous adorable man-nerd surrounded by hot babes who want to jump his bones" deals. This in and of itself isn't a bad thing. The male spotlight in shows like this tends to be pretty dull (maybe so it's easier for the viewer to imagine himself in the hero's place...? Nah, couldn't be!), but the girls are usually wildly overblown in personality. For example, there's usually "crazy girl who hits everything", "extremely shy soft-spoken girl who blushes a lot", "butch girl who everyone thinks is a man"... and so on and so forth until every stereotype is accounted for. In this department, I found Love Hina coming up short. To be fair, this could be a side effect of the Christmas special focusing mainly on two characters and letting everyone else fall into the background. Or it could be that the majority of the cast is lifeless to begin with. March, march, march! You're in Santa's army now, soldier! Either way, they don't jump out at me in the Christmas Movie. The main character is Keitaro, a kid trying to get into Tokyo University who is unlucky enough to live with a dozen beautiful women. Keitaro's main squeeze (in his head, anyway) is Naru, an industrious (but violent) young woman whose favorite activity seems to be ignoring Keitaro at every available opportunity. Most of the story revolves around Keitaro and Naru (who are so head-over-heels into each other it's more pathetic than an episode of Friends) popping from one endearing misunderstanding to the next, silently ignoring the existence of the half dozen other characters desperately jockeying for attention. So unless you're willing to invest in the series, there's really no point getting attached to well-meaning but lazy hedonistic Kitsune, or the soft-spoken and timid Shinobu, or the no-nonsense lonewolf Motoko (who at least gets one interesting scene). These characters are undoubtedly more interesting than the ones hogging the spotlight, and never seem to get their due. Story: Disappointingly, Love Hina Christmas Movie isn't really a Christmas story. Well, it is, in the sense that it takes place around Christmas, and one of the minor plot points involves giving gifts. It's really about Keitaro and Naru realizing their feelings for each other and attempting to express them. Not helping matters is an urban legend floating around which states anyone who professes their love for another on Christmas Eve will get a wish granted. At it's heart, Love Hina is a nice heartwarming story about two kids trying to sort out some complicated emotions, and their bungling friends egging them on. I'm a sucker for a good mushy love story, so I liked this aspect of things. What really ruined it (and kept it from scoring a full four hamhams) was the ending, which I'll address in spoiler text below. Things start to get interesting about the time a pair of hyperactive junior high kids are rooting through people's things looking for Christmas presents. They stumble upon a letter of Naru's, presumably addressed to Keitaro, talking about "love". In fact, it's the only word they bother looking at on the page, completely disregarding simple things like "context clues" and, well, "not rooting through people's things looking for Christmas presents." Word of this eventually gets around to Keitaro who, like the good dimwit he is, goes completely ballistic and * falls off a roof *. While * laying in recovery * Keitaro blurts out to Naru how much he loves her. She responds by ignoring him and running to Tokyo. This starts a domino effect in which everybody follows everybody else to Tokyo, resulting in a series of misunderstandings (such as how the actual contents of Naru's letter differ from their perceived contents), missed trains, lost presents, and a race against the clock as Naru tries to * find Keitaro amidst the hustle and bustle of Tokyo on Christmas Eve and gush all over him *. Naru helps a weather girl get promoted. The climax finally takes place as * Naru finds a news reporter and broadcasts her huge admission of love all over town * This leads to the heartwarming (albeit predictable and well-expected) scene in which the two characters realize their feelings for each other, finally get together and give their friends a break. Except they don't. See, had the movie ended right there in Tokyo, it would have been good. But it doesn't. It goes on to New Year's Day, where Naru * backpedals her admission, says she and Keitaro are "just friends", and then punches him in the face *. Anticlimactic? You bet! Of course, if you stop the movie before the end scene, you can just keep on believing everything turned out hunky-dory. Therefore I only faulted Love Hina's plot half-a-ham. Animation: Love Hina is obviously based on the one selling point of having lots and lots of cute female characters walking around looking beautiful, wearing tight sweaters, taking baths, and other such things that cute female characters are known to do. In this regard the animation is quite good. And though one can be certain the animators were told to pay less attention to Keitaro than his all-female co-stars, he too is still fairly distinctive in ways other than having the only deep voice in the cast. However, I kept feeling this nagging boredom as I watched the movie. The visuals, while pretty and well-animated, just didn't strike me as very interesting. It's not really a matter of "good but not great", but more of "great but not good", if that makes any sense. It's as though the animators were going to use this as their rough draft for a more interesting movie, but never got around to completing it. Still shots of Love Hina, such as the DVD box art (which, have I mentioned, is very pretty?) and the fold-out poster that comes with the movie, are cheery and bright and fairly pleasant to look at. Once things are set into motion, everything somehow starts to look plain. Can you spot at least two differences between these pictures? One curiousity I noted, which I'm sure is just a trick of the animation, is the case of the Incredible Growing Breasts. This happens two or three times in the movie, whenever the plot calls for one of the girls' boobs to be in Keitaro's direct line of sight. There's one scene, for example, where Keitaro is laying down and Naru leans over to talk to him. She's wearing a fashionable sweater and has normal human-sized bosoms until she bends down, at which point these two enormous heaving bulbous extremities explode forth, swinging back and forth like weighted pendulums. Once she stands up again, the strange alien teats devolve back to their previous selves, retreating into Naru's flesh like roaches fleeing from light. I can't say I'm an expert on breasts, not having any of my own, but I should think this particular phenominon is something Naru might want to have looked into by a doctor. It sounds like that sort of thing can cause serious problems. Culture Shock: Love Hina is set in Japan, but the characters and plot and setting are so streamlined and Americanized that it's hard to notice. All the Santa hats and Christmas trees and strung lights help lull any nearby English-speaking schlubs into a false sense of security. It's not so much the content of Love Hina that's bad, but rather the presentation. First and foremost, there are parts in the movie that are not translated. Even on the English language track, any lyrical music (even music that is only playing softly in the background behind the onscreen conversation) is fully Japanese and floods the screen with subtitles. Just in case the viewer is in danger of missing them, these subtitles are enormous and lime green. These subtitles are impossible to get rid of - you cannot turn them off without switching to the Japanese language track. Even if you do that, the lyrics that aren't the focus of the scene are too hard to hear to understand, so even if you do know Japanese you won't be able to discern what they're saying. I really, really have to make plain my concerns with Love Hina's voice acting. Normally I enjoy watching dubbed anime. It's just a personal preference; I don't mind subtitled anime, but I'd rather listen to the dialogue than read it if possible. The English voices in Love Hina, however, are so grating (especially Kitsune, who sounds like an English professor doing a poor imitation of a hillbilly), so overacted (the manner in which Keitaro screams "Naru I love you!" would have worked equally well for "Look out Naru you're being attacked by killer bees!"), and so flat-out annoying that eventually they make you regret having been born with ears. Well, no problem. I switched over to the Japanese language track. This is when you make sure all your internal organs are still in tact. However, this wasn't much better. Where the English actors were way too flamboyant and explosive for their lines, the Japanese ones all sounded jaded and bored. This is especially noticable when we hear Keitaro's inner monologue; even when talking to himself, Keitaro tries to sound as uninterested as possible. I switched back and forth between the two tracks, trying to determine which was the lesser of two evils, several times before I realized that neither one was any good. Those in the "sub" camp prefer the Japanese voices and watch those. Those in the "dub" camp prefer the English voices and watch those instead. Sane non-extremists like me listen to bits of both tracks then listen to the one they like better. But what do we do with a movie like Love Hina where both tracks are like sandpaper on a chalkboard? I suppose we're supposed to just mute it and read lips. I look at the Love Hina Christmas Movie and see lots of wasted potential. There's really a good little anime in here, somewhere. Something tells me that the writers were too afraid of changing their series dynamic to make things too interesting * by allowing Keitaro and Naru to get together once and for all *. I guess if watching twenty some-odd episodes of Ross and Rachel Keitaro and Naru determinedly not hook up cranks your tractor, the movie's more-of-the-same motif might be right up your alley. From where I'm sitting though, it's just a Christmas movie with no Grinch, no angels, no Daisy pump action rifles, and no fantastic miracles. The movie could have been called "Love Hina Linedance Showdown" or "Love Hina Halftime Special" and only needed five minutes of retooling. Links Official Love Hina Site Animenation Listing Hinastar.com So, when all is said and done, was Love Hina worth $29.99 (plus tax)? I mean after all, there was half a butt in that one scene. And, honest and for true, Naru does look deliciously cute on the box. I suppose, in one odd way or another, it was worth spending $30 on this movie for the knowledge that the rest of the series isn't anything I'd be interested in. Better than spending $70 on a season-in-a-box anyway. (If I ever need re-affirmation of that fact, there's a bonus episode from the TV series on here that I haven't watched yet.) And, of course, I got a review out of it. It'll at least look nice over there with that flannel shirt that doesn't fit right, that book of Jewel poetry, my Jeff Foxworthy CD, Xenogears, and all the other stuff I've accumulated but don't want and ain't motivated enough to get rid of. Naru's sexy wink will be a constant reminder of my first - and hopefully last - experiment on blindly making anime purchases. Overall Rating:

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