Love Hina Christmas Special (of 1)

By: Dani Moure
Review Date: Monday, December 05, 2005
Release Date: Monday, November 07, 2005



What They Say
If you make a wish on Christmas Eve will it come true?

It's Christmas, and at the Hinata Apartments, that means gifts, parties and inevitably utter chaos!

While sneaking around searching for gifts, Kaolla and Sara discover a letter in Naru's room. It's none of their business, so of course they read it: "I Always Loved..." What does this mean? Who does Naru love? Everyone has their suspicions, but to find out, they plan to follow her! Meanwhile, Keitaro's following Naru as well. What's going on?

Car chases! Subway chases! Bicycle chases! Keitaro and Musumi in a Love Hotel! The creator of Love Hina! It's five minutes to midnight...will the truth be revealed?

The Review!
After the TV series ended, the Love Hina franchise soon hit back with the first of the two specials, this one for everyone’s favourite festive period.

Audio:
Having heard the series in its entirety in Japanese, I opted for the English dub again for this special, and my opinion remains the same. The performances were a little better, but still sounded off in places and again I can only put this down to the direction because there are some great actors in the cast. The volume level is also low; far more so than the Japanese track, and sounds a little bit tinny at times. It's disappointing as this show's dub could've been a real riot if it'd been handled better.

I did spot-check the Japanese track, and the performances continue to be enjoyable. It sounds very good (at a decent volume level), and I noticed no dropouts or distortions during regular playback.


Video:
I didn’t notice any compression problems with this disc, and really it looked like a very good transfer. Colours come out well, nice and vibrant, and there’s no noticeable aliasing. Once again though since we get a credit roll in kanji, there are no translated credits anywhere on the disc itself.

Subtitles are in a nice yellow font, and are a good, clear size. I noticed no spelling or grammatical errors that stood out throughout the episodes.

Packaging:
No packaging was included as this was a check disc.

Menu:
The menus have a similar style to previous releases, but with a Christmas theme. The logo for the special is at the bottom of the main menu screen with selections, while images from the show appear cloudy in the background which is covered with Christmas trees. The theme for the special plays over this menu. Sub-menus are all static, and access times are nice and fast.

Continuing in the same style as the earlier volumes, there's a brief animated logo that appears before it goes into the main menu, which has a montage of clips of each of the characters in the show playing inside a frame. The show's logo and menu selections appear at the bottom of the screen, while the opening theme plays over the menu. The setup and extras menus are both static with no music playing, but look nice and fit with the menu's theme. Access times are fast, and while it won't blow you away, the menus do fit the tone of the show nicely.

Extras:
This disc has yet another stills gallery, which were very common on the TV series releases, as well as the textless ending for the special. The main extra here is the Episode 25 special, which is covered at the end of the content review.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The Love Hina Christmas Special is my favourite part of the anime series, followed by the Love Hina Again OVA. The reason is simple: it has a good story that’s well told, and, a first for the anime series, some sort of decision. Yes, that’s right, a decision! Shocking though it may be, it happens, and it’s really sweet and works really well against the Christmas backdrop.

Incidentally, despite being released after the Spring Special over here (that was released, funnily enough, this past Spring), the Christmas Special actually comes before it chronologically and in terms of original airing.

The story of the Christmas Special begins on December 21, with Shinobu, Su and one of their friends discussing a rumour about Christmas eve. Apparently, this year if you confess your love to someone, a wish of yours will come true. Meanwhile, Keitaro, Naru and Mutsumi study for an upcoming exam. Both girls are studying heavily, and when Naru goes out and sees Keitaro dressed as Santa, she is surprised that he’s taking the time out of studying for it and starts giving him the cold shoulder. Of course, he’s actually working because he wants to buy Naru a jacket she saw that he could never have afforded for Christmas, but it’s just another one of their misunderstandings.

With Naru being frosty towards Keitaro, Su and Sara find a letter they think Naru wrote for Keitaro, that mentions she’s always liked something, and they jump to conclusions thinking she’s planning to confess to Keitaro on Christmas Eve. They go and tell the others, and later Shinobu lets it slip to Keitaro. Naturally, he’s ecstatic at the news but decides he should confess before her as he’s the man.

So sure enough, he does! Only when he says “Naru, I love you!”, she turns and runs off (as if he should really be surprised). The next day, at the exam, when Naru comes in Keitaro embarrasses her by jumping up in front of everyone and wishing her luck. Afterwards, he tries to catch up with her and ends up following her to a hotel where he finds her meeting with Seta and giving him a gift! Once again, this leads to a terrible misunderstanding, but can the pair actually work things out before Christmas Eve comes to an end?

Well, you probably know the answer to that from the start of the review, but it really is quite refreshing to see the Love Hina anime have a story that actually goes places. Sure, there were a few key moments throughout the TV series, but you really had to sift through a lot of fluff (some of which was quite good though) to get to it. Nevertheless, this time we get not one but two, count ‘em, confessions. Finally people are actually admitting their feelings! And although things quickly go back to normal in the last couple of minutes, as you’d expect, it’s still nice to finally get something.

Outside of the main events, the story is actually quite predictable and pretty typical for Love Hina (or mostly any story with a love multi-angle like this). But still, it’s quite well executed as well, and because it’s happening in a contained, fairly short OVA, where things move a lot faster in general, it really doesn’t great that much at all.

Every character gets a little bit to do as well, although Naru and Keitaro are the key focus, and Haruka and Seta are particularly short-changed. But you can’t have it all and there are some really good other character moments in the story as well, such as Shinobu’s reaction to initially thinking Naru was planning to confess to the really sweet way she made sure Keitaro heard all of the letter later on. I also really liked Motoko’s scene with Naru on the train. Not much was said, but it was nice. And having everyone band together to help the pair out was quite nice too and really fit with the Christmas spirit.

So granted, it’s not a masterpiece but it’s a nice story that keeps everyone involved and moves things forward in the anime storyline (which is a very good thing). The production values seemed a little higher as well, with things looking a bit more colourful, vibrant and generally more animated. All in all I think the anime creative team did a good job with this OVA.

Also on the disc, in the extras section, is a self-contained TV series episode (number 25), which was originally only released on home video in Japan as well. This story is often referred to as the Motoko special, and with good reason, because it focuses around her. It starts with her sister coming to town, a person she’s always been a little bit intimidated by. So as not to be shown up because she’s not been training as much, she ends up lying to her sister that she and Keitaro are going to get married. The usual hijinks ensue, and people start getting possessed by spirits and things, but it’s all a good laugh and is a fun little episode that does serve its purpose of giving Motoko fans something extra to savour.

In Summary:
While it’s not rocket science and never will be, the Love Hina Christmas Special is my favourite part of the anime series, because it takes a very simple story and plays it out really well, and though it is drawn out and ripe with misunderstandings, they work a lot better in the short space of time the OVA has to develop than they did in the TV series. It also ties nicely in with the whole Christmas theme. For fans of the series, it’s a no-brainer, and for everyone else I’d still recommend this disc. You could pretty much get a good idea of the TV series just by buying the first and last discs of the show, but this would still get a recommendation from me.

Features
Japanese Language (2.0),English Language (2.0),English Subtitles,Episode 25,Textless Ending,Photo gallery

Review Equipment
Philips 28" Pure Flat Widescreen TV, Pioneer DV-464 code free DVD player, JVC gold-plated RGB SCART cable, standard stereo sound.