Its the dawn of a new semester at Tokyo University and Keitaro Urashima is finally ready to live his dream Not that long agoconvinced that hed bombed his entrance exams yet again he had run away to a foreign island nation like a coward leaving his friends from Hinata Inn... The brutish Naru the reserved swordswoman Motoko the mischievous Su the diminutive Shinobu the sly Kitsune and a flying turtle to chase after him with the news that hed actually got in After an adventure involving lost civilizations leaf bikinis and a tanned doppelganger of his 13 year old friend the gang finally makes it back in time to seal the deal on his attendance And then he breaks his leg on the first day. He has to go home because his parents dont believe him a couple minutes after which he comes back recovered and declares hes going to spend some time away with his mentor Seto and a mysterious figure starts to run around groping and impersonating everybody theres several love confessions and some incest and a magical annex and just throw this OVA in the trash and read the manga. Like the rest of the Love Hina franchise this OVA was produced by the infamous anime studio Xebec which at least one entire generation of otaku will remember as the last name they wanted to hear attached to an adaptation. Yes it is true that their output did start to improve by quite a bit toward their demise in 2019 but in the nineties and two thousands this studio was known as the producers of the ugliest stiffest cheapest looking anime on the market and while Love Hina Again may be one of their better looking titles from that specific time thats still not very high praise. Actually the overall visual quality of this OVA is really inconsistent... Sometimes its the stiff cheap fare youd always expect from Xebec exploiting key frames to their fullest while all onscreen movement appears limited in scope and stilted in its presentation. Other times the animation is fluid and graceful showcasing an almost anatomically faithful range of character movement. Other times it looks like a little too much money was poured into a scene resulting in movement thats way too fast and incoherent for the viewer to keep up with. Ive said in previous reviews that this series was produced by Xebec AND Production IG and I dont remember where I got this information... I cant find any other source to back this up and in its listing on AnimeNewsNetwork it only has Production IG listed as taking part in the localization and doing inbetween work for episode 2. Still Im tempted to believe this assertion because there are some parts of the OVA that look as good as if the IG powerhouse were behind them. Im also not fond of just how much of the OVAs run time we spend within the boundaries of Hinata Inn which is a pretty boring set piece overall especially when the manga travelled to a ton of interesting locations around this point in the story. Even the interior of the evil cursed annex was boring and claustrophobic. It might look slightly better than the previous series but theres nothing impressive about this OVAs visuals. The English dub hasnt lost a step since the original TV series by which I mean its still one of the worst Ive ever heard. Pretty much everyone who has enough screentime to leave an impression is either annoying miscast or both. In all fairness Derek Stephen Prince does sound like Keitaro logically would sound as a spineless whiny punching bag. Hes doing the role as written and I cant knock him for reading the assignment but that doesnt make his eternally cracking voice sound any less irritating. Dorothy Fahn isnt terrible as Naru but shes far too restrained to hit the emotional high and lows of her character. Mona Marshall is voicing Motoko with the same voice she uses when she plays little boys. Barbara Goodson is still playing Kitsune with a terrible southern accent Wendee Lee is still playing Su with a terrible Indian accent Bridget Hoffman makes thirteen year old Shinobu sound like a 1950s milf and as for the newcomer? Weve got Kanako Keitaros winkwink little sister played by Melissa Fahn. Yes she still sounds like Ed from Cowboy Bebop and yes its still distracting. Watch in Japanese. So recently I started doing that anime challenge thing where you answer a new question every day and the question I answered todayat time of writing not at time of publishing was Favorite mangaka? And somewhat ironically the very day I was planning to review a Ken Akamatsu adaptation I acknowledged Ken Akamatsu as my favorite manga author. I have read most of his work... Negima UQ Holder Love Hina AI Love You... And there are some very strongly auteurish qualities about him that have made his work nearly impossible to adapt faithfully over the years. If I had to describe Akamatsus main genre I would call it Epic Ecchi. He writes these long involved and intricately woven tales populated by tons of fully realized and fleshed out characters intense lore and meticulous and creative worldbuilding. His stories are full of twists and turns and exciting surprises with more than enough memorable moments to make it worth the journey for any reader who followed along with the story. He also uses a ton of fanservice. To be fair his content straddles the line between PG and PG13 as theyre full of underwear shots and nudity but the kind of mostly censored nudity where you see a constant string of bare bottoms but everything else is somehow obscured. From what I can tell he seems to use this cheeky fanservice and silly ecchi hijinks as a crutch to keep the readers invested in the story waiting for the next bit of exposed flesh while he draws them deeper into the story like a frog in boiling water earning their patience while laying the groundwork for the epic developments that hes planning out sometimes years in the future. This doesnt work in anime form for two reasons. First of all as relatively tame as his brand of fanservice is its still too explicit for most TV anime so there goes his crutch. Second his work is nowhere near mainstream enough to justify the lengthy runtimes he would need in order to do his work justice. Either they end early they have to force multiple story arcs together or both and none of these options ever work. Hell I consider the second Negima series to be the best Akamatsu anime in existence and that series only succeeded by scrapping the story of the source material and going off in its own direction that preserved the spirit of an Akamatsu narrative while telling a unique story. As for Love Hina it is famous for being one of the worst anime adaptations out there. Ive already reviewed the series itself and the Christmas movie so look up those reviews if youre curious but for Love Hina Again it is stuck with the unfortunate distinction of being the ending to the anime adaptation because after the series ended early and the Christmas and Island story arcs were blessed with thir own movies it was Agains job to squeeze several volumes worth of story into a three episode finale that to its very minimal credit is the first and only piece of Love Hina anime that has been able to present the same level of fanservice that the manga had. Now I should take this time to point out that Im not going to have a lot to say about the accuracy of this adaptation because I havent read the Love Hina manga for around ten to fifteen years and while I remember some highlights the events of the manga around this time are kind of vague to me. Besides I dont necessarily consider accuracy to be a mark of quality in the first place. What I do remember is that the portion of the manga thats being adapted here could accurately be described as the best of times and the worst of times. It was the best of times because Keitaro and Narus relationship had finally made some progress and we were finally getting a break from Keitaro as he takes off with Seta and like a Saiyan in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber he later comes back a much stronger character. It was the worst however because Keitaro and Narus relationship still had a few highly tedious hurdles to clear and one of them was the worst character Kanako. His little sister but Im gonna call her his Imouto because this shit is too fucking common now. Has somebody ever written a book about animes obsession with the imouto trope? The one where an incestobsessed little sister pops into a story to stalk her brother who it turns out shes gasp not really related to? Why is this exact situation so damn ubiquitous in the medium? Is it the taboo of it thats so exciting and the stepsibling reveal is just to smooth out any moral hangups? Is it like an offshoot of pedophilia or something? I mean its always an older brother and a younger sister and the few times that its the reverse its only played for laughs. I know this whole situation is fictional and that I shouldnt take it too seriously but because I am who I am heres why this trope is unrealistic: When two children grow up together in close proximity especially during their formative years they develop a familial bond that sexually and romantically desensitizes them to each other. So no your little sister isnt going to suddenly want to sleep with you just because she found out youre adopted. Its actually more likely for a blood related sibling you were raised apart from to find you attractive later in life because that bond was never formed and we intrinsically trust those similar to us. Im not the first anime reviewer to bring up the phenomena of Genetic Sexual Attraction and the Westermark Effect but once you learn about them you cant help bringing them into the conversation about incest in anime. Its also worth pointing out that for someone to tie their entire romantic future to a promise they made when they were a drooling toddler is the most pathetic red flag since nice guys wearing fedoras I dont know how the manga made it work so well. I also dont like thinking about how Keitaros obsession with going to college as his destination in life despite having no clear career path or major in mind and nobody bringing up the issue of payment reminds me of how shameless American media is about advertising expensive colleges to impressionable youths. Maybe its just easier to notice issues like that when the story is just ramming event after event into each other so frantically and incoherently that you cant form a connection to anything thats happening on screen. Ill reiterate that Im not a stickler for accuracy but the manga was paced well enough that no matter how ridiculous the story beats got they all had time to sink in. No matter how horribly a character acted there was some nuance to them and enough time to get into their heads and sympathize with them a little bit. This is just playbyplay storytelling that has no heart to speak of. On top of all that theres just nothing to latch onto here. Most of the cast is pretty useless in this OVA and while the narrative does TRY and give them stuff to do... Getting harrassed by Kanako or having to fight Naru at the annex... Its fair to say that this story didnt actually need anybody in it other than Keitaro Naru and Kanako. Whats even worse is that in regard to the story surrounding those three characters all we really have is an annoying imouto who wants to force her brother into a relationship based on a vague promise he made like a decade or more ago into a relationship against his willalthough he DOES start thinking impure thoughts about her at one point and the entire reason shes doing that is to drag out the willtheywontthey aspect of Keitaro and Narus relationship even farther but since theres no nuance to either character in the anime nobody WANTS them to get together in the first place which makes this entire plot point tedious. Can a talking warthog and a human punching bag overcome the power of incest to live happily ever after? Who fucking cares? Hell didnt the Christmas movie already cover Keitaros broken leg? Like I said before I dont remember a lot of the manga but I remember enough to acknowledge that this final stretch of the story... Everything presented in this OVA essentially... Was awesome not just because I genuinely liked both Keitaro and Naru which I did but because the closer they got and the more they defied the forces that felt like they were trying to keep them apart the more epic it felt like they were battling the forces of fate itself and Im pretty sure I remember the relationship the annex had to all of this being up for interpretation as it didnt have any obvious magical powers like it kind of lazilly does here. Honestly the way the OVA incorporates the annex into its climax should be right up my alley in terms of creativity but it still just bored me. Honestly this whole jumbled mess of deconstructed and rearranged subplots did nothing but bore me and I know the franchise well enough to follow it. Imagine watching this crap blind because you just happened to be curious about the franchise as a whole. There are people out there who dip their toes into a series by watching a sequel movie/OVA first and its not always a terrible idea but if you try it with Love Hina Again then Lord protect your soul. Love Hina Again was available from Bandai but is now out of print along with the rest of the anime. The original manga by Ken Akamatsu is available from Tokyopop. Im honestly kind of surprised that Love Hina hasnt received a reboot as popular as the manga still is to this day. I even know exactly who should adapt it the same people who did Monogatari and every installment of Negima from the second series and onward It should be produced by Shaft and directed by Akiyuki Shinbou because even though Im not a fan of his work in general he would still be the perfect director to breathe some life into it and every single one of his aesthetic quirks would feel right at home with the material. But alas we have the anime we have and unfortunately that anime has the conclusion that it has. Whether I look at it on its own merits or as an adaptation of one of my favorite manga titles I cant see it as anything other than an incoherent trainwreck whose only bright spots are a few well animated segments and a smattering of fanservice thats finally free of TV restrictions. If thats all you got thats not a lot. Roses are Red Violets are Blue. Out of 10 I give Love Hina Again a 2. Heppy Valentines Day.