Originally aired on December 25, 2000, the special takes place after the events of the tv series. It’s Christmas time, and for three familiar individuals at the Hinata Apartments, it’s study time. Still working on their entrance tests for Tokyo U, there’s a happy holiday feeling in the place, but Keitaro, Naru, and Mutsumi are in full-on work mode. It’s eventually discovered by Koalla & Sara that Naru has bought a Christmas present for someone very special. Is it Keitaro, or is it some other man that the rest of the girls don’t know about? It’s from this question that propels the characters into a funny, wild, and heartwarming chase that closes up the Love Hina Story.
The first positive of the special is the story. If you’re a Love Hina fan, you’ll appreciate the familiar setting & characters, not to mention the fact of what’s going on in front of the viewer, and what’s going on in the background. It’s really great to watch a special from a familiar universe, and not have to worry about any massive changes.
The second positive to the special is that the original cast of voice actors have returned. Like the story, it’s great to have something familiar come back and not be changed so drastically. There’s still a great amount of fun & effort put into the voices of the characters, despite the flaws of two characters, but I’ll get to than in a bit.
The 3rd positive of the special is the increased emotions. Despite being a 45-minute special, there’s more at stake in this than in some of the show’s episodes. You really feel for Keitaro & Naru, and you really want them to truly confess their love for each other. You even manage to feel for the other characters more so than normal, especially Shinobu, but I’ll leave that up to you as to why.
The special’s 4th & final positive is the visuals. Usually I would say something about the visuals, but a reviewer over on Animetric (Rowena Lim Lei) captures this aspect perfectly:
“Love Hina Christmas Special sports the clean and cute style of the TV series in terms of visuals, but I somehow got the impression that the overall effect was softer compared to all the other Love Hina episodes I've seen.”
Sadly, there also a couple things that put this special in a bad light. Some are minor, but the rest have some more weight to them. Chief among them is the special’s predictability. Now what I mean is that you know that there’s going to be a problem, everybody gets involved somehow, all kinds of wackiness ensues, and in the end, everything gets fixed, and the viewer is treated to a bit of fanservice at the end. The opponents of Love Hina will almost always use these points when arguing with someone who enjoys the show, and they’re sometimes right in these arguments. As for me, I take both sides in the Love Hina argument.
Secondly, I’m not necessarily sure that this should have be a special. That’s not to say that things work within the allotted timeframe, because things do work. It’s just that perhaps it should have been spread out over the course of two episodes: the events leading up to Naru giving away the present, and Naru giving the present, would be episode 1, and the effects of giving the gift would make up episode 2. This isn’t quite as major as the predictability, but it is something that fans & haters might talk about.
For the third negative, let’s talk about the voices for Koalla & Kitsune. While I didn’t talk about this in my review of the show last year, it’s clear that these two characters have voices that might be grating on the mind for some. Koalla is the big culprit in this regard, as her voice is very high-pitched, even when she’s normally talking, which is strange because she’s not a normal character. I don’t complain about Kitsune as much, as the territory in Japan that she comes from (Kansai, I believe) has an accent like hers. My only complaint is that her accept is perhaps a little stereotypical, and sounds more Southern United Stated than Kansai.
Finally, this special is somewhat difficult to find. Despite Funimation re-releasing the Love Hina series back in 2009, nobody (including Funimation) did a re-release of the Christmas special, as well as the Spring special and the 3-episode OVA (I’ll get to these at a later date). I was able to find my copy on Amazon (used, by the way). There aren’t many new copies available to buy, but luckily there are a fair amount of used copies, and the pricing on both aren’t that terrible either (New copies start at around 29 dollars, while used copies start at 4-something dollars).
The Love Hina Christmas Special gets a 7 to 8 out of 10.
See you towards the end of the week, when our winter will get a little more nuclear. Until then, stay Otaku!
*
Oh, I forgot to mention this back in the original Love Hina review, but the original manga creator Ken Akamatsu makes some cameos in some of the episodes. He also manages to get at least one cameo in the special as well, add more to the special’s humor.
**
I was originally gonna post this on Wednesday, but I accidentally forgot, and instead decided to post this up today, along with the review that was meant for today. My bad!
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