Love Hina-Volume 3: Secret Lives (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Anime	Biographies-Character Interviews-Crew-director Trailer-1:41 Trading Card-Madman Propaganda
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	86:26 (Case: 100)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Toshiaki Iwasaki
Studio Distributor	TV Tokyo Madman Entertainment	Starring	None Given
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$34.95	Music	Koichi Korenaga

    This is Volume 3 of Love Hina. I strongly recommend that you read my review of the first volume before reading this one. You might also want to read my review of the second volume.

    The four episodes on this disc are:

9. The Case of the Missing Hinata Apartment Money: A Mystery — a month's rent for all the apartments goes missing from Keitaro's room
10. Who is the Beautiful Woman Wandering in the Moonlight?: Transformation — an insight into Su's background, which turns out stranger than we expect
11. The Idol Shooting for Tokyo U is a Prep School Student: Sing — what happens to Naru after she wins a talent contest
12. Changing After the Wedding: Swordmaster — Motoko has a feminine side? She looks really good in a dress!

    And I thought the episode titles were getting longer in the previous volume? I'm wondering if I'll have room for them in the next review.

    This group of episodes is quite a mixture. We get a bit more insight into several of the girls: Kitsune, Su, and Motoko all reveal a bit more of their character. And Naru's jealousy seems to be growing...

    Motoko seems to have her sword with her at all times, even when she's asleep. She has seemed somewhat one-dimensional, pure swordmaster, but now we get a greater understanding of why she is the way she is. We'd heard mention of her sister before, but it isn't until Episode 12 that we get to hear the whole story.

    Keitaro gets beaten up by almost every one of the girls (including Hiruka) in Episode 9. It seems that one of the few unchanging elements in this show is that no matter who is at fault, it is Keitaro who gets thumped. It's a good thing he's extremely robust. The Hinata Apartments must have the largest maintenance budget in Japan — walls, windows, and doors get destroyed on a regular basis. Then again, it is a huge building for so few residents.

    Kentaro Sakata shows up again in a couple of episodes. I doubt I'm the only one to find his slimy behaviour annoying.

    Every so often they get self-referential, making cracks about a show or game that has a guy as manager to an all-girl dorm. Add to that the occasional light-hearted reference to other anime series (there's a reference to Card Captor Sakura on this disc). There are occasional inconsistencies in detail between episodes, but you have to see the episodes quickly one after another to notice them.

    Every episode of this series seems to be a good one. It's impossible to predict what kind of episode will be next, which is good. The one constant is the good humour and overall positive outlook.

Video

    This DVD transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced. That is the original aspect ratio.

    The image is as good as the second disc — quite sharp on close-ups, and only a touch of softness on the long shots. Film grain never seems a problem, and there's no low-level noise.

    Colour is excellent. Skin tones are rather more credible than many anime series. There are no colour-related artefacts, but there seems to be some slight ringing, leading to faint haloing on characters on occasion.

    There are no film artefacts.

    There is still noticeable aliasing and dot-crawl on the black lines around characters, but it is far less annoying than on Volume 1, except in Episode 12, where it does get somewhat irritating — possibly because there's a lot of action. There's a moment of moire on one design, but no MPEG artefacts. There are interlacing artefacts, but they're hard to see when watching the anime — you really need to single-step through scenes with serious motion in them to see the interlacing.

    There are two subtitle tracks. The first subtitles only signs. The second provides full subtitles of the dialogue, plus the signs. The subtitles seem well-timed, accurate, and easy to read, in the traditional yellow.

    The disc is single-sided and single-layered. All the episodes together take less than 90 minutes, so they fit comfortably onto the single layer.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided in English and Japanese, as is appropriate for anime. Both soundtracks are Dolby Digital 2.0, not surround encoded, which is a reasonable presentation of a television track. I listened to both soundtracks in full. This English soundtrack is recorded at the correct level — the two soundtracks sound fairly similar. Reports have it that the Region 1 Japanese soundtrack is surround-encoded — this one definitely isn't, but sounds good without it. There is some stereo separation, but it's well-done, and doesn't stand out ostentatiously.

    The English dialogue comes across clearly and is easy to understand. The Japanese dialogue sounds just as clear, and is probably just as easy to understand if you have that language in your repertoire. The big disadvantage of the English soundtrack is Kitsune's fake deep South US accent — without that, it would much more enjoyable. It is quite interesting to compare the English dub with the sub — most of the translations are very similar, but occasionally there are telling differences; I wonder why they thought it necessary to refer to "chi energy" rather than simply "chi"? How ignorant do they think we are? I become increasingly convinced that this is one series worth watching in Japanese...

    The score, from Koichi Korenaga, is really beautiful. The theme songs are from Ritsuko Okazaki, and contrast strongly with one another.

    The surrounds and subwoofer are not called upon by this soundtrack.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu is animated with music. It offers the episodes (by number), setup, and extras — simple and functional.

Character Photo Gallery

    This gives us a short bio for a character, plus seven images of the character. This disc only has the bio for Motoko Aoyama.

Interview — director Yoshiaki Iwasaki (5:17)

    Far too brief, this interview mixes footage from the show with a few words from the director. Several interesting subjects are hinted at, but there's nowhere near enough time to go into any depth.

Trailer (1:41)

    The same trailer as on the first two discs, but this time it has its own menu entry, rather than being lumped into the Madman Propaganda section.

Madman Propaganda

    A new selection of trailers this time, which is good:

• Robotech (2:03)
• Excel Saga (1:39)
• Ah! My Goddess (0:51)

    The Region 1 disc was released mid-2002. The Region 4 was released in November 2002. There are fewer differences between the discs this time, confined pretty much to the artwork. The Region 1 cover looks better than previous ones, but there's nothing wrong with the Region 4, and we get the better logo. The R1 cover blurb mentions Shinobu questing for her first kiss — they must have been watching different episodes...

    The Region 4 disc is missing:

• full cast and credit listing (on the cover)
• poster reverse to the cover slick

    The Region 1 disc is missing:

• Madman propaganda

    Once again, judging by reviews, the R1 is has a very good transfer. It may be slightly better than the R4, but I doubt the difference would be huge, because the R4 has quite a decent transfer too.

    More interesting episodes of a delightful series, this time probing a little deeper into some of the characters.

    The video quality is really good, but there is still a fair bit of aliasing.

    The audio quality is good.

    The extras are limited, but interesting — I just wish the interview with the director had run a decent length.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall