Love Hina-Spring Special (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Anime	Main Menu Audio & Animation DVD Credits Credits-Spring Special textless ending (1:30) Credits-TV Series textless opening (1:30) Credits-TV Series textless ending (1:02) Credits-Episode 24 textless ending (1:16) Gallery-Stills (20) Trailer-Madman Propaganda (6)
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	45:56
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Yoshiaki Iwasaki
Studio Distributor	Madman Entertainment	Starring	Yűji Ueda Yui Horie Masayo Kurata Yu Asakawa Reiko Takagi Junko Noda Megumi Hayashibara Satsuki Yukino Yumiko Kobayashi Yasunori Matsumoto Hiroyuki Yoshino Michio Miyashita Yukie Maeda
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$34.95	Music	Koichi Korenaga

    Move along there. Nothing to see here. Keep moving.

    Nothing to see but a horrible train wreck of a attempt at an OVA. This is almost an insult to the audience who have stuck with the Love Hina series all along. The drawing of Naru is dreadful — they got the the hair about right, but that's about all (when did she get breast implants?). Some of the voices are quite wrong (Motoko, for example). And then there's the plot — if you can call it that. A search for an ancient turtle civilisation? A young girl doing a version of Tarzan? A trackless desert in the middle of a tropical island? Tropical leaves that do a good imitation of spandex? It's all very silly. And that's before we get to the horrible song about three quarters of the way through.

    There's a cameo of Akamatsu-san, the original artist who drew the Love Hina manga. It's not helpful that he looks almost exactly like Keitaro.

    The only reason you might want a copy of this disc is if you are desperate to have a complete set of Love Hina DVDs, like, err, me.

Video

    This DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and is not 16x9 enhanced. That's the expected aspect ratio, given that this was a TV special.

    The picture is fairly sharp (there's just a hint of softness) and clear. There's no film grain, and no low-level noise.

    Colour is adequately deep and rich, and is rendered well. There are no colour-related artefacts, such as colour bleed.

    There are no notable film artefacts.

    There's aliasing, although it's really noticeable only on pans, and it doesn't interfere with enjoying the show. There is no significant moiré, and no shimmer. There are no MPEG artefacts.

    There are the customary two sets of subtitles in English, the first subtitling only signs and handwriting, the second being full subtitles. They are easy to read, and seem well-timed.

    The disc is single sided and single layered, which is perfectly reasonable given the amount of content on the DVD.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are the expected two soundtracks, in English and Japanese. Both are Dolby Digital 2.0, not surround-encoded, at 224kbps. There isn't a whole lot of stereo sound, but there's enough to assure us that it is stereo, rather than mono. I listened to both soundtracks in full.

    The English dialogue is clear and easy to understand. The Japanese dialogue sounds clear enough. There are more than a few occasions where the sound doesn't match the animated mouths, but I'm confident that these are sloppy dubbing, rather than any error in the transfer. The English dub is frequently distracting, because some of the voice actresses are different from the TV series, and jarringly so (Motoko stands out the most, but others too — even Naru sounds wrong on occasion).

    The music is a real disappointment, in that the only other songs I can remember in the soundtrack (the opening and closing themes, and that pleasant song they sang in the yukata episode) have all been good stuff. The song in the middle of this is bad enough in Japanese, but the English adaptation? Ergh!

    The surrounds and subwoofer are not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu is animated, with music. It's very simple and easy to use.

DVD Credits

    A single page, themed to this show, listing the Madman people associated with the disc.

Spring Special Textless Ending (1:30)

    This is the ending to the special, in Japanese, with no translation.

TV Series Textless Opening (1:30)

    Included to bulk up the list of extras, one suspects...

TV Series Textless Ending (1:02)

    Included to bulk up the list of extras, one suspects...

Episode 24 Textless Ending (1:16)

    The different ending for the last episode of the TV series.

Gallery: Stills

    Twenty pages of stills of scenes from the special.

Madman Propaganda

    Six trailers (the same ones as the Christmas Special, in a different order), all individually selectable:

• Angelic Layer (1:30)
• King of Bandit Jing (1:30)
• Last Exile (1:33)
• Excel Saga (1:39)
• Jubei-chan the Ninja Girl (1:05)
• .hack//SIGN (1:39)

    This came out on DVD in Region 1 at that start of Spring of 2003 (March). We get it almost a year later. The Region 1 and Region 4 discs have the same content, but different menus. The R1 disc has a cover featuring the US Love Hina logo (I prefer ours, which is much closer to the Japanese one), and different cover art — our cover art is odd, because Naru doesn't wear that top with that bottom at any point. I think the character looking due left on the cover is meant to be Kitsune, but it looks so very unlike her. There's an insert in the Region 1 which has a full set of credits on one side, and a mini-poster of Naru and Nyamo in their leafy bikinis.

    The Region 1 transfer is almost identical to the Region 4 — but the R1 is slightly clearer and sharper, although it shows a bit more aliasing. What it comes down to is that we have two very good transfers of a bad piece of work.

    All up, I'm calling this one a draw — buy whichever suits you. But don't say I didn't warn you!

    A big disappointment to Love Hina fans, this disc is really only for the obsessive collector. The transfer, however, is very good indeed.

    The video quality is very good.

    The audio quality is very good.

    The extras are fairly meagre — shame they couldn't scare up another bonus episode to put on this disc.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall