Yozakura Quartet – Hana no Uta – 02

For those of you who don’t know: Yozakura Quartet is being directed by Ryo-Chimo. His previous works include the chief animation direction of Birdy the Mighty, the animation of some of the best-looking parts of Noein. This guy is an awesome animator, and with Hoshi no Umi, he showed that he can translate this to direction really well as well. So yeah, I was delighted to see a full series being announced on it.

Episode two was the kind of episode that would not have been possible in the OVA: just too little happened in it and it was mostly meant to flesh out the characters, something they very badly needed midst all that action. And this episode did a very fine job of making the various slice of life interesting, by paying attention to the fine details. Things like a character eating ramen may not seem like much, but they bring said character alive. That’s what this entire episode did: there were so many characters involved, the entire town felt alive and bursting. I suspect that this is a trick that Ryo-Chimo picked up from working with Birdy the Mighty Decode, which also had that.

But yeah, I didn’t notice this in the first episode because of all the awesome action and all, but really: were the groping twins really necessary? The fanservice in episode 1 was fine because it just flowed perfectly with the action, but this episode was like “let’s throw a horny nun here who likes to grope people and let’s spend a ton of inbetweeners on those scenes!” – Really Yozakura, your animation is awesome. You can spend your inbetween animation on tons of better stuff than a bunch of boob shots.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

6 thoughts on “Yozakura Quartet – Hana no Uta – 02

  1. This show is extremely likable, and I have to say I love the black lightning and the sound effects used. Everything meshes together well, and the characters are interesting. Would really like to see it get a little more “deep” regarding demons/humans and whatnot but it’s fun so far.

    Seriously I love the use of sound, you rarely get that in anime, and the animation really is great. Good stuff.

  2. the animation rocked during that little bout between the 2 females.
    but yes this show should be called “Fan Service”. even going back to the OVA i thought the fan service was emphasized

  3. ok.. i watched the old yozakura quartet(which i didn’t like that much) and, well i’m still kinda confused with the new one( which does look alright)… Wasn’t enjin exorcised? How the heck is he back? Or was that an attempt on an original ending?

  4. Is the whole series going to have this much fanservice? Finally there was some action… then a lesbian kiss right in the middle of it. I guess I don’t really understand what this is supposed to be.

  5. Who exactly is the protagonist in this? I figured Hime must be but Kotoha gets a lot of char development. And everyone seems to get equal screen time. I hope the next episode will about them paying more attention to their “imaginations” and trying to figure out where the disturbances come from.

    For some reason, I’m less disturbed by fan service here than in any other anime. Prob because they’re indulging in themselves rather than “entertaining” a male character.

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