—newgeekphilospher

Ok, so back at my home blog I promised more “visual” posts less reliant on text, also extra pics for lolz. I aim to deliver on that with this Love Hina episode review.

Shinobu is clearly the sad shy girl archetype, which is supposed to be moe. Personally I find it cute but distressing to see a girl so glum.

Shinobu is sad because she is moving to a new place and her parents are divorcing. The episode begins with a flashback to the first episode from her point of view instead of Keitaro’s. Speaking of which, there is minimal beating up of Keitaro in this episode because the main focus is on Shinobu.

Meanwhile, these three old guys don’t say much but when they appear in the show they have an awesome aura about them.

Shinobu is embarrassed when this girl on the right gets a makeover akin to Courtney Love, and the other girls make fun of her by suggesting she is friends with Shinobu. By the end of the episode this changes when cookies seal the bonds of friendship (like they always do).

Shinobu attempts to return Keitaro’s naughty but tasteful sketchbook to him, but the girls get hold of it and show Shinobu the racy images. Shinobu runs away while Keitaro tries to get the sketchbook back, but by the time the girls give the book back to Shinobu she runs off with it again. Keitaro then voices his genuine complaints about his privacy, and Kitsune says in her Osakan/Southern Accent voice “Sorry, that was wrong”.

Shinobu gets chastised by her mother about how the Hinata House girls have no morals and her daughter shouldn’t go near them, whilst Kitsune, Keitaro and Naru rush to dinner.

The gang go over to Hinata Restaurant to find that the restaurant is closing, because Shinobu’s family are moving due to the big divorce. There is a scene where Shinobu’s parents argue about the father’s “other woman” who may or may not exist, at this point in the series we don’t know. But they’re angry and they both want custody of Shinobu from the other, which makes Shinobu in for more shy-sadness-moe sequences.

Shinobu runs away to find where Keitaro lives, and a singed Keitaro. She is modest in her cooking skills, and doubts her abilities to cook, but it turns out she can cook really good meals. (Is this an early example of girl cooking as fanservice?)

Then there’s some Keitaro beating, making up for the lack of Keitaro beating in the latter half of the episode…

Then even more Keitaro beatings after some accidental fanservice:

Then Shinobu’s parents come back looking for their daughter and arguing over custody. OH NOES!

Quiet you! You wouldn’t want Shinobu’s parents to find her!

Then the Hinata House girls pull crazy pranks on Shinobu’s parents to stop them finding her, but none of these pranks either work or impress the parents who want to grab their daughter out of each other’s custody. Boy are they angry!

Shinobu gets up on the roof and starts talking to Keitaro. At first I thought she was going to jump off the roof and suicide, but really it was a moment more like when Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet or whoever are leaning off the front of the Titanic, only with just the girl:

You are saaaafe in my heart and, my heart wiiiiilll go ooooooonnnn…

Basically what happens is that Shinobu’s parents show up and Aunt Haruka tries to reason with them, and in the end Shinobu stays at the Hinata House while her parents move away. But not before Keitaro declares his love… for Shinobu’s tasty cookie treats! She has no faith in her cooking until Keitaro declares that he wishes somebody would cook for him… throwing feminism to the wind in a way, but this IS a harem romance show after all.

After that Shinobu vows to make new friends, and decides to make them with cookies. The mean girls from earlier on show no interest, but the girl who got made up like Courtney Love wants to be her friend. And so it goes…

[Sorry if the pictures are in odd sizes and formats, I hope blissmo will be able to fix it for me. This is my first article with extensive screenshots, so be kind, mmkay?]