Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs

Stark700★ 7

Every season, every year, there are new shows that you shouldn’t watch with your parents or little siblings around. The ecchi and harem category constitutes for bringing glorious fan service at every way possible. I’m not going to lie, watching Yuragi-sou n Yuuna-san (Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs) felt like diving into a pleasure of ecstasy. Based on the manga of the same name, it felt inevitable this show would eventually get animated on TV. It was just a matter of not if but when. The time came when the series decided to adapt itself into 12 episodes for a 1-cour season. What does thatmean? Well, that pretty much says the anime will not cover most of the material from the manga. It’s a disappointment to fans for who wanted to see some of their favorite chapters in anime form. But make no mistake, this show still has what it takes to bring on fan service to a level that is satisfying. It’s not rocket science to figure out but the show features a harem of girls and a main male protagonist. Fuyuora Kogarashi is the lucky (or perhaps misfortunate depending on how you look at it) guy with an ability to see supernatural entities. After training and learning to fight against spirits, he is now looking for a normal life. This lands him to a boarding house known as the Yuragi Manor where his life really takes a turn. Pretty simple story right? To be honest, this show’s plot is about as simple as it gets. Kogarashi is the standard protagonist who encounters a variety of beautiful girls. The most unusual one though is actually not human but takes the shape of a ghost. Meet Yuuna Yunohana, the female Casper of the inn! I’ll be straightforward here. You better get used to seeing fan service like ass, boobs, and compromising scenes often in the show. It’s an ecchi that doesn’t try to hide its intentions from day one. The first episode easily positions Kogarashi as an accidental pervert when he gets into some awkward moments with Yuuna. It’s a bit impractical considering Yuuna isn’t human but the show loves to create these moments for the sake of fan service. Despite being a ghost, Yuuna is actually very innocent when it comes to feelings and is very shy about herself. Unfortunately, we don’t truly know more about her past although the show makes it clear that she’s not malicious in any way or form. The character chemistry between her and Kogarashi is very noticeable as the two understands each other more. As a show with a harem, expect girls of all type of personalities. Ninja girl Sagiri is serious and overreacts when she is complimented by others. Yaya Fushiguro has a cat-like personality of always being curious with playful energy. Nonko adds more of the adult humor in this series with her carelessness and seemingly never taking anything serious (with exception of manga drawing) Chitose Nakai has a more mature personality and is very helpful towards others. Then, there’s Chisaki, a friendly girl that misunderstands many situations in the show especially regarding men. You get the big picture here? It’s a troupe of female characters that fills almost every category of harem archetypes. If you don’t fancy harem shows of similar nature (example: To-Love Ru), you’re not going to find much enjoyment here. And unfortunately, don’t expect much character development from them either. It’s a 12 episode show that pretty much dedicates itself like supernatural sit-com of misadventures. Almost every episode consists of story segments to show Kogarashi’s new unusual life. There’s going to be tons of misunderstandings and teasing all around. As it also contains supernatural elements, expect some common logic to be thrown out the doors. To be honest, I didn’t really care who the studio for this show would be in the end as long as they made the characters look faithful. Thankfully, that is the case even though a studio like Xebec took on the project. Oh who am I kidding? They did work on the To-Love Ru franchise before. Nonetheless, expect fan service to be saturated all over the place. Some of the moments from this series also reminds me of To-Love Ru especially when Kogarashi accidentally gropes a girl’s chest, ass, or some other private body part. The main selling point is the character reactions as some characters tends to overreact more than others (I’m looking at you, Sagiri, Yuuna, and Chisaki) There’s a lot of suggestive camera angles on the female characters so be ready for that too. While the technical quality of the show isn’t anything spectacular, it definitely leaves little to the imagination when it comes to that fan service. It’s a harem. It has fan service. It’s sexy. There are probably countless other words to describe Yuragi-sou no Yuuna but it’s pretty much you’d expect. There’s nothing really unique about it with its harem cast and daily shenanigans. I can say honestly that fan service can be sold well to an audience when it has a clear mission in mind. For this particular anime, they completed that mission.

literaturenerd★ 6

It’s become a cliché at this point to say just how powerful nostalgia is, but it’s all true. Once you get into your 30s, 40s, and beyond, you start to feel this longing for the things of your youth. Not just the most beloved things, but anything from your youth. My fellow boomers and I will dance to shit we HATED back in the 90s just because it’s from the 90s. Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs will set off an explosion of nostalgia for anyone who grew up watching shitty harem anime. This was made in 2018 but feels exactly like something that wouldhave come out in 2001. The Yuuna manga ran in Shonen Jump from 2016-2020 and really wanted to pay homage to the romcom mangaka of the past like Rumiko Takahashi and Ken Akamatsu. To be fair to Yuuna’s author, Tadahiro Miura, that’s exactly what this feels like. If you were to tell me that Ken and Rumiko met on vacation somewhere and made the first few chapters of this manga together, I would genuinely believe it! This is the story of a young man with spiritual powers named Kogarashi, who spent his childhood constantly getting possessed by ghosts. After the ghost of a failed day trader possessed him and made him go into crippling debt, he went into the countryside to find a Buddhist monk and master his psychic powers. After a few years of grueling training, Kogarashi is now a master exorcist and is OP as FUCK. When he hears about a haunted inn offering a room for dirt cheap, the utterly destitute Kogarashi shows up thinking it will be a quick exorcism and a peaceful life. Instead, the inn is home to a sexy ghost girl named Yuuna and a whole harem of supernatural babes. Unfortunately for this anime, audience tastes often change over time. The same show that would have sold 2 million DVDs and been a smash hit in 2001 was met with utter disdain in 2018. Funimation passed on it. Sentai passed. Aniplex got roped into licensing it, but then they just sat on the license and never released a dub or DVD/Bluray. Allegedly, this was after test audiences despised it. I can definitely see why Zoomers would hate this anime. This isn’t a “cool” ecchi like Mushoku where you can tell people you’re just into the magic system and the world building. This is the cringeworthy shit that your weird uncle that watches anime jerked off to 20 years ago. This is “guy slips on a banana peel and accidentally a grabs a boob” humor. In fact, there are SOO many scenes like that in Yuuna that it somehow becomes funny again! The fanservice in this show is relentless. Kogarashi is accidentally getting his face shoved into tits, ass, or vagina for what often feels like 30% of the runtime. It’s fucking insane! Despite all of this, I actually still loved this anime! Don’t worry, I’ll explain myself. So, what studio would put THIS amount of ass and titties in their anime? If you guessed Xebec, congratulations! You win a free trip to horny jail! This was one of the very last series that Xebec made before closing their doors forever. A fate that they shared around the same time as their longtime rival Studio Arms. Xebec burst onto the scene with the Love Hina anime and their entire history was mostly harem anime. These horny bastards did To Love-Ru, Shuffle, MM, Ladies Vs Butlers, Keijo, Mnemosyne, and a dozen others. This was their swansong and by God they wanted to go out showing as many titties as humanly possible. You know that really famous scene from Cinema Paradiso? The old film projectionist before he dies splices together all of the hundreds of romantic kiss scenes that the village priest forced him to cut out and it forms this beautiful compilation that represents his love for cinema and his life devoted to film. Well Yuuna is basically like that…only with titties. Xebec put in every single titty shot that they held back on in Shuffle and Love Hina and everything that came before. It is simply ludicrous how many titty shots are in this anime. I think you see every female character topless like 3 times every episode. This has to be the world record for a non-hentai anime. Interspecies Reviewers only has like maybe 1/4th as many titties as this show. Obviously watch the uncut version. Otherwise, what are you doing with your life? So why do I like this piece of shit? Firstly, a lot of the humor when not resorting to “oops I grabbed a booby” is actually funny. I was shocked that it managed to deliver so many genuinely clever gags. In one of my favorite episodes, Kogarashi is concerned about Yuuna’s lingering regret that’s keeping her bound to the Earth as a spirit. So, he takes her to an exclusive couple’s resort to try make her happy. He does this without thinking about the fact that nobody else can see her and everyone is going to think he’s just some loser who is SO lonely that he’s gone insane. The shenanigans that follow are quite hilarious. Part of what makes the humor work is that Kogarashi and Yuuna are actually likeable characters and their romantic chemistry together is sincerely good! As in better than 85% of romcom anime main couples. The side characters definitely borrow heavily from Love Hina and Ranma, but they manage to work. The cast has really solid comedic synergy and it makes every scene of them hanging out together enjoyable! Like their previous work on Shuffle, Xebec managed to squeeze in these really sweet moments that catch you completely off-guard because you’re just expecting some dumpster fire ecchi show. What is THIS? The anime that just showed me 300 mammaries in the last 15 minutes is actually making me feel things? So how does Yuuna compare to modern ecchi? I’m going to be honest here. Yuuna just beats the dog shit out of most modern ecchi anime. It’s not a fucking isekai. It’s not pretending to be better than what it actually is. Kogarashi isn’t just a “nice guy” who wants to help everyone around him with no ulterior motives. He’s much more than that. He’s also assertive, strong, and frankly admirable in his moral convictions. One girl desperately wants his seed because he’s super powerful and she will throw herself naked at him. He’ll calmly put her clothes back on and tell her that he’s only interested in doing that with the woman he loves. No nosebleed freak outs. No judgment. Just outright stating his feelings. Compared to most ecchi leads, Kogarashi is a fucking GigaChad. However, he also avoids being wish fulfillment bullshit. Kogarashi is not supposed to be us. He is an idealized positive example for young men to try living up to in the classic shonen sense. So many modern ecchi instead give us this lonely otaku who is “Just like me” but then he gains this power and starts desperately making up for all the ass he wasn’t getting in high school. Stories that mostly appeal to bitter, angry, single men in their 20s and 30s. That evolutionary tree within the ecchi family can pretty much directly be blamed on Rance, which led to Mushoku, which led to Shield Hero, Overlord, Redo of Healer, and SOO many others. I’m absolutely thrilled to see something that sprouted from the grandma Rumiko tree again. I’m sick to death of Rance and his offspring. Also, Yuuna is astoundingly wholesome compared to Higehiro, Domestic Girlfriend, Rent-A-Girlfriend, let alone anything from the Rance Family. The show with 500 boobies an episode is crushing modern ecchi in wholesomeness. That’s honestly very sad but it’s true. In conclusion, this absolutely should have received a dub and physical release in the US. If it really was a test audience that convinced Aniplex to do Yuuna dirty like that, I have something to say to them. In the immortal words of Michael Jordan, “Fuck them kids!” Yuuna frankly deserved WAY more love than it got back in 2018. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a masterpiece or anything. It is still kind of bad in some regards. Some of the running jokes do get a bit stale. The full-frontal nudity unfortunately extends to the 13-year-old innkeeper. Why Xebec? Why would you do this? The anime also left on a cliffhanger regarding Yuuna’s forgotten past that will never be resolved in anime form. The manga eventually answered all the questions, but this anime sure isn’t getting a second season. Yuuna does have some problems. However, this trashy ecchi is also worth your time. It’s only 12 episodes and it’s pretty damn enjoyable. I have to recommend this one.