An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Cute Ghost Girl and the Lazy Formula – Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs Spoiler Review

To start off, a word of what we’re getting into: this show is probably something like 90% Ecchi Harem Comedy and 10% Light Action. There’s not a ton of meat to the product, and what there is has a lot of standard notes. So, in some ways, rather than looking at this as a review of an individual show, I want to examine the formula. What works, why it works, and what we should jolly well expect better from instead. This is still going to be primarily an analysis of the show at hand, but it’s standard enough that I want to keep an eye open for what’s done the same everywhere and why.

It’s also worth a note that I prefer to get my Anime through legal streaming means. There are a lot of them, but this ranks a notice here because the one I knew to use for Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs happened to be Crunchyroll and the version there is censored – there are a lot of scenes where a good amount of screen is taken up by extra thick steam or magical beams of heavenly light. And for the purposes of reviewing a show, I think that’s perfectly fine. While nudity can be used in an effective manner for storytelling and atmosphere (and was in shows I’ve previously reviewed, like Mirai Nikki), I’m personally of the opinion that if a show can’t survive without drawings of nipples, well, then it was dead on arrival.

Those programming notes out of the way, let’s talk about Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs.

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