English Dub Review: Hina Logic from Luck & Logic “Repay Kindness With Flowers”

What gift do you get for the girl who’s already happy with nothing?

Spoilers Below

Yuuko may be a student at the academy, but she’s been taking such good care of the other girls that it’s easy to mistake her for the dorm mother. I know I did in an earlier review. She also talks like an old person and is computer illiterate. Fortunately, she’s got Mahiro living with her. The resident tech expert jumps in to help her poor computer out: it looks like it’s still running on DOS. Within minutes, the machine is running the latest operating system. All that’s left is Yuuko’s password. It’s the same as her birthday, 0617… June 17th? That’s today! As soon as Yuuko leaves, the girls are up in arms. They simply have to throw her the perfect birthday party. After all, she takes such good care of them! They deduce that the best form of the party would be a surprise pajama party. While Mahiro and the Kiritani sisters decorate the room, Liones, Nina, and Yayoi run out to town to get the present. They plan on getting her some new pajamas since, after all, it’s a pajama party. Problem is, the shop that would sell that closes earlier than you’d think. The girls run out to get it but are waylaid by a child that looks mysteriously familiar. She’s looking for a very particular flower, a white dahlia, for her friend, but it’s out of season. They help her search the stores, and all they can find are some seeds. On the bright side, Liones’ magic is all about plants! She uses her magic to turn the seeds into a field of the flower. Back on the dim side, this means the shop closed on them, and they were unable to get there in time.

Back with Mahiro, she and the sisters are about to set up her room. The hacker uses a back door into Yuuko’s machine to make it look like it is accessing top secret files on its own. Yuuko runs off to get Mahiro’s help. The girls then enlist the help of Mizuki, Yuuko’s amorous admirer, to keep the green haired caretaker away. Turns out, they don’t need her help. Yuuko happens on the indoor baths and decides it needs a cleaning. She uses her own magic for the task. Yes, she transforms into a magical girl for the purposes of cleaning. And boy, does it work. She soaks herself afterward, and when she returns, her clothes have been swapped out for her old pajamas and an invitation to her party. Yes, there was also an invitation to a date with Mizuki, but she doesn’t see that. When she arrives, she’s absolutely stunned by the effort they put into the party. Nobody has ever given her that much thought. Liones harvested a bouquet of white dahlias for her, which means thank you. She takes one flower out of the bunch and puts it in the girl’s hair, returning the thank you with a heartfelt smile.

This episode was a bit more of the slice-of-life story that it seems this magical girl show is developing into. I was surprised that Yuuko is a student. Her voice actress, Elizabeth Maxwell, gives her an older, more motherly sound. This is a great way to portray her since she likely talked with “old people language” in the Japanese. Rather than having her use thee-and-thous, she just made her sound older. I feel like Mikaela Krantz has been struggling to get Yayoi just right. The last episode was good, but this episode felt like more of what I heard in the first episode. She’s trying too hard to sound posh, and it comes off forced and wrong.

The animation and art were good in small places, such as all the times Mizuki hits on Yuuko. These shots are dynamic and show a lot of character. Almost all of the episode is in traditional style, with one exception: The trolley into town is made in CG, and looks a bit out of place as it first rolls up. Other shots of it look good enough and blend with the surrounding art, but that first shot felt.. off.

After getting through these four episodes, I find myself looking back and analyzing my impressions so far. When I first walked into this, I was expecting something along the lines of Little Witch Academia, only with transformations. While it’s true enough that this show is in a similar vein, I don’t find myself as enchanted by it. It may be how the characters are written. They feel flat compared to LWA, and the art is rather mainstream, with the exception of the transformations. Further, it doesn’t feel as if it is truly connected with the original show, Luck & Logic, at all. While L&L is a slightly darker, more action-based show, Hina Logic is a brighter, happier slice-of-life that just so happens to be in the same universe. From the transformations to the dropped themes of TranceJacking and Overtrance, it just feels like it doesn’t exist within the same mechanics as the older show. I do enjoy watching this show, it just feels a little off to me.

This episode does show some subtle spots of plot that could be bigger later on. The little child was, in fact, the school’s headmaster in disguise. But why does she behave like that in public, and why disguise herself as a child? Is it possible that the headmaster we know is actually a logicalist in Transe with the child, and the child is a Traveller? Or does she just have other magic powers than normal logicalists? Combining this gently handled plot point with the way the episode flowed, I feel like it outweighs my misgivings about the show in general. I give this episode seven white dahlias out of ten.