English Dub Review: Hina Logic from Luck & Logic “Transforming is Not Mastered in a Day/Rice Balls over Flowers”

A mid-term the day after she arrives? That’s bogus.

Spoilers Below

Liones is totally screwed. She lost the whole evening passed out from the hot springs. She missed her only opportunity to study for the mid terms. She’s pretty much guaranteed to fail. Depressed, she runs into the student council, and they console her with cookies at lunch. Afterwards, it is time for mock battle training. It’s Yayoi versus Nina, and given Nina’s experience, it’s a foregone conclusion who is going to win. But, Liones isn’t going to jump into a battle yet. First, they need some data on her Covenanter, Rosa. Using her Logic Card, she calls out to Rosa, and transforms. Whoever Rosa is, she has a deep love for Liones, and desperately wants to give her her every desire. But… who is Rosa, really?

Having failed the midterm (was there any doubt?) Liones talks to her classmates about taking a trip to see the last of the cherry blossoms fall. At first, Nina is non-committal. She hates being at this school. She was once a field logicalist working for Veronica Ananko (the chief from the last series), who held multiple contracts and had an impressive record. So why was she transferred to the school? Because she had no childhood, no joy, and no connection with others. She doesn’t understand what she needs with all that, but a bit of convincing by the house mother, and she decides to join Liones and Mahiro for some cherry blossom viewing. The three take the hike up the mountain to a shrine, and picnic under the sakura tree. Though there isn’t much of a point to it, Nina has to admit, it is pretty fun.

But really, why would a school do that to a kid. Welcome to day two! A test on all the material you haven’t even been taught because you’ve never been here. You fail, sucks to be you. Yeah, schools can have crappy policies, but that’s just unfair. Anyways, while this episode looks like it’s broken into two, the pair of them flow together into a single, anticlimactic whole. Yes, as individual stories, they have a build up and a conclusion in a slice-of-life sort of way. But they don’t feel like separate stories. When taken as a whole, it just rambles around, with the only interesting bit in the middle. The second half is… just there. I like that Rosa is still a big mystery. She’s obviously good since she’s the main protagonist’s Covenanter, but her goals, story, and true nature is unknown. She strikes me as a trickster, so we’d best keep an eye out.

I’m most of the way through the original series, Luck & Logic, and the sheer difference in tone is shocking. While Luck & Logic is an action-packed show with a slightly darker feel, Hina Logic is a bright and peppy magical girl/slice-of-life show. Though there are some characters that will cross over here, it feels like they have nothing to do with each other. That’s probably what they were going for, as L&L is the world at war and Hina is the world at peace. I’m wondering what form of antagonist or conflict we’re going to see, as this show doesn’t feel like it’s got anything wrong going on in its world.

So, let’s wrap up with animation and voice acting. Um… Is it there? I guess. Other than a scene of Liones dancing, it was all pretty basic. There were quite a bit of cycled animations, especially with Rosa. The high points of the animation were, as is typical of magical girl shows, the transformations. I don’t really count this towards the show’s quality since the transformations are always given a high priority, then used as stock footage. The voice acting has improved slightly over the previous episode, but several characters still perform with a forced and artificial air. I’m looking at you, Yayoi.

Really, it still feels too early to tell if this is a good show or a boring one. I want to like it. I can enjoy a magical girl show if it’s got a great plot. A slice-of-life can be entertaining if it’s got engaging characters. Hina Logic has the potential to have that, but it needs to break out of its mainstream rut. Until then, I give it seven logic cards out of ten.