English Dub Review: Hina Logic from Luck & Logic “Songs Change With Hinas, and Hinas Change With Song”

And who invited Liones’ father?

Overview (Spoilers)

The First Pirari Festival is on, and everyone is preparing. With special permission from the teachers, the students are working day and night to build what they need. Liones’ class is putting on a play, and they have to build the sets. The real trouble, though, is that Liones can’t act to save her life. Whenever she performs in front of others, she loses all confidence and becomes robotic. Their solution is to take advantage of how much her covenanter alters her personality during trance. She transforms with Rosa, giving her confidence and a sultry voice. The play is a hit, up until the climax, when Liones slips and falls off some stairs, losing her trance. Fortunately, Nina leads her through the rest of the performance. Afterwards, Commander Veronica (Who ordered Nina to go back to this school) comments on how well Nina is fitting in. Though their performance didn’t win first place, its message did get across to the viewers, and isn’t that what it was all about?

Well, this episode was only vaguely painful. This play was planned as a musical, so I expected a ton of intentionally bad singing. Really, there was only one song, so we got a bunch of intentionally bad acting instead. That was actually rather funny, as they made Liones look as blocky as she talked. While the main plot of the episode was all about the play, the secondary plot was about the Miss Pirari Contest. This pitted Liones’ father against Mizuki, each campaigning for their favorite girl in the competition. This was also humorous, especially when Liones’ mother stepped in to shut down her husband. The post-credits sequence explores the couple’s relationship, and how he won her heart, even though the teachers are expecting it to be a bit more carnal of a romance. Honestly, these portions are my favorite in the show. I like how they actually develop the teachers as people while giving a preview of the next episode. Now, if only the rest of the show had more character development…

After finishing this episode, I had a realization. I have no idea why I didn’t think of this already. This is a school for logicalists, right? Specifically, the military training of logicalists. As we saw in the previous series, there are several male logicalists. Where are all the boys in this school? Liones’ father is literally the ONLY man we have seen in this show. I know it’s a show about magical girls, but this doesn’t make logical sense.

Our Take

Okay, I know I’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating. This was episode nine. Of twelve. That means that it has three episodes left. This episode was pretty much a waste, as far as any form of development. Nothing was revealed. No plot occurred. Things were the same at the beginning as they were at the end. Absolutely none of the characters changed at all. They even acknowledge Liones’ issue with mostly becoming her trance partner but… they do nothing with that. There aren’t any consequences for using it to their advantage. While this was effectively a two-parter, since the previous episode was the lead-in, there wasn’t anything that made it meaningful. It was just there. The episode had the opportunity to do so much with Liones’ condition, or Nina’s anti-social behavior, or… anything! With so few episodes left, can they really afford to just blow episodes like this? Also, we have so many characters that are completely unexplored. The Headmaster of the school has been suggested multiple times to be a foreigner, but she just shows up every now and then, and nothing is done to further her character. So far, this show is just like the opening credits, a bunch of cute magical girls that are paper thin. In personality, I mean.

The animation on the episode wasn’t bad. That wasn’t the focus, however. Most of the episode was focused more on the art, and using it to amp up the way Liones was acting. Radical shifts in style would illustrate how her acting made others feel. It isn’t all that much, and many times actually made her use less animation, but it was entertaining and expressive. Backgrounds were beautiful. Unfortunately, the voice acting was a bit wonky, but I still give the actresses credit. Brittany Lauda was doing the singing for Liones, and had to also show a difference in the singing between the Rosa-Liones, and the base Liones. While the base Liones had an okay singing voice, Rosa’s deeper, more sultry tones messed her up a bit. It flattened the notes. It isn’t stellar singing in either form, but I really don’t expect that. In a way, Liones not being able to sing like a prima donna is a good thing. It keeps her from being just like every other main magical girl in a show. I would have liked a little more from Leah Clarke as Nina. The closest we got to character development was Veronica saying she’s grown. It would have been good to actually show that by having her act with a bit more gusto. Oh, and Yayoi didn’t annoy me this episode. Yay!

While this episode was cute and funny, it just kinda shows what’s gone wrong with this show. Just like the ACLA, this show has a bunch of magical girls but has no clue what to do with them. So… just let them run around and be cute. Three episodes left, writers.