English Dub Review: Hina Logic “The Countdown is the Time To Plan Your Year Around / Shameful is She Who Spurns Chocolate”

This is an extremely awkward episode to watch in a hotel lobby.

Overview (Spoilers)

It’s New Year’s Eve, and all the girls have gone home for the holidays. Well, all but Nina. She’s content to stay at the dorms, binge some TV, and work on string theory explanations of the multiverse. Too bad Liones decided to crash the party with her kotatsu. After eating a bunch of traditional Japanese New Years snacks, the two receive a package of crab. They gobble it down without realizing it belonged to the teachers, who are staying over as well. After quickly packing the crabshells with imitation crab sticks, they return the package to its rightful owners. The two reflect on the year, and on the beginning of a new one. Then, at the strike of midnight, Liones leans in and kisses Nina. She claims it is a tradition where she comes from, but Nina is still taken aback. That was her first kiss.

Fast forward to Valentine’s Day, and Liones makes a chocolate cupcake for her bestest friend Nina. Things go a bit awry when the oven gets broken, then turns murderous when repaired by Mahiro. Fortunately, Nina arrives, tranced with Amor, and shoots the oven down.The little silver-haired girl surprises her (and me) by launching herself at the princess, making a declaration of love. Romantic love. She even goes as far to intertwine her legs with the blondes. It seems that Amor’s arrows are the same as Cupid’s arrows, and the shot enchanted the cupcakes into love potions. Since there are two more cupcakes, you can imagine the dorms devolve into a den of debauchery until the magic wears off. A few hours later, Nina wakes up, head in Liones’ lap. As she steps away, she presents Liones with a batch of chocolates. She jumps to Nina, hugging her.

This episode might take a little explanation. Nina seems to run from a Japanese perspective, and much of this episode is shaped from those nuances and cultural norms. In America, Valentine’s Day is a day for lovers, but this goes a few steps further in Japan. There, it is a tradition for you to give chocolate (of any kind) to the one you love, as a way of processing your feelings. The more effort you put into making them, the better. When they receive them and eat them, it is considered an acceptance of your feelings. Typically, this is observed by girls confessing love to men, but it can also be an expression of courtesy. Then, in one month, on what is called White Day, the recipient presents the gifter with something white, and most often of three times the value. This is referred to directly in the post-credits sequence. One teacher gives chocolate to another, and they discuss triple in return and looking forward to White Day. So, while we see Yuuko making chocolate cupcakes for everyone, this is Giri-choco, or chocolate made out of courtesy. Yayoi’s chocolate, made for her two servants, was also giri-choco, as she is their superior. Liones’ chocolate, made specifically for Nina, was a bit more ambiguous. While it could have been intended as giri-choco, the New Years kiss added another nuance to the mix that could have made it look like honmei-choco (love chocolate). Question is, will we see a White Day episode? How will the Liones/Nina relationship mature? Is this the beginning of an official coupling? And what do we call it? Liona? Ninones?

Our Take

At first, this episode is another cute, fluffy throwaway about the New Years. Just like the summer episodes, they’re obligatory in any show with a sufficient number of teenage girls. I was expecting the kiss since that is a rather international tradition. That Chocopocalypse, though. That was a shock. It’s hilariously funny, don’t get me wrong, and while it is very fanservice-focused, it isn’t without a point. As one of our readers pointed out, the apparent main plotline was a bait and switch. This wasn’t a show about a girl who lost herself empathizing with Foreigners, losing control of her transformations. This was a show about a developing relationship between a super-serious loner and a bright soul. The show touched on this throughout but did so ever so gently. So gently, even my headcanon-centric brain missed it. Liones losing control was actually a means for Nina to realize things about herself, and how she felt about Liones. This is extremely subtle writing, such that it almost felt like it was out of left field… Except you could see the signs from episode one if you were looking. That episode carried much of the foreshadowing for what we would see in the last few episodes. Where I was rapidly getting bored with this show, I am now on the edge of my seat to see how it will turn out.

The animation was high quality here. Of course, it would be. When you throw a bunch of lonely dudes together to animate, they’re gonna give the attention to the sapphic content. Not that this is explicit or anything. No clothes are removed, just fondling, cuddling, and sniffing of hair. What we do get to see is the intense detail of Nina eating the cupcake, then sweating as the enchantment takes effect. The animation is smooth. The kiss scene is tasteful, with the breeze blowing the window dressing in front of them. Even the motion of that dressing and the shadows of the girls behind it were well animated. Visually, it just got more attention than other episodes, which sets it apart as something important. I was interested in the choice to only add a slight bit of pink to Mizuki’s eyes when under the effect of the chocolate. The other girls had their iris change in shape to a heart. It shows that her love for Yuuko is genuine.

The voice acting teetered a bit. Brittany Lauda spent most of the episode with Liones speaking in a natural tone, and it is totally fine. Early on, however, she comes off overly-showy, almost as if she’s trancing with Waffle. It’s distracting and cheesy. On the other hand, all of the remaining girls come off much better than they usually do. They must have been having fun with the zany humor of Valentine’s Day scenes. I actually enjoyed Yayoi’s performance this time around. Good work Mikaela Krantz, keep it up!

This episode successfully re-ignited my interest in this series… right before the last episode. Dangit. It showed that the writers were playing a long game. A game that could have hurt them. If viewers weren’t interested in what they were laying down earlier, it wouldn’t be likely they’d pick it up for this installment, where everything makes sense again. Coupled with excellent animation and good voice acting, it makes for an enjoyable episode. I just wish I had some warning the Yuri-fest was coming. I was in a public place! There are no cameras watching me watch schoolgirls make out and fondle each other. Thankfully, nobody walked by.