Posted by OP Sequence
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OP: 「桃色タイフーン」 (Momoiro taifuun) by Haruna Luna
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“The Yuragi Inn’s Yuuna”
Some Background Context:
As an avid manga reader, I’m familiar with Miura Tadahiro, the mangaka behind Yuragi-sou. In fact, I’ve been following him since his debut work of Koisome Momiji, which had exactly the kind of love story I wished to see more often within the industry. But apparently that’s not the kind of stuff that flies with Jump’s typical readership. Unfortunately, Koisome Momiji was axed following an arc that was admittedly weak. That said, I’ve always retained hope for Miura-san to strike a home run. His art style is absolutely gorgeous (Shokugeki’s Tosh once worked as his assistant!), and when things don’t get too whacky, his stories can be truly beautiful and compelling.
But eventually, Miura-san found success in milking the tried and tested formula. As a result, his big break came in the form of Yuragi-sou, a series that currently occupies the romcom-ecchi-action niche as a staple of WSJ. Sadly, he’s completely done away with delicate storytelling as a result of this transition, something that I really liked about Koisome Momiji. But I’m happy that he successfully reinvented himself, because the alternative was falling off the wayside and joining the pantheon of aspiring mangakas who failed to make it. So, now that it received an anime adaptation, how does Yuragi-sou fare as a TV series? Here are my first impressions and let’s find out!
First Impressions
Kogarashi Fuyuzora (Ono Yuuki) is a young chap with a heart of gold, despite his alarming circumstances. Despite being crippled by financial issues, due to being possessed by the spirit of a reckless stockbroker, he doesn’t ask people for money when he solves their problems. His happy-go-lucky and plucky attitude earns some degree of respect from me. Incidentally, he also gets thrusted into a lot of situations that result in unfortunate misunderstandings, namely those where he accidentally grabs some boobs or gets an assblast to the face. Don’t you simply hate it when that happens to you?
But being very ecchi turned out to be a double-edged sword for this anime adaptation. On the one hand, the exquisite design of these girls make these kind of moments very rewarding. On the other hand, most of it is completely censored by steam from the hot springs. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like a non-censored version will be airing concurrently, which means that desperate fans will have to wait for the bluray release. For now, it still seems pretty viable, in terms of getting laughs and arousal out of people. But receiving an incomplete product feels unsatisfactory, even if the complete version will roll out at a later date. We’ll have to settle for censorship in the time being, and hopefully, it won’t negatively impact upon your viewing experience too much.
How are the female characters? So far, we’ve only really had proper exposure to one of them. That would be Yuuna Yunohana (Shimabukuro Miyuri), the infamous ghost who haunts the Yuragi inn. From what you can see, she’s an innocent girl who is pretty clumsy and easily gets flustered. Additionally, she really comes with generous packages, a prospect that is bound to please those who prefer well-endowed girls. But that isn’t all. Judging by how the other female characters come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, there will probably be at least one girl to fit the bill for most of the varying tastes out there. They’re all fantastically designed, and I reckon that regardless of preference, people will be in for some kind of treat.
Concluding Thoughts
Having read the manga, I knew that this anime adaptation could become a weekly guilty pleasure, but probably wouldn’t amount to anything more than that. In fact, I was partially surprised that Yuragi-sou got an adaptation. In my opinion, even taking the top tier art into consideration, it doesn’t have a compelling story, world or set of characters. Then I remembered that the combination of incredible art style + fanservice is a guaranteed blockbuster. So why am I still here writing about this show? To be honest, I’d have felt guilty about giving it a pass, especially since I’ve always wanted to see Miura-san succeed. Plus it can hit high notes where its target audience is concerned, something I’ll acknowledge despite not being a part of the aforementioned target audience.
Those who subscribe to the holy quartet of ecchi + romcom+ harem + action (e.g. To Love Ru, HSDK, Infinite Stratos, etc) will find familiarity and comfort here. We haven’t seen a lot of the action, but so far our protagonist has been doing a fantastic job of learning from One Punch Man, seeing how he’s been ending most of these encounters in a single punch. Not to worry though. There will be more to the action than simply a punch, provided that you stick around until the anime gets to that point. Anyway, if you have a sexual inclination towards supernatural mischief, then watching this would be a no-brainer. If you hate trivial misunderstandings being levied for humour and generous smatterings of fanservice, avoid at all costs. However, to those of you who are currently unsure about giving this a shot, I’d still recommend giving it a try. There’s going to be a lot of casual fun, with some surprising depth at certain points, where boundaries between life and death come into question.
ED Sequence
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ED: 「Happen～木枯らしに吹かれて～」 (Happen～kogarashi ni fuka rete～) by Yunohana Yuno (Shimabukuro Mayuri), Miyazaki Chisaki (Suzuki Eri), Ameno Sagiri (Takahashi Rie)
Preview
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Funny enough, the manga just recently dropped some plot on us. Not to be confused with PLOT. And it was a flash back.
Also, I’m a Sagiri fan. She’s the best!
Seems like not a bad adaptation. I’m hoping it’ll do well going forward.
I like all three of Sagiri, Yuuna and Chisaki. But if I had to pick, Chisaki is my favourite :3
Chisaki is your favorite? You are truly a man of TASTE! 😀
The one advantage this has over the standard ecchi harem romcom series is that our protagnoist Kogarashi is actually a decent, likeable, and actually downright cool guy. Most things in this genre make the male protagonist a generic loser: an “ordinary high school student” who has absolutely nothing interesting about his character. It leaves you wondering why all those girls (who always have much better and deeper character development than the protagonist) fall in love with him.
In this series that is not an issue. Most readers agree that Kogarashi genuinely deserves his harem. Folks understand why the girls like him, and accept that he’s actually pretty cool.
Does that make up for the fact that we tend to get about 30 comedy/fenservice chapters for every one story-based chapter? Well, that comes down to personal preference. Me, I think this series is fun.
It also helps that the “story” here is more in the vein of To-Love-Ru in that it knows it doesn’t really have a story aside from crazy people living together, and not Nisekoi that pretended there was a story then veered off for fifty chapters before getting back to it.
Add to that how most of the girls actually take a decent amount of time to go from “having an interest in” to being “in love with” and this one’s pretty different than most I’ve seen. Sagiri was the most cliche/annoying part in the early chapters, so once they got past her angry phase this series became something special for me.
lol, another inn anime.
3 something-sou titles this season so far.
Not watching any of them though.
If only they all are in the same universe than the characters can cross over here and there.
Summer-sou universe!
Thinking too much, lol.
So far nothing is strong this season to me.
Looks like its 2 only.
Misread the title between pages.
Not just the fact they are sou, which lends to a lot of bathing opportunities. But also the fact we’ve been blessed by well-endowed female characters too 🙂
I recall when Yuuna first came out, there was speculation that Weekly Shounen Jump would quickly cancel it because “it was cheap fanservice which could never hold long-term reader popularity”. (This was eventually proven wrong.)
That said, it does bring up the question of what themes make a Weekly Shounen Jump entrant a hit with its readers (especially for beginner mangaka). Many aspiring mangaka aim for their works to become long-term serializations in the prestigious mainstream magazine that is WSJ, but only a few make that cut; most just end up getting cancelled after failing to meet the popularity quota.
And WSJ is quite ruthless with the axe; no matter how compelling the story is, it means nothing if the readers don’t warm to it within several weeks of serialization. (Which explains why some mangaka prefer to go to WSJ subsidiaries or smaller boutique magazines altogether.)
In my opinion, Jump has been in decline over recent years. I think it’s worth re-evaluating their current business model and editorial approach to encouraging creativity. Then again, we’ve just lived through one of Jump’s golden ages, so perhaps that’s skewed my perspective of what the norm is. Perhaps this standard is the norm, and higher quality from the past decade and a half are actually an outlier to the trend.
I quite disagree. Their business model is arguable the best between all the other magazines by any measure. The magazine is still the one with most circulation and the volumes of it continues to be one of the best-selling on the market.
And as someone who began to focus more on the magazine, the actual catalogue of them is pretty good for me now. I read Black Clover, Dr. Stone, One piece, Gintama, Act-Age, Jujutsu Kaisen, World Trigger, Yunna, We Never Learn, Kimetsu no Yaiba and MHA, which is the one part of the magazine that I read most manga. But I also began to look more into the catalogue since 2016 so maybe that’s why. Either way, I think that their manga right now are one of the best ones right there.
well this show feels like im living in the year 2000
https://randomc.net/image/Yuragi-sou%20no%20Yuuna-san/Yuragi-sou%20no%20Yuuna-san%20-%2001%20-%20Large%2007.jpg
So the voice of Diamond is Unbreakable‘s Josuke Higashikata also voices Kogarashi Fuyuzora?! That’s awesome and hilarious at the same time. Also, he could stand (pun intended) to learn the “gender equality punch” from RailDex‘s Touma Kamijou to help Yuuna ascend, but then again, that would end the series pretty damn quick in a bad way, won’t it? Also also, it’s a good thing Kogarashi’s made of iron like Love Hina‘s Keitaro Urashima and MonMusu‘s Kimihito Kurusu.
https://randomc.net/image/Yuragi-sou%20no%20Yuuna-san/Yuragi-sou%20no%20Yuuna-san%20-%20OP%20-%20Large%2005.jpg
“Discount Junyou.” *ding* (Drunkard, well-endowed, and has a similar hairstyle as well as hair color.) Also, Ai Kakuma goes from being a well-endowed Valkyrie unable to handle a drink in High School DxD HERO to being a well-endowed drunkard in this show.
https://randomc.net/image/Yuragi-sou%20no%20Yuuna-san/Yuragi-sou%20no%20Yuuna-san%20-%2001%20-%20Large%2013.jpg
Good thing Sagiri’s kunais don’t come with an enchantment that causes them to explode… Also, I’m getting some Motoko Aoyama (Love Hina) vibes from her.
Other comments:
– Yuuna’s so adorable! ~<3 Also, when the topic of "lingering regret" was brought up by Kogarashi, I already had a hunch that Yuuna's main regret was not falling in love before her untimely death. (Confirmed after reading the TV Tropes character page for the series.) And speaking of untimely deaths, did a chapter in the manga cover how Yuuna died? (There was a mention of Yuuna drowning in the open-air baths at the start of the episode, but I can't help but sense there was foul play involved.)
– I'll wait and see if the other ladies in this anime manage to charm me later on.
– No wonder Yuragi-sou no Yuuna-san is considered the spiritual (hehe) successor to To Love-Ru. So much ecchi (sadly steam-censored) and accidental pervert moments! (Not that I mind.) Also happy to see this show fill the void left by a relatively successful High School DxD HERO.
– As long as Xebec don’t stretch themselves thin with their other projects that I’m also looking forward to, Yuragi-sou no Yuuna-san should do fine.
https://randomc.net/image/Yuragi-sou%20no%20Yuuna-san/Yuragi-sou%20no%20Yuuna-san%20-%2001%20-%20Large%2036.jpg
ROCK-SPLITTING SWORD
There’s a real Love Hina vibe to this. Except more lewd, of course.
I was definitely looking forward to this adapation, but I’m still getting used to Yuuna’s seiyuu. As a manga reader, I always imagined Yuuna’s voice as either Yui Horie’s (yeah, Love Hina bias here) or HanaKana’s. I know Shimabukuro Miyuri is a newcomer, but her voice sounded a bit too “airy” to me at times, but it’s more of a personal interpretation than anything else. Granted, I don’t think she sounds bad, not by a long shot. I’m sure her voice will grown on my in a few more episodes.
Little complaints aside, I agree, this is a guilty pleasure show and I’m happy to see a decent adaptation for the first episode. I’m also digging how well the manga art was adapted. Well, steam censorship is usually a means to encourage BD sales…