Yotsunoha - Episode 2

The first half of Yotsunoha turned out to be pretty run-of-the-mill stuff, as expected from an H-game to anime translation, and unfortunately the second half of this OVA fails to turn things around.

For starters, with its constant flash-backs to the past of the main characters while the school they're wandering around was open mixed in with present day scenes, things soon get disjointed and even downright confusing, leaving you trying to keep track of what's what. The episode also makes it patently obvious which of the girls Makoto Yuki is interested in is going to 'win' far too early, leaving the usual tensions seen in this kind of show to be a very tame and half-hearted affair. To top it all, Nono (who gets by far the most screen time in this episode) has a hugely irritating voice. Yes, I know she's from Osaka and it's just the accent, but something about her voice really grates.

So, a formulaic OVA reaches a formulaic end, and to be honest it only ever felt like it was going through the motions without much thought being put into it. While this kind of show has been done to death many times over there's always the opportunity to do something fresh with it, or at least put a handful of truly interesting characters together in some interesting situations, but all we had here were a few generic characters with generic feelings for one another. Dull, dull, dull.