Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu - Purezza - Episode 1

Wow, this must be some kind of record... A hot springs episode as the first instalment of a new series? While the first season of Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu was a pretty fun and cute little show all thigns considered, I guess they're trying to reward the series loyal viewers this time around by cramming in as much fan service as humanly possible.

Then again, as far as the broadcast release of this episode goes, the only real fan service you get is if you have some kind of fetish about steam, thanks to one of the more clumsy and over-bearing uses of censorship I think I've seen in anime. Even if you don't care for the fan service then having steam cover the entire screen for large portions of the episode pretty much ruins the viewing experience, making for some frustrating moments throughout this episode.


That aside, after Haruka and Yuuto find themselves invited to that aforementioned hot spring by Shiina and a handful of her friends, needless to say Haruka's sister and team of maids end up coming along uninvited to liven things up, including a new maid with a penchant for acting like some kind of attack chiwawa. Between one thing and another, all of the usual old hot springs cliches are rolled out, from the "don't touch me there" shenanigans through to that time-honoured tradition of switching the male and female baths around at night just to confuse people. Does that ever actually happen anywhere in Japan by the way?

To be honest, I'm actually rather disappointed by the lowest common denominator path this opening episode of Purezza took - While the initial series was hardly clean-cut, it still kept the fan service to a minimum to instead focus on the characters and their relationships while still throwing some genuinely entertaining (at times anyway) comedy into the mix. In this episode a lot of that rather sweet relationship-building and the like is gone, replaced with fan service galore. Now, I'm no prude, but to be honest the way the entire thing was handled was pretty dull really, and I can only hope for more from future episodes... Assuming the entire animation budget hasn't been blown on producing steam, that is.