3ET: Yozakura Quartet: Hana no Uta

The titular quartet. Yes, the catgirl's ears are real.

Studio: Tatsunoko

Director: Ryouchimo

Writer: Ishikawa Manabu (Kuuchuu Buranko)

Main Cast:

Fukuen Misato as Yarizakura Hime

Kaji Yuuki as Hiizumi Akina

Sawashiro Miyuki as Isone Kotoha

Fujita Saki as Nanami Ao

Character Design: Ryouchimo (Tetsuwan Birdy Decode)

Music: Yashikin

Yozakura Quartet: Hana no Uta presented me with a couple of conundrums. The most basic of these was whether I needed to watch it in the first place. It is a remake of a 2008 series, but is a follow-up to a 2010 OVA. I decided to just watch the first episode, and if things made enough sense, I'd finish up the three episode test as usual. Now, the first episode doesn't exactly make sense, but I didn't feel like I had missed a great deal of pertinent information, so I finished up the three episode test. Which leads me to the next question, will I watch more?

The plot of Yozakura Quartet revolves around a town where the human world and demon world meet in modern Japanese city life. Children of both races go to school, they attend festivals, and the office workers deal with bureaucracy. The center of it all is the Hiizumi Life Counseling Office, which facilitates life for the demons in the human world. Four teenagers with different powers along with a few demons who work at the Counseling Office round out the cast. What impresses me the most about this group is how established the relationships felt for how short of a time I saw them. It gives a feeling of how normal their lives are to them, despite how strange it must seem to the audience. This may be a function of there being a prequel OVA to establish said relationships, but jumping right into it didn't feel that awkward to me.

Just an average day, really.

There are problems with this show though, and much of it is avoidable. First, the exposition dumping is as transparent as the paper scoops the festival goers use to try catch goldfish. I realize there is a lot of information about the town to get across to the audience, but there has to be a less clumsy way than just telling it to children, and therefore the audience. Second, yeah, I'll harp on panty shots and boob grabs that are just there for audience scintillation. Those aren't from anyone's viewpoint and they don't do anything other than waste time that could be spent showing off the town and its people. Time is a major limiting factor in any televised medium, and wasting it on stuff like that is poor direction.

The other issue I had for most of the first three episodes may turn out to be a strength. Yozakura Quartet: Hana no Uta takes a while to get going, in fact it doesn't really finish setting up the characters until the end of the third episode. But, now that it has done that, I think it's in a good position to actually do something. There are the demons who are trying to shackle their powers to fit in with the humans, the human priest whose power to send the demons back to their own dimension who thinks doing so is equivalent to murder, the "mayor" who tries to keep everything in line, and finally an actual villain whose motives are not clear, but whose machinations are probably already in motion. I wouldn't have thought it after one episode, but this show seems to have a long-term plan for this season, even if the next episode is a pool/beach episode.

As you can see, the office is a whirlwind of activity.

The more I thought about it, the more comfortable I became in giving Yozakura Quartet: Hana no Uta a pass. And what really clinched it for me wanting to watch more is that it got stronger as the episodes went on. There are several characters who get their backstories looked into in the third episode, after two episodes of meandering around looking at the daily life of the Counseling Office. And this is exactly what the show needed. I'm looking forward to watching more of this flawed, yet promising title, as long as they cut down on boob grabs and shots up the skirt.