Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs is a 12 episode anime that is based off the manga series. To date, there are four OVAs that were released with special editions of the manga. The protagonist is Fuyuzora Kogarashi, who has psychic abilities. He’s able to see ghosts and had enough training to be able to exorcist ghosts by punching them. That’s the extent of his abilities though. Having had a tough childhood, he travels to Yuragi Inn, where the rent is cheap, and attends high school at the town. We quickly learn he’s been possessed by many ghosts in the past and gained a lot of random skills as a result, which he puts to good use at times.
Yuragi Inn is infamous around town as being haunted, and Kogarashi sees firsthand the ghost that has been haunting the place. It’s nothing to fear though as it’s just a high school aged girl named Yuuna. This is probably the most interesting part of the anime because five minutes in, it shows its hand as a generic anime that’s mainly for the fan service.
Yuragi Inn has other occupants and naturally they’re all attractive girls, so Kogarashi has quickly built himself a harem. They’re of varying ages and appearances but Kogarashi will often find himself accidentally having a peek here or touching something there. It’s to the point where it constantly happens, someone will get angry, and then rinse and repeat. It’s almost immediately tiring and way too predictable that it feels very lazy in its execution. The anime isn’t even trying at this point.
Yunna herself has the typical airhead qualities, such as accidentally revealing herself in front of Kogarashi, finding herself embarrassed and always having her thoughts flow towards him. It’s noted that she’s still lingering on as there is something she wants to do, as there is a risk of ghosts who stay too long on Earth will fall into Hell. She ends up partnering with Kogarashi, going wherever he goes, and helps him up with various supernatural stuff that he naturally finds himself in.
It gets more and more apparent that the whole purpose of the anime is the fan service. It leans towards quantity over quality, so the quality isn’t great. There’s so many of it, pretty much every scene, that you get desensitised quickly. It doesn’t help that it cycles through each heroine, and it’s always the same generic sequence of events that way too predictable. Characters will awkwardly move or fall into certain positions, so it ends up cheapening the whole effect.
There’s really not much of a plot going on, not that you’d expect something complex or amazing for this genre, but definitely more than this. As a result, we only have Kogarashi going on about his normal life, with various girls popping up and unconditionally fawning over him. There may be a rival here and there, but all in all, it falls very flat. There are no stakes here, Kogarashi is surprisingly powerful as a character. He also plays the part of a pure innocent boy that’s just about to step into adulthood but not quite there.
The other characters are equally forgettable, because that’s what happens when it’s just about style and no substance. We barely get any backstory or their motivations, which is a shame. The character designs and potential are there, and it could have facilitated both the fan service and actual real character development but it looks like the author went the easy lazy route so all we get are one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs. Despite the flaws, there are some genuine laugh-out-loud moments and nicer moments where Kogarashi shows off his good side.
The OVAs, as they did not have to be aired on TV, pushes the limits on what it can do with its fan service without crossing the line. It comes very very close though, and the framing devices for the fan service remains weak, but gets worse with each subsequent OVA. The initial ones fill in some of the gaps in the anime while the later ones jump ahead and so there will be characters we haven’t seen before in the anime, and spoilers for several of them. The fourth OVA in particular throws all pretence away to bare the characters completely and have them in sexual positions (it’s not even suggestive anymore by this point).
Overall, Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs is an unremarkable harem comedy. Its biggest flaw is how all its fan service, and the way it occurs, is completely unoriginal. It’s stuff that has been done plenty of times in previous harem anime so it just loses too much impact. That’s not to mention the huge rays of light acting as censors (but there are uncensored versions from the Blu-Ray release). The plot is non-existent, and all the characters are forgettable. There are some genuine moments but all in all, it’s forgettable.
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