Yozakura Quartet: Hoshi no Umi

The story for this OVA is mostly focused on Rin and a bit of her background story.

It covers the weird time gap between episodes 8 and 9 of Hana no Uta, so that's when I watched it, and it seems to be the perfect timing plot wise to watch it, as I imagine if you watched this before watching Hana no Uta, then it would be hard to grasp the characters and such as they are only very briefly explained or mentioned in this OVA.

Very typical of the shounen, action, fantasy genre. I personally like this kind of art style, although I haven't read the ... manga, I'll be sure to put it on my list.

I decided to watch "Hoshi no Umi" before watching "Hana no Uta" becuase people say it's a prequel. I was little scared at first because I've watched the previous Yozakura Quarter series and it had quite different character designs. At first I hated new ones but at the second sight I realised they're still really great.
So on to the actual review:

"Everyone says the starry night sky is beautiful."
To Azuma Rin starry night sky was something that she hated the most in the whole world. Why? You need to watch those 3 episodes to know because Rin is the real main character here!

Story 8/10
Story starts ... really fast and viewer can feel somewhat lost in all those characters and places. I heard that 4 first volumes of manga weren't animated, so it may be a good choice to read them first (I can't read manga online because of my eyes).

When I finally remembered most of the characters and met some new ones I really enjoyed the story. There was a lot of funny moments, especially with Yue and all her bears but you can find plenty serious scenes too.
Pacing of the story is really well too, I mean you won't get bored but you will get some slower moments too.

Art 7/10
Overall art wasn't that bad. We got nice character designs, vibrant colours and detailed (but static!) backgrounds.
Animation and art in opening is top-notch.
The thing I didn't like was details.. no I mean LACK of details. Sometimes we were getting beutiful detailed eyes and second later we had seen the same eyes that looked like just 2 dots of colour. Nothing nice.
Animation was crappy sometimes too. It looked like it was having lags.

Sound 6/10
Why "only" 6? Because there is some music but you will notice it mostly at the end when some nice piano background-song is playing. Other than that I noticed a lot of quiet moments that could use some fast-paced action music because I think action scenes beg for some good sound.. really.
Opening is really nice (but english of those singers is not) and voice acting too. I loved Zakuro's voice because she had mean and slutty voice as well as good and calm (TOO CALM) one too.

Character 8/10
3 episodes are not too much to meet SO MANY characters and I really mean MANY.
Nurse, youkais, hanyou, some strange little boy, his maid, Enjou (??), demon hunters and MUCH MUCH more.
I was overwhelmed by their numbers but I loved each of them. They all have different characters and that's something nice to see.

Enjoyment 9/10
I enjoyed this short series a lot. I laughed at Yue's bear moments and was sad when watching scenes with Rin. I loved the ending too and all this stuff with "starry night".

Overall 8/10 (7,6)
8 matches here because it's Very Good. Really. I'm happy I watched this and I hope you will be happy too 'cause I recommend it to everyone.
It's not the best anime in the world, you will see some crappy animation, lack of details or music but the story will still be great!