Alternative title(s): Yuragi-sou no Yuuna-san
Manga Adaptation by Shueisha
Streaming on Crunchyroll

Premise

Dull protagonist, an exorcist, moves into a room at a hot springs because it has cheap rent. There he finds himself living with a variety of quirky women who all seem interested in him, even though he’s very boring. He doesn’t exorcise a ghost despite being an exorcist, because she’s cute.

Euri’s verdict: Fifteen years late and still trash

The protagonist, particularly bland exorcist with a throwaway sad backstory, moves in with five women. There’s the owner of the hot springs, who, despite being the owner, is definitely a young girl. Then there’s a permanently drunk lady with large breasts and little clothing, who doesn’t have a problem getting close to the protagonist. Next up is a girl who is dressed like a cat that licks protag’s face before talking to him, followed by a tsundere ninja girl who wears a short skirt and tights and is the subject of many panty shots. Last but not least there’s a cute ghost who protag will very obviously be having a relationship with by the end of the show. Does any of this sound familiar?

It was back when I was in uni that I really started watching anime as it aired, and between that and the anime society I was part of, there were so damn many of these shows. And I’m not just talking about harem shows, but specifically the kind with the bizzaro OP full of minor references from episodes that won’t air, boob jiggles and panty shots galore, and a wacky selection of girls to form the harem. No childhood friends here (yet), we’ve got a ghost and a ninja. Shows that I haven’t thought about since 2008 that are like this include Akikan! and Kemeko DX, and consider this your NSFW warning on those dumpster fires.

The whole point of having a cast as tropey as this is to see how the protagonist reacts around them – he’s supposed to be the normality around their absurd characters. But the show doesn’t even give us that much, choosing instead to spend the episode displaying a variety of boob and butt shots.

Look, you can still have an ecchi show that delivers on character development, but the fact that it leaned so heavily on showing skin right off the bat doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that the rest of the series will be any different. And while I get that this show is set in a hot springs, they’ve even used the ‘guy sees entire female cast naked by accident’ trope already. Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs showed its hand so quickly that I don’t have even the tiniest curiosity for how episode two will play out. It’s going to be bland, unoriginal, and not worth your time.

Iro’s verdict: Ghost of Anime Past

I skimmed this after we talked about it on the podcast, and it is 100% part of the “skirting around guidelines so horny tweens can read not-quite-porn” genre that To-Love-Ru and any number of completely forgettable early-00s harem series are (the manga even runs in Weekly Jump). That pretty much means it isn’t worth the time of any civilized adult, no matter how much cheap rent or ghost punching is featured; skip it. All that said, if you really do have a hankering for bros banging busty ghosts or whatever, maybe check out My Lovely Ghost Kana, which actually has some amount of emotional depth to its storytelling.