Hyperdimension Neptunia The Animation – Nep Nep Festival Review

Before You Watch

Hyperdimension Neptunia The Animation has a few episodes in the series. It also now has been getting a chunk of OVA’s localized in the west. One of which is the one called the Nep-Nep Festival. The overall premise of this episode is the Planeptune Festival is in pure swing, and wouldn’t you know it, Neptune has a lot of fans who want her autograph. Neptune is now stuck inside and has to finish the autographs in time for her part in the festival.

Now, this particular episode will be very confusing if you aren’t aware of the rest of the Hyperdimension Neptunia The Animation series. It has characters you may not understand, and it doesn’t explain them very well. The world itself also gets no explanation it pretty much expects you to have watched the series or have played the games. If you have done neither, go do that first.

What Happens

Neptune is signing autographs when she says in her mind she just wants to stay lazy forever. After signing one autograph Neptune turns into stone. Luckily the dimension traveling Neptune is currently in the area to have an explanation that this is something that goddesses do once they feel overworked. And that it only takes a few hours before she would be back to normal. They didn’t know what happens to Neptune when she turns to stone. Neptune has appeared in a ghost dimension that is apparently the lazy feelings of the goddesses, and they all feel the lazy emotions for the Goddesses so that the ones in Neptune’s dimension can use their motivation to work on their Goddess tasks.

Neptune is ecstatic hearing this information and immediately decides that she, too wants to be lazy with them all and starts playing a variety of video games. we get moments of Neptune, then also feeling bored of being lazy and decides to try to clean up. As soon as she gets this small feeling of motivation to do something, the proper Neptune of this dimension shows up. This Neptune instantly goes on the attack and is annoyed with our Neptune since she hardly ever gets to be in this dimension since our Neptune chooses to be lazy most of the time. We have a small fight scene between the two before they become buddies and want to be lazy together.

On the outside world, Nepgear is having a great time with the dimension-traveling Neptune, that is until they lose track of time and realize that the time for Neptune’s fight is nearly upon them. Nepgear decides to try to be the responsible one and go eat up time telling very bad jokes in front of the audience. IF and Compa, who are friends of Neptune and Nepgear, then make a hasty decision to use a new outfit from Nepgear to cover Dimension Travelling Neptune to look as if she is the real Neptune in her Purple Heart form. To give them a small explanation for this, they say that Dimension hopping Neptune is a Basilicom staff for Planeptune and wants to help out. Nepgear then unlocks her CPU form, and together they kill the prop eggplant monsters.

Eventually, Neptune gets even more bored of being lazy in the ghost dimension when she suddenly remembers the Planeptune festival and says she has to leave. Immediately with her saying this, Neptune is able to leave. She comes back extremely motivated and is signing the rest of the autographs at an alarming rate when she then notices the Dimension Hopping Neptune, and we get a very good scene of the two meeting each other.

The Good

Throughout the episode, we get peeks of other characters from the Series, you get to see Arfoire, Chu, Ram, Rom, Blanc, Uni, Noire, and a slew of other cameo characters. If you are someone who loves this series, you will recognize them and feel just the slight jitter of seeing them interact even a little bit. I watched this with my wife, so it was fun just to point them all out to her, even though she had no idea what I was talking about. When there were fights happening on the screen, the attention to choreography was there, and the animation made it look fantastic. The motion was captured well when it was meant for spatial awareness. Plus, I loved seeing moves come from the game, like Mirage Dance happening on screen when they killed the eggplant creatures. The colors were extremely vibrant, and they demonstrated the areas quite well. The music in Nep-Nep Festival was extremely well done.

What Was Not as Good

Even though I loved watching this episode I knew there were still flaws in the episode. I would say the biggest one was the pacing. We get only two real story plots happening in unison. Neptune in the Ghost Dimension and Nepgear and Dimension Travelling Neptune. They only needed to really go back between the two but there were moments it would go to other characters that would add nothing to the episode. The most one scene added was Noire asking Uni if she wanted to go to the Planeptune festival in person when they were done with work. It never went anywhere since they just stayed in Lastation to watch the events. Seeing them watch on TV made sense, don’t get me wrong, since it was showing the perspective of them looking on as Nepgear made herself embarrassed with the jokes which gave us an outside point of view. Just the moments it went back and forth of Lastation, the festival onlookers, Nepgear, Neptune with the Ghost Dimension, then back to Nepgear was a bit jarring and made it difficult to keep focus of what was going on. A small nitpick I had was in animation the character’s mouths move but their chins do not. It wasn’t a mind-breaking experience by any means, but it was noticeable.

Verdict?

Hyperdimension Neptunia The Animation: Nep-Nep Festival is a fun and engaging episode. I wouldn’t recommend it if you are not a fan of the series or if you haven’t seen any of the prior episodes. This is an absolute fan series episode that just lets you watch action and characters. It isn’t a bad thing, but it isn’t a necessary episode, either. My favorite scene is Neptune meeting Dimension Travelling Neptune or the Mirage Dance animation from Nepgear. Both of those were solid.

You can watch Hyperdimension Neptunia The Animation: Nep-Nep Festival on Steam until November 1st, 2022.

Review Disclosure Statement: Hyperdimension Neptunia The Animation: Nep-Nep Festival was provided to us by Idea Factory International for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please go review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.