Hyperdimension Neptunia The Animation: Little Purple Sunshine Review

Hyperdimension Neptunia The Animation is starting to get more OVA’s localized, with Little Purple Sunshine, and Nep-Nep Festival. We’ll be checking out Little Purple Sunshine this go-round, which will only be available via Steam until November 1st, 2022.

Before You Watch

Based on the prior OVA episode “Nep-Nep Festival” I was expecting this episode to require some prior knowledge to understand what is going on. That was not the case. This is more like a stand-alone episode that covers something that doesn’t really need to be explained. The basic premise is the Goddesses of Gamindustri are fighting a new monster created by the Eggplant merchant Arfoire. This monster then turns our four heroes into children with its power. The basis of this episode is the CPU sisters are trying to find and take care of them. That is the premise and ultimately it is pretty good. I enjoyed myself and my wife who had no idea about anything Neptune could understand and enjoyed the episode as well. This is a high recommendation from me.

What Happens

Arfoire has combined two monsters into one to create the “Level Trick”. Level Trick has an ability that it lowers the level of the person it hits with its beam. The action of this episode begins in the middle of the battle as Purple Heart, Green Heart, Black Heart, and White Heart are all transformed and ready to take down Arfoire. Arfoire is confident in the new power of Level Trick and is distracting them as much as she can. Soon Purple Heart dodges a blast that hits the other three Goddess CPUs.

In order to try and have the two enemies attack each other, Purple Heart moves in closer and gets right on the opposite side of Arfoire and Level Trick. As they are fighting Level Trick then shoots a giant blast aimed toward Purple Heart. Arfoire and Purple Heart clash with their swords as the blast overtakes both of them and we get a jump cut over to Nepgear who is on the trail of finding the Goddess CPUs. She soon stumbles upon what appears to be child Noire (Black Heart) and Vert (Green Heart).

It appears that the level-down attack also has a side effect that makes the one hit also younger. Only a small time later Nepgear has found child Blanc (White Heart) as well. The only one that she is unable to find is child Neptune (Purple Heart).

Shortly afterward we get a cut to young Arfoire who is just her human side rather than becoming a child. The design of human Arfoire looks to be more in line with Chrome from Super Neptunia RPG, more than it is the human design of her in Hyperdimension Neptunia: Re:birth. Arfoire has no recollection of what was going on other than her own name and her eggplant farm. She decides to cut some of the eggplants when she then finds Neptune as a child. The scene goes back to Nepgear who doesn’t think she can find Neptune the way she was going about it and brings back the children to the Planeptune Basilicom. She alerts the CPU sisters and has them babysit the child Goddesses while she wants to use the resources at the Basilicom to try and find Neptune with satellite help.

We then get a scene of Arfoire trying to get Neptune to eat eggplants cooked in a variety of ways since Neptune was hungry. Neptune disagrees and says that it is disgusting. She eats some of the meals but only around where the eggplants are located. She asks for pudding which Arfoire declines and says she can only give her eggplants or she won’t eat at all. Neptune gets sad and Arfoire asks her to help her out with getting more eggplants. Neptune has fun with the eggplants and finds a flower.

They start getting along and having some sentimental moments when Arfoire suddenly gets her memories back and realizes who Neptune actually is. We bounce back to Nepgear who is frustrated until Histoire gives her an idea to use a share crystal to find Neptune since even as a child the energy will resonate with the Goddess. She takes off in her CPU form while Arfoire goes to confront Neptune about being a Goddess. She hits Neptune who is confused at what Arfoire is talking about and decides to run away. As she is running away Level Trick finds her and wants to finish her off.

Arfoire goes to chase Neptune when she notices Level Trick and steps in between them protecting Neptune from a blast. This makes Neptune sad as she wishes to gain the strength to help Arfoire. As Neptune is saying this, the share crystal that Nepgear is carrying resonated and sends energy to Neptune. This transforms her outfit into a wedding outfit. This outfit signifies when Arfoire and Neptune are looking at a church and Arfoire explains what weddings are for. She starts fighting Level Trick afterward when Nepgear shows up. Together they reflect one of the blasts back towards Level Trick and he turns back into a baby mechanized creature. Once Level Trick turns into a baby, the energy he gained from leveling down the Goddesses and Arfoire is returned. Neptune turns back to normal as well as the other Goddesses.

All the girls are surrounding the tv as the CPU sisters turn on a home video they made of when the Goddesses looked like children. Noire, and Blanc want them to turn it off but Vert is excited to see it and asks Nepgear if she was an easy younger sister to take care of. Before she can answer the doorbell rings and Neptune gets excited as IF and Compa walk in what appears to be Pizza boxes. Neptune wonders how they got pizza so fast and then eats a bite to discover it was Eggplant sweetened bread. She then gets ecstatic as she now loves the taste of sweetened eggplant. The last scene is Arfoire in a pizza delivery person outfit going on about how this will ruin Neptune’s tastebuds since she doesn’t like eggplants.

The Good

This episode has a lot going for it. The art direction, the camera angles, and the quick cuts all serve as a narrative in helping the episode in having tension and direction. Every time we go to Nepgear or Neptune it adds more weight to moments that will be further on in the episode. The pacing felt natural and helped us see what both sides were doing during the same time frame. I really enjoyed the art and the background shots. Scenes with the Church and the eggplant farm were beautiful. I have never once watched an episode of anything involving eggplants and then wanted to eat eggplants. This episode is the exception. I had a weird craving for eggplant seeing all the various meals Arfoire made with them. They all looked delicious!

If it helps you understand how desirable the meals looked, my wife decided to google eggplant recipes directly after the episode was finished. Now she wants to go buy eggplants to try them out. I honestly don’t know if I would want to try them unless they looked as good as the meals Arfoire made but at least there is a desire now. It is weird that an episode that mainly focuses on Neptune and Arfoire building a relationship with each other is probably going to go down as one of my favorite pieces of Neptunia media. I want more of them building relationships together and seeing the pain that comes when Arfoire does learn that Neptune is a Goddess.

The Bad

Honestly trying to think of what is bad on this episode only points me to say, that I want more Eggplant dishes to be zoomed in on. We see a small overview of the dishes with one dish only that gets a zoom-in treatment. I would say the only real bad thing is how the action scenes are choreographed. We don’t get a lot of them but in most of them the action is happening just off the edge of the screen. When the Goddesses are fighting Arfoire we see jump cuts between the two sides before a blast hits three of them as we are in a smoke screen. We also don’t see much of the deflect ability Neptune activates with Nepgear except from the point of view from Level Trick. The action just felt a little jarring.

Verdict?

This episode was a joy to watch and experience. I would recommend this episode to anyone who likes Neptunia in even a casual sense. I would also say you should watch it if you like just random episodes of well-written and paced anime. It still has moments of easter eggs for those who are fans of the series but you don’t need to understand them, nor do they take away from the bigger plot. I could see myself wanting to rewatch this episode just to see more eggplant meals from Arfoire.

Hyperdimension Neptunia: The Animation: Little Purple Sunshine is on Steam but will be removed from Steam on November 1st, 2022.

Review Disclosure Statement: Hyperdimension Neptunia: The Animation: Little Purple Sunshine 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 review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.