Love Hina

Love Hina is really great! From the first moment, I was gripped by this story's violence, drama and slight funniness, s well as the romance, which develops as the story goes on.

So, a young man called Urashima Keitaro suddenly finds himself working as the manager for an all-girls dormitory. Yes, you can probably see where that story is going. Lots of slapstick humor, romance and funniness is the recipe for this show. I think it's pretty cool, and if you like romance/harem anime, this is a definite must-see.

Looking for a romance/comedy/harem anime to kill time? Look no more because Love Hina will SERIOUSLY KILL your time.

I've watched Love Hina before way back when I was still a kid and I remember loving this series, but after re-watching this series 10+ years later, I began to question my taste for anime because Love Hina is by far one of the most stupid and ridiculous anime I've ever watched and I can't believe it’s actually possible for me to hate an anime this much.

I'm writing this review at the risk of getting viciously mauled by an angry mob of Love Hina fans who ... will do anything to defend their beloved anime, so I'll try not to be too harsh on this. Okay, time to get started with this rant—I mean review.

*CHARACTERS: 5/10
The characters of Love Hina are soooo darn GENERIC and just downright ANNOYING that I need to punch the wall just to appease my frustration. Let me introduce them.

— Urashima, Keitarou - The main protagonist. He is really dumb and extremely unreliable but he is very persevering (Sounds familiar?) and he makes a good punching bag for Naru.
— Narusegawa, Naru - The main heroine. She's a tsundere on drugs who's got nothing better to do besides beating up Keitarou EVERY…SINGLE...DARN...TIME!!!.
— Aoyama, Motoko - The very typical "Ice Queen" of the harem.
— Maehara, Shinobu - The kind and pure-hearted middle schooler *cough* loli bait.
— Su, Kaolla - The awfully annoying and carefree kid in the harem.
— Konno, Mitsune - The "mature" one.
— Otohime, Mutsumi - The airhead.

I don't have a problem with harems, in fact, I love them (not including reverse harems) so I'm quite used to stereotypical girls, but the girls in Love Hina are just so darn annoying that it's impossible for me to like any of them. The one I have the biggest problem with though is not one of the girls, it's the stupid MC Keitarou! because he is just so fucking useless and unreliable! I JUST FUCKING HATE THIS GUY!!!. He doesn't have any redeeming qualities whatsoever except for his undying perseverance and hard work that leads to nothing most of the time.

*STORY: 4/10
The story revolves around Keitaro and the "promise" but mostly, the episodes are just stupid fillers designed to prolong this stupid anime. The fillers doesn't contribute to the plot one bit and can get really really random, for example, ancient turtle civilizations? seriously? come on, they can do better than that. I wish they focused more on the main plot because I was actually curious who's this mysterious "promise" girl.

Although I have lots of bad things to say about this anime, I can't deny the fact that I did get some laughs watching Love Hina, but the jokes becomes so repetitive (Naru beating up Keitarou) I'm laughing no more.

~Love Hina's formula for comedy~

Keitarou + accidents + misunderstanding = Naru beating the crap out of him

*ART: 8/10
The art is fine, I don't really have much complaints about it because it's a very typical art for an old anime.

*SOUND: 7/10
I actually liked the OP and ED and I kinda felt nostalgic hearing them again. The OP is kinda catchy, although it annoyed some viewers, I'm not annoyed by it at all.

As for the Japanese voice acting, there's one voice that grabbed my attention, the voice of Motoko. Her voice is adorable especially when she is screaming. The voices of the other characters are also good and fits the characters quite well.

*OVERALL/ENJOYMENT: 5/10
I recommend this to you if...
you like generic harem anime.
you like old and repetitive jokes.
you like an extremely violent tsundere heroine and a pathetic loser MC.
you're masochistic.

But if you're not any of what I mentioned above, I suggest you cross this out on your list now, because I guarantee you'll hate this one.

When Love Hina was released, it came with a high pedigree. First anime featuring no cel animation whatsoever, and the foundation of a successful and very popular manga by the soon-to-be-well-known Ken Akamatsu. Yes, everyone looked forward to Love Hina, and everyone most likely had all their hopes for it dashed along the rocks in an instant.

For as innovative as they may have wanted us to think the animation is, it's just bad. I know cel animation anime that flow far more smoothly than this. It jerks, the characters are often disproportioned, character movement is erratic and often impossible even by anime standards. Backgrounds are ... nice looking but that's about it.

The BGM had my ears bleeding. It's an example of why amateurs shouldn't be playing with artificial synthesizers. It's all over the place, never appropriate, and nothing you would ever want to hear stand-alone. The only decent thing the series manages is a very catchy OP sequence, but with repeated listening, even that will beging to grind on your eardrums.

Enough about the technical aspects, Love Hina is based off the manga by Ken Akamatsu. It's a fantastic romantic comedy and the series roots itself in the concepts that made the original very popular. In fact, many of the main story is well scripted and executed, but then manages to make everything likeable about the story horrible. The comedic timing is off, the dialogue is laughably awful, and of course there is no nudity. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not some horndog wanting to see the girls nude, but don't have twenty-thousand bath scenes and all the girls bathe wearing towels. IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. Either make an ecchi series or don't!

But that's not the worst part, oh no. What really makes this series near-unbearable is the godless amount of filler. 1/3 of the series doesn't even correspond with the story, introduces meaningless characters who serve absolutely no purpose, and only serves to annoy the viewer who slowly realizes what he or she has been cheated out of.

Speaking of characters, the core cast stays very true to the original idea whether you like them or hate them, but when the series devolves to filler it feels like the characters become stereotypical versions of themselves. Not only that, but the spotlight is put on meaningless filler characters who only add minor and inconsequential conflict for the allotted time of the episode they're in. Development is slow and often unrecognizable for the majority of the cast, sans Keitaro, Naru and arguably Shinobu. It's just very unsatisfying given the length of the series, and what is done with the characters.

You know, the first time I watched it, I wanted to like it but the more I watched, the more I realized I was watching crap. My 12-year-old cousin who watched the series with me lost all interest in anime after finishing this I kid you not. Let that be a warning to anyone who thinks that because this anime is popular, that it's also good.

Overall, Love Hina gets a 4 out of 10.