Love Hina

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Love Hina and I go way back. This was the first series that I downloaded pirated fansubs for back in 2001. I stumbled onto it as a baby anime fan trying to find "generic anime" art to decorate my desktop wallpaper. By itself out of context, Love Hina fit that description pretty well. Regardless, though, Noticed the little kana Love Hina logos on these images and wondered what show this was.

The thing was, in 2001, Slice-of-Life anime was functionally unheard of in the US. Everything on Toonami was fantasy/scifi, everything on pretty much any other anime source was similarly fantastical. I wanted something grounded ... and realistic, something that took place in modern day Japan. Anyway, Love Hina ended up being this in a big way for me. It was sort of providential that I got the subs when I did because later that year the manga started coming out in the US.

Now the manga. That's a whole new can of worms. Suffice it to say it quickly became my favorite manga of all time. Grant it, I had only read a small handful at that point, but still. The anime was good, the manga was 1000x better.

Love Hina is a pretty by the numbers harem comedy where the twist is that the ladies by and large hate the guy (at least for a while, they come around). Usually in a harem you have a dude surrounded by ladies who fawn over him while he flusters or is mostly aloof. Keitaro, our protagonist, on the other hand, is a lech and a creep, and is constantly punished for his bad behavior. Due to manga plot circumstance, he finds himself manager of an all girls dorm (converted from a very fancy hot spring inn). He's got the ususal childhood friend motivation, supposedly if two people who love each other get into Tokyo University together, they will be together forever. He remembers making this promise with a girl when he was a child and has clung to this until adulthood, even though he can't remember the name or really the face of the girl. Unfortunately Keitaro is kindof a dumbass and has failed multiple times already to get into Tokyo U. So here he is, managing a girls dorm and trying to study, meanwhile maybe the girl he made the promise to years ago is closer than he thinks.

Where the manga excels, in my opinion, is its mix of comedy and heart. Naru is a really gd good character. She should just be a stereotypical tsundre but she has a lot more depth than that and really carries the series. Keitaro goes through an interesting evolution, too, though he is a somewhat weak protagonist, given that so much the comedy relies on his doofy pervyness. The other characters are good, too. They each start out as pretty stock but grow quite a bit as the series goes on. But aside from all that touchy-feely crap, the comedy is often really where it's at. Akumatsu Ken is just such a funny writer/artist. His timing is so often on point, dropping hilarious panels right in in unexpected moments. And while the story does start to feel a bit strained by the end, he does manage to inject enough new characters, situations, and evolutions from time to time that it manages to stay fresh.

I've just completed Love Hina a second time. First time I completed it I gave it a score of 6/10. After the second reading completion, I still think that this score is not too low. Why?

[Story: 5/10]
Actually for story, there could be 2 parts: Before chapter 70 and after 70.
To me, the 2 parts represent a [Before very random and draggy situations] and [After very random and draggy situations]. This is especially so for the main love relationships and the never-ending memory issues that seem to keep changing from here on==. Therefore, chapter 70 marks a drastic change in character personalities, story coherence and also ... art at times.

Before 70, the story was quite smooth, sometimes there were a few unexplainable things and jumps in storyline, but it was still good, at about 7/10 to 8/10. There was a huge focus on romance even if there were harem and ecchi scenes as well.

After 70, the story sometimes was very random, characters changed personalities, doing very weird things, and the ultimate "escapism" character emerges. It was quite painful to read through some chapters, numbering to maybe 10-20 that I almost dropped it but completed it for the sake of completing it.

Still, it was not as bad as Kimi no Iru Machi, but could have had it continued further. But then again, if you think about it, this manga has near no school scenes and very little family history exploration except for a few select characters. Heck, I think 70% of all manga happenings are inside the dorm==.

[Art: 7/10]
Hmm, art is evidently not a very strong point of this manga. Aside from mainly lacking details in some background scenes, the most impt point is the expressions on characters and the character design consistency.

Sure, some characters are drawn well and beautifully, but one issue is that due to the number of panels (there were a lot of small panels), some of the characters might not have looked as consistent as they should have been.

Especially the last few dozen chapters... some situations were drawn with such little detail that I had to think and figure out on my own what the manga was depicting.

And 1 more thing, maybe it has to do with the majority of characters having a smiley mouth whenever ANYTHING happens, on one sense it makes the manga lighter and nor so serious, but in another sense sometimes most of the expressions are the same. So the severity of some scenes were not portrayed that well.

[Character:6/10]
For heaven's sake, character personality consistency and Narusegawa!!!! I have never found myself hating a character so much ONLY during about 40 chapters out of 123 chapters (wow... 1/3...).
I'm not going to divulge a lot of details regarding what she did but honestly, I have no idea why the manga artist would put such a character that would obviously make a great escape artist.

Character personality consistency is the greatest problem of this manga. To say just a few examples, take Sara and Naru for example. Sara's personality was initially very strong and bright, but after a certain chapter.... she was a shadow of her former self. For Naru, I am not exactly sure of her personality as it keep changes here and there but overall, I think she would make a great escape artist. O, and for the last adventure arc, character personality does not matter anymore.

Character development was pretty bad. First of all, very little character past, so I could not really understand the characters. Secondly, most of the situations in Hinata Sou are very simplistic. 1. Dorm 2. Todai examination hall or just the surroundings 3. Japan other cities or outside Japan (But all confined to mainly Hinata-Sou characters). So what makes a character? If I could not see their past that makes the characters then I should see what they do right? With character inconsistency and mainly just interaction with dorm-mates... I think this manga is aiming more for slapstick comedy rather than a real romance... (even the quest for the childhood promise seems slapstick at times).

[Enjoyment: 8/10]
Before 70, I think it was 10/10 but after that, sometimes it went to 3/10 or 4/10 so....

Love Hina is a light manga with a lot of slapstick comedy and accidental pantsu showing. Ecchi harem rom-com I guess.

[Overall: 6/10]
I do wish the mangaka had not tried to drag this for so long if he couldn't, as it made Naru's character look very silly and childish at the last 50 chapters or so.== Well it isn't as bad as Kimi no Iru Machi though and it does have a lot of similarities to To Love-Ru so I would recommend that manga to people who like Love Hina.

Classicly shit that is. Actually it's completely fucking awful.

Love Hina is the story about a Ronin who wants to get into Todai the no.1 university in Japan. So he joins the Hinata Inn which is now a girls only dormitory. His grandmother own's the dormitory but now gave the ownership to her grandson the MMC, The Ronin. Now he has to live with like 6 girls including the FMC. And since the author is such a master writing character personalities she has the absolute unique personality of being a Violent tsundere. I know never been done before. I think this is the first series ... to even try something as bold as this. Guess what else. The main character has no redeeming value whatsoever except he's kind of a hard worker and incredibly debatably nice. Both very unique and never been done before.

Lets talk about what i liked about the series first.

Now lets talk about the garbage aspect of this series which is everything. The side characters are complete trash. Every single of them are the most generic boring pieces of garbage ever. The main heroine however, get this, Is actually the worst one. Amazing i know. It's not just the violent tsundere problem or the fact that the main character is used as a punching bag. They are literally 2 dimensional garbage tier heroines. You can usually forgive the side character in other romance series because they don't have the spotlight often but in here the main heroine is garbage. Tsundere's are really the most garbage tier laziest heroine's in existence this really solidified by feeling that violent tsundere are trash. The only decent character was the 12 year old shy girl who had a crush on the MMC in the series but she's basically just a pointless side character.

The main character isn't better either. Now about 60% of the time i'd say he doesn't deserve to get his ass beaten. But this character is borderline retarded. This man has no understanding of personal space. Constantly he is entering the woman's bathroom or going inside woman's room. This guy is beyond dumb no wonder he was a ronin for 2 years holy shit. Their are other series out there like sora no otoshimono where the main character deserved the ass beaten he got but that made the relationship more equal. It felt sexy to see the naked girls and satisfying to see his ass get beaten. Here he's just a punching for an ecchi manga that doesn't even deserve called an ecchi manga.

Another thing this series has no understanding for serious moments. I laughed 7 times throughout this series. btw im counting a snigger as a laugh which happened 6 times of the 7. The comedy in this series is dog shit repetitive and ruins any serious moment this series had. Last time i read a romcom which a crapton of jokes was Jitsu wa watashi wa and that series sucked massive balls too. Not everything, every moment needs to be a fucking joke. Pace yourself for fucks sake.

Don't worry though their are moments where you are like oh they are going a step forward. But don't worry any sort of attempt of actually making this series interesting is thrown directly into the garbage can for more garbage tier slapstick comedy. What the fuck is wrong with this series.

I do like the fact that the author really did the show don't tell really well tbh. I liked that part. Like the author show'd how the main heroine fell for the MMC. The answer was obvious the entire time.

**She's fucking retarded.**

After that her personality made more sense. Why she acts like she does. Why she falls in love with a guy who constantly falls into her boobs and ass and has no sense of personal space. Like i'm tearing into her character but Honestly the main character is also just complete ass. This is like the tv series friends. 2 of the most incompatible people on the fucking planet end up together. What a shit show of series, What a shit show of character development.

Another thing i enjoyed was so many people stating that they loved the ecchi-ness of this series. Now imagine my surprise when i saw the abhorrent amount of 5-13 year old naked in the series. I'm glad the pedophiles find themselves comfortable in expressing themselves especially the author.

This is an ecchi series without any of the fun. This is a harem series without a proper ending. This is a romance series without any of the romantic interactions. Almost every single time it is a complete shit show. This is one of the most pathetic excuses of a series i have read. Their are 7 panels, 4 pages ,and half a chapter of decent moments. I know because i counted thats how fucking bad it was. This series was awful from chapter 1 and got worse. I guess i can include another *masterpiece* that belong in the fucking trashcan.

TLDR: Domekano was better. 2/10