Love Hina

Ever since his first love disappeared from his life when he was a small child, geeky Keitaro has striven to be accepted at Tokyo University, where he strongly believes he will find his long-lost love again. Unfortunately, Keitaro's strongest assets (if he has any) aren't his grades, and he ends up being the student with the 27th worst grades on the school. Looking for a job and a place to live, he ends up at the all-girls dorm Hinata Inn where he quickly becomes the caretaker, despite the protests of Naru Narusegawa, who, to put it mildly, isn't Keitaro's biggest fan. Violent and hilarious comedy ensues as Keitaro must deal with his own extreme bad luck, angry girls, and an ever increasing sense that the world is against him.

This is in no way fine art, but that doesn't stop the show from being absolutely impossible to stop watching. This adaptation faithfully brings the essence of the manga to the TV screen: horny teens accidentally getting into awkward situations, lots of goofy humour, lots of violence (in 99% of the case directed towards poor Keitaro), lots of hot girls, a heart of gold and a generally surreal atmosphere. It's over the top, absurd and repetitive at times, but never boring. Some minor changes have been made from the source material but the show never suffers from it. In my opinion, this is as great as an adaptation of the wonderful manga can possibly be. I love it.

I've read several Japanese manga's but none has managed to capture my heart like 'Love Hina' did. The series was made into an anime series, which is good, but nothing compared to the manga. The story is as follows: Keitaro is about to become a third year Ronin and wants to get into a high class university called Tokyo U, but he has failed so many times before he doesn't think he has a chance... until he moves into his grandmother's former hotel, which unfortunately for Keitaro has now been turned into a girls' dormitory. After several mishaps with the girls they finally allow Keitaro to stay with them. Upon learning the truth that he is not really a Tokyo U student, they begin to contemplate kicking him out. However, when Keitaro announces to them that he wishes to take the exams again in order to get into Tokyo U and escape becoming a third year Ronin, they let his little lie slide and allow him to stay. However, he neglects to tell them the real reason for why he wants to go to Tokyo U: years ago Keitaro made a promise to an anonymous girl that both of them would get into the university together. He wants to discover the girl's identity, but how can he after all these years?

Keitaro becomes close with each and every one of the girl characters. There's Naru, the heroine of the story, who becomes Keitaro's best friend and begins to harbour a crush for him, which is mutual; Kitsune, the sly fox who often gets into trouble by getting wasted or gambling far too much; Motoko, the verging-on-psycho kendo girl who is forever trying to kill Keitaro (she, however, also has a crush on him); Shinobu, the sweet, shy and caring young girl who unlike Naru and Motoko falls in love with Keitaro almost at once, and Su the eccentric yet lovable Indian girl. Each one has an effect on Keitaro and he becomes very good friends with all of them. Along the way Keitaro meets other new friends, such as Mutsumi Otohime, the clumsy yet carefree girl who could be a link with Keitaro's past.

Together both Keitaro and Naru vow to study hard in order to get into Tokyo U together, but they both know it won't be an easy ride.

So, why should you read the manga first? Because simply put it's one of the best manga series' ever created. In short it's a sweet, fun, hysterical masterpiece. The main problem with the anime is that it's only twenty six episodes long, while the manga lasts for a whopping fourteen volumes. Therefore not everything could be packed into each twenty minute episode of the show. Not to mention that the manga is a hundred times better and funnier then the anime. Still, the anime is great too, and you can hardly beat that catchy ass theme tune. So please read the manga first, I beg of you! You really will not regret it. Also if you are considering watching the anime please watch the Japanese dub as the English dub is beyond awful.

What can I say, I'm a writer. Don't get me wrong, I love Love Hina; it's quickly become one of favorites - but in comic form. Like I said, the show is respectable, but taking a 14-volume comic and turning into a 26 to 36 episode TV show really doesn't work for me. Ken Akamatsu's writing is incredible - each chapter is religiously 18 pages long, save for about 5 here and there, and his style is such that each of those chapters could easily be turned into a 23 minute TV episode. Admitadly, you could probably cut out a good portion of volumes 10 through 14, considering that the comic started to lose it around there, but that still leaves over 100 chapters available, meaning there could have easily been over 100 episodes. I love anime, but my one complaint with most is that they are too short. Most animes are about 26 episodes; this, most of the time, leaves very little room for character and story development as it should be (this isn't the case with a select few, like Cowboy Bebop and Trigun); this especially applies for shows based on comics, where the characters develop slowly over time, and you enjoy every minute of it.

I still recommend seeing the show, but I also, even more strongly, recommend reading the comics; the show's for laughs, the comics are for everything else.

What can you say about the show that contains some of the best combinations of romance, humor and slapstick humor imaginable by my opinion. An animeshow has to be real good to surpass this one.

I gotta say, i'm a sucker for romantic comedies and i have seen a lot of them, but none really matches the level of this one. The seemingly endless almost-gonna-happen-but-never-does mood of this show has on more than one occasion made me bang my head against the keyboard until i had to get my backup keyboard. You gotta love slapstick to love this show though as much of it is based around that kinda situation, just don't do the mistake i did when watching it. Watch the episodes in the way they came, not the last one first or you won't be a "headbanger"

I am a very huge anime/manga fan. since i was a little child i loved watching cartoons. One day I realised Manga existed, my brother use to bring in lots of Manga, and i watched all of them, 18 rated or not. But never have i seen a cartoon series that i have been into so much, love hina is my favourite of all time, and it will stay that way. At my current age, action and destruction isnt all that for me, i need something more. and live hina has it, action, suspence, comedy, love etc...

Anybody who reads this i advise u go out and get urself the collection, u wont regret it, i didnt.