Review of Love Hina

"Your experience in reality may differ"

Any fan of anime worth their salt knows this series, and with good reason. Created originally by Ken Akamatsu, a mangaka well-known for harem plots, Love Hina was developed into an anime series by Xebec in 2000. Both the manga and anime have proven immensely popular, and Love Hina is widely considered to set the standard in harem anime. Honestly, I can see why. It’s original, fun and best of all, has actually relatable humour. Before you all balk at the concept of decent and dare I say, good harem anime, let me discuss the plot, characters, obvious pitfalls of the genre and the reasons why this Harem is actually worth half a look.

Introducing our protagonist, Keitaro Urashima. To keep a promise he made with a girl fifteen years ago, Keitaro is attempting to get a place in the prestigious university Tokyo U. to keep said promise. As a main character, Keitaro fits the bill relatively nicely, for a harem anime anyways. He’s portrayed at first as pathetic, everyday guy who, let’s be fair, we all can relate to just a little. He is struggling to get a place at Tokyo (for the third time, no less), when he just happens to come across a miracle in the form of an all girls’ dorm that he gets dragged into running. A very sarcastic eyebrow rose from me at this premise but oddly as a premise, it works, as soon as the rest of the cast are introduced. Each of them is  very distinctive and well rounded for anime characters, making them likeable in the sense that they aren’t just blow up dolls with varying hair and eye colours.

Let me introduce just one of six females in this series, Kaolla Su. Her particular brand of  kookiness I can really only equate to that of Ed from Cowboy Bebop and even then she’s pretty incomparable to any character I’ve seen in any fiction. Imagine feeding a lemur a packet of sugar, standing back and watching the results. Kaolla is a literal rollercoaster on screen, fast, furious and nonstop, constantly bouncing around with her various and sometimes downright terrifying inventions. Just take the first ten seconds of her introduction, which includes ten miniature tanks and two explosions. In an already bizarre scene, Su attempts to stop Keitaro from running rampage in the house with these mini tanks, nearly killing him the process. Well I guess you need to introduce her somehow.

"Giving sixteen year old's advanced military equipment, 

what could possibly go wrong?"

Even with this kookiness, she does get character development however, and we see different aspects of Kaolla, emerging as the plot progresses, makes her, I daresay, a little complex and even three dimensional. While not all the characters in this series are as “special” as Su, others such as Motoko, Kitsune and Mutsumi all have individual personalities and quirks that make them interesting and very likeable. In fact I don’t think there’s a character I dislike in this series, bar the annoying twitterfuck called Sara who clearly has daddy issues.

Plot-wise, Lova Hina has been criticized as being repetitive and disjointed, criticism I can understand. General episode outline varies from from “we go to point A to point B” to “girls somehow end up in bath-house”. This is overall what the episodes entail however – the themes and actions are what makes these stories genuinely interesting. I would almost step a toe over into calling Love Hina “Fantasy” as the outrageous action is really out of this world. At one point, a dragon is on the receiving end of a megaton punch and a flying turtle features in the cast of minor characters.  As a result, I’d hesitate to go so far as to put this anime into the Fantasy genre, but the outlandish action really does make a mountain out a molehill and is mostly there to emphasize the comedy. The action is funny, original, and catches and holds your attention, which is a serious achievement considering the current reputation of Harem animes.

Love Hina does have one major flaw however, that being the use of the same gags over and over again. Two episodes into this anime it becomes obvious that the main running gag of this series is that Keitaro is the official sole punching bag of Japan. Accordingly, he gets punched into oblivion on a regular basis, sometimes due to misunderstandings but more often just because he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is entertaining the first time, perhaps the second time, but when the exact same situation involving Keitaro, a fist, and a “world of hurt” emerges at episode fifteen, we’re into broken tape-player territory. This is made even worse by the fact that the joke wasn’t really funny to begin with. Yes, anime, it is mindlessly funny when a character is punched, please do not use it as the only source of humour in an entire episode, it stopped being original fifteen episodes back.

"Oh anime, u so original."

Despite it flaws though, Love Hina is really a decent anime, despite being a harem. Though the manga is famed for being “ecchi” in the sense that there are tits and ass everywhere, the anime really downplays this, surprisingly focusing more on the drama and plot, The animation is pretty standard for its time, but not an eyesore. The character designs are original, and each is unique in their own way. Best of all, the music is ridiculously catchy and fun in tune to the series. Yes I’m listening to it right now. And no I won’t stop.

Going to give this a solid “WATCHABLE”.