Love Hina

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.

I saw this anime right after the big series like Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy bebop and movies like Akira, Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell and End of Evangelion.

Those aren't the most happy series and movies out there so when I saw Love Hina, this was like a relief. It made me laugh, cheered me up, brought up so much different emotions. Its serious and cheerful at once. It kept me hooked for the entire series, the specials and the sequel Love Hina Again. And another very important thing: the soundtracks and music are amazing. they make the images so much greater when its needed, they never irritated me once.

If you like cheerful love stories, this sure is a recommendation. It goes right up there with the Ah! My Goddess OVAs, even tough Ah! My Goddess is a little better in my opinion.

At first Love Hina may look like some crazy kids show (unlike the manga) but there's so much more to it. I watched it several times now, and it gets better and better. You live along with the characters, you see their life, their evolution in the story and the series finish this just so perfectly in the end. Even tough it's completely unreal, it all looks so possible and constantly goes up towards that one big climax: what about Keitaro and Narusegawa? Still, it's a pity they didn't completely end it. The manga goes on for a few more chapters and clears even more things up. But that doesn't change a thing about how good the series is.

This went straight into my top 5 of best anime ever. 10/10

I've seen a lot of anime at various university clubs and rented a lot from local video stores and I rank Love Hina among the best shows. The artwork is good and the stories are varied and clever. It can be argued that the situation of a geeky guy who somehow ends up living with a household of girls has been used before but what matters is whether you care about the characters. With a show like Vandread that is supposed to be good I didn't feel much for people in it. With a show like Cowboy Bebop it wasn't long before I grew to enjoy the oddball characters living in that world. That is also true for Love Hina. We are introduced to the supporting characters and learn their backgrounds gradually. The way they interact with the lead actor Keitaro reveals his personality. It didn't take too many episodes before I realized how good the show was. For example the episode about the forgotten automaton Mo-e was a big surprise. It told a touching story on the importance of keeping promises which is one of the main themes of the series.

I've just seen the TV series and Christmas special released in English and the actors do a very good job on the voices. Matoko sounds serious, Shinobu sounds shy and Kaolla sounds playful just like the Japanese version. This show is well worth watching because the plot advances unlike shows like Ranma where it will take forever for the two leads to confess their love. Warning: Keitaro always blunders into fan-service situations where girls are undressed but Naru is always there to punish him for his transgressions.

The manga was better. Now this is not to say that the anime was not good. It was hysterical. It's just that the manga is that much better, and fans who have read it first should not expect to be blown away. However, if you haven't read the manga, you will be beside yourself with laughter for the first several episodes, and you will find yourself pulling for the characters throughout the series. And then when you read the manga (you won't be able to resist), you can repeat these feelings all over again.

However, there are some downsides. This series is crammed full of filler, and can only be matched in that aspect by Dragonball Z (which, by the way, is 291 episodes long). Also, if you're going to watch this, subtitles are a must. This is one of the worst - if not the absolute worst - dubs I have ever seen. Kitsune for the most part sounds like a drunk Dixie Chick, and Su has some sort of accent that sounds like an unnatural blend of Russian and Indian. Motoko sounds like "Izzy" from the Digimon dub, and Shinobu and Naru, while having voices that relatively fit their characters, are acted adequately at best. All this is amplified one hundred times when you take into account that the original had such a stellar voice cast, in fact one of the BEST in anime. Keitaro is probably the best in the English cast, but still can't hold a candle to Ueda Yuji. No one can squeal like this guy!

So all in all, I highly recommend this series to anyone, anime fan or just a fan of good laughs. Just make sure you read fast.

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.