Spoilers. They say its a waste to live in the past clinging to people you once knew and dreams youve outgrown. To live in the moment and make plans for your future are the cornerstones of responsibility and you can never truly grow until you embrace them. But what if the past IS your only hope for a future? What if the only person who ever loved you was a brief acquaintance from your childhood? What if the promise to reunite as adults bound by a common goal that will ensure their love will one day last forever? Its easy to find the idea of someone devoting their adult lives to such a fleeting moment of happiness laughable at least until you meet Keitaro Urashima a 20 year old loser with a heart of gold and a body that would put a crash test dummy out of work. As a child he made a promise to a mysterious young girl with whom hed shared an unexpected connection. Upon realizing that theyd probably never see each other again they vowed to one day get into the prestigious Tokyo University a college that they heard has the power to keep loving young couples together forever. That actually sounds kind of romantic right? Well it loses some of its luster when Keitaro as an adult has decided to work around his pesky undatability by holding onto this 14 year old promise well into his early twenties optimistically believing that the love of his life is waiting just beyond the entrance exams of Tokyo University Exams he has no hope of passing. Yeah his ambition would probably be an admirable trait if it didnt involve the Japanese equivalent of an Ivy League school and even moreso if Keitaro himself wasnt intellectually suited for say a forprofit school or a community college at the very best. Nevertheless he tries and fails and when he refuses to set his sights any lower than the top his parents realize with what I can only assume was dawning horror that theyre going to be taking care of their son for the long haul and instead decide to ship his unemployed ass to the family hotel Hinata Inn to study while work as the buildings new manager What they dont tell him however is that Hinata Inn has recently been transformed into a girls only dorm and its home to a flock of ferocious females who arent shy about letting him know where his boundaries lie. With these tough temptresses attempting to murder him over every little misunderstanding will Keitaro ever be able to chase his dreams or will he be too distracted by the angry teenagers chasing him? Love Hina is a bit of a rarity in terms of production history It was animated by two distinctly different companies Production IG and Studio Xebec the differences between them being like night and day. Production IG has a reputation for showing us the best visuals that the current technology of whatever year its working in have to offer and this was no less true in the year 2000. Xebec on the other hand is to animation what a child with a plastic steering wheel attached to its carseat is to driving Except with actual control over the car. These two radically different agents mix about as well as oil and water making it embarrassingly easy to tell whos behind the visuals at any given time. Now to be clear the animation in this show is never what youd call good. It clearly had a lot of budget issues to deal with which Ive heard is partially responsible for its failure to secure a second season before it got canceled. Its passable about half the time with good old IG doing their damnedest to not let the series look as cheap as it was and for the most part it kinda worked. They did what they could to limit obvious cornercutting techniques animating character movements and framing conversations in such a way that key frames never become too oppressive and awkward motion isnt too distracting. On the other hand we have Xebec who did the rest of the series and to say they didnt handle the fickle nature of the budget as well as IG did would be a generous freaking understatement. I guess the best example of the kind of job they do would be episode 16 the Monkey King stage play. This episode doesnt just abuse key frame it cuts back and forth between the SAME key frames at one early point shooting its main characters way out in the background with the entire rest of the frame filled with a simple beach landscape the tiny characters barely moving as it cuts back and forth between this frame and another slightly more interesting one. Its eventually revealed that the reason these excessive shortcuts were taken was so Xebec could show some action scenes towards the end which probably would have made it feel justified if it wasnt for the fact that the action in question isnt even all that great. Its not terrible by any means but even a novice animator knows that its not worth letting 90 percent of your anime look like crap just to save your budget for a few mediocre fight scenes. So yeah the worst thing you can say about the animation overall is that its inconsistent but when its bad its painfully bad. The same can be said for the artwork which Like the animation Is at best passable. The backgrounds are serviceable enough as while they never really feel detailed or immersive and extras existing in the background never really move or feel lifelike its never so bad that you cant imagine characters existing and living in them. Theyre fine. The characters however run into some serious issues here and there. While its not a consistent problem I do recall several instances of characters appearing offmodel frozen in time or having the incorrect bodily proportions. There was one particularly egregious frame towards the end where Narus little sister temporarily went from a normal middle school physique to an inexplicable Dcup and thats not even at its worse. Motoko the swordswoman character had her face altered for this adaptation in a way that makes her look almost froglike in the early episodes. Thankfully thats really the only deviation from the original character designs that I noticed. Anyway the artwork is largely fine but any given time youre only one rogue pause away from seeing what can only be described as bad fanart. But you wanna know whats consistently awesome unlike the visuals? The music. Love Hina has a fantastic soundtrack with its only real massive downfalls being the fact that you cant really find all the sample tracks online and the fact that several more recognizable tunes get recycled ad nauseum throughout the series. Not that the second issue matters because the music is good and youll welcome opportunities to hear each track multiple times. Unfortunately the best track only plays once. Its a solemn piano piece that plays in episode 12 between the opening theme and the title reveal and its a classical track called Gymnopedies by Eric Satie. The rest of the music which has been equally difficult to match names to is overflowing with effort and personality from the frantic upbeat songs to the beautiful insert songs that were all sung by the cast and especially the more soulful tunes that get used for more sad or romantic moments. Songs dealing with individual characters carry the flavor of said characters like Motokos traditionally eastern sounding themes and Kaollas exotic ones. The opening Sakura Saku could almost be considered an ode to the fast forward button as it just feels Fast. from the song to the visuals its an incredibly fast paced op where everything seems to be trying to catch up with each other. I get the feeling that this tone matches what Xebec and IG THOUGHT they were going for with this anime but in reality it doesnt really match the tone of either the original manga OR the final product. Its like this is the op they commissioned when they though the show they were going to create was going to be slapstick zany antics and physical comedy all the way through. Having said that as fast an OP as it may be it also comes off as a bit lazy as it recycles visuals from the show A pet peeve of mine if youre wondering And otherwise introduces the entire cast through framed faceshots a staple of the harem genre. Honestly its a pretty annoying op that I found myself skipping over and over. The ending theme is better employing a slower and more groovy song as it slowly pans across a single still image of the main female cast on the floor covered in nothing but loose white sheets and while it feels completely out of place it at least pleasant in comparison. Although yes I skipped it just as often. The English dub has actually achieved notoriety over how terrible it is as I dont think Ive seen a single reviewer attempt to recommend it over the sub But honestly I dont think its really all that bad. Now once again its not what youd call good but several of the performances are at least accurate and the ones that arent are the product of bad casting and direction although even in those cases I can kind of see what the director was trying to do. To start things off on a relatively positive note Derek Stephen Princes performance is more or less what I hear in my head when I read Keitaros dialogue in the manga and hes able to stretch what should be a throat destroying role to some pretty diverse places and situations. Hes a good actor but that doesnt really make up for how annoying Keitaros voice sounds both in my head and in the show. Marginally better albeit on the same note is Bridget Hoffman in the role of Shinobu the shy middle schooler who had much easier role to perform. Her waify Yamato Nadeshiko pitch would be a bit too grating for the original Shinobu but with the bulk of her character development either removed or straight up replaced she fits the part nicely. When Im having a discussion about bad mediocre or middleoftheroad voice actors I always manage to shock the room by bringing up the prolific Wendee Lee. Yes shes had her fair share of outstanding roles but shes also been dragged down on too many occasions by poor direction choices that she just couldnt manage to save. In Love Hina she plays the energetic Kaolla Su as well as Sus older sister Amalla in a dual role where she was asked to perform with an Indian accent Even though the character is not Indian and the dialogue even goes as far as to blatantly STATE shes not Indian. Of course there wasnt much available in the way of other options and there really isnt a known accent attached to her people in the manga and to her credit Wendee does pull it off When playing Amalla. When her range is stretched too far by the combination of acting using a difficult accent AND playing a hyper character the end result is just terrible. Its still better than Barbara Goodsons inexplicable southern drawl thats supposed to act as a substitute for the Kansai accent but better is a relative term here because theyre both virtually unlistenable. And if you thought my criticism of Wendee Lee was hard to take wait until you hear Mona Marshall playing Motoko Aoyama. Good God was this an awful casting choice. Ive criticized her before for having a little boy voice that doesnt sound remotely male but thats not to say the voice sounds like a natural woman either And she uses that exact voice to play Motoko the kendoobsessed girl and my favorite character from the manga. Every single word that comes out of her mouth sounds like its coming from the wrong person like shes the sad victim of a rogue ventriloquist. Rounding out the rest of the main cast we have Julie Ann Taylor doing a fine job with Mutsumi playing her appropriately as a klutzy airhead and Dorothy EliasFahn as Naru. This is one of Fahns two biggest credits alongside Meryl Stryfe from Trigun and to say the two characters are similar Shouting critical nags attached at the hip to doofus heroes Is a bit of an understatement but since Naru isnt as wellrounded or fully realized a character as Meryl was theres also the problem that she doesnt really click with the character as fast. She enters the role as a stuckup screaming Tsundere but to be fair she does settle into the role as best as she can as the series progresses Possibly even moreso than the character really deserves. Its a dub that takes some tolerance and getting used to but yeah theres no real reason not to watch it subbed. Before I start to look more deeply at Love Hina I should probably start by saying some things about its creator Ken Akamatsu. As one of the founders of the modern harem genre Akamatsu is a renowned mangaka whose works have been well received both critically and commercially and his influence can be seen just about everywhere. He has seven unique titles to his name but since Maochan started off as an anime Kids Game is difficult to find and the less we say about Itsudatte My Santa the better were going to focus on the way his work has evolved over the course of four of his most well known works AI Love You Love Hina Negima and UQ Holder. The first thing that Id like to call attention to is that throughout his career Akamatsu has had a penchant for inventive action scenes PGrated fanservice nudity and deep complex exploration of characters who seem at first glance to be nothing more than cheap tropes. Well those and all the weirdness but the weirdness is largely unique to each title. Its interesting to look at his body of work over the years how its changed from title to title but the most easily trackable change comes with the theory that he uses his fanservice as a crutch to keep readers interested throughout the story. AI Love You was basically a ripoff of Ah My Goddess with High School Keitaro in the lead role and Skuld being swapped out for a little boy. Not gonna lie its pretty bad. The only thing it really has to offer is a generic slice of life story disturbingly sexist undertones and a lot of bare bottoms. Its followup Love Hina had lot more effort put into its plot and story with Akamatsus trademarked fanservice put into a more consistent context and more practical use as other elements and themes were experimented with. When Negima came around Akamatsu didnt even want to make a harem wanting instead to try his hand at the shounen action genre so he worked around his contract by using a beefed up harem as the roots and origin of such a story. Since the shounen action and magical adventures wound up being the most popular aspect of Negima he wound up creating his most recent effort UQ Holder a sequel to Negima and a pure shounen action series whose occasional fanservice feels more like a halfassed obligation than anything the writers really invested in. My point is hes grown as a writer in maturity craft and many other areas. But Love Hina is still one of his earlier works so you kinda have to expect an immature worldview going in. Since Love Hina is the work that made him famous it is the one most synonymous with his name and its achieved a sort of iconic status in its own right particularly as a gateway manga for a surprising number of otaku from both sides of the ocean. Its appeal can best be explained by the way it utilizes its target audience teenage boys and those who think like them. It works the best on readers who are lacking in experience with anime manga and sex and unless youve already spent your youth on it its a surprisingly easy story to grow out of. Young readers are sucked in by the promise of crazy comedy sexy antics and the bare bottoms of seven radically different female characters But instead of just milking these impressionable young readers for cash Love Hina introduces them to extended arcs complex character writing and a sense of conflict and themes that comes off as natural and never forced. For example Keitaro and Naru arent just thrown together as the main prospective couple In a house full of people who are only staying there to run away from something theyre the only ones who are also running towards something making them the most compelling members of the cast and even when theyre battling against the literal force of fate you still wind up rooting for them. Theres a lot more to this manga than just fanservice and slapstick and it stays with you years later. How well does the anime translate these qualities? Well let me ask you this after writing more than sixty anime reviews how many times did I break the review to talk about the manga the series was based on and why it worked? I did that here because there are tons of reviews that will tell you Love Hina doesnt work but I havent really come across any that went into detail about why. The manga works because in between every big memorable moment there are volumes upon volumes of character development and a very specific order to the events which unfold. Because of this it represents the best of a lot of otherwise regrettable tropes. Shinobu is the best notice me sempai girl Keitaro is the best of the obsessed over a childhood love characters etc. Out of all the changes that the anime made more of them being completely harmless than you might think the absolute worst thing it did was rush the story ignoring all of that glue and focusing solely on those big moments and showing everything out of order. The characters are there but the familiarity is gone. Theres no magic left in our bond with them and with such terrible execution nothing feels like its happening at the right time. This is a devastating problem for a story with so many imperfections that it needed that glue to cover up. You can argue until the cows come home about Ken Akamatsus level of maturity but he was not a stupid writer. One of the biggest complaints anyone has about the anime is how much abuse Keitaro suffers at the hands of his love interest which is a complaint that isnt heard nearly as often from the Mangas readers despite it happening about as often. This is where fanservice comes in. In the manga almost every time Keitaros assaulted its accompanied by either a peek at some panties or a flash of some flesh and due to the static nature of a manga panel the presumably 14yearold reader has the option of lingering on the naughtiness already perfectly framed and then just glancing over the punch/kick/sword slash. In the anime almost all fanservice is removed Hell girls dont even enter the hot springs without towels until the halfway point The abuse is left to its own devices no distraction offered. This is why among people whove only seen the anime the character of Naru Narusegawa has the unfortunate stigma of being despised by otaku the world over. Ill try not to give too many examples of the disastrous changes the anime makes at least in the interest of avoiding spoilers but there are some that must be addressed. Keitaro lying about being a Tokyu U student is supposed to be a major plot point one where he digs himself in deeper with each interaction but in the anime its swept under the rug soon after being brought up. Replacing the original Shinobu introductory arc with one that involves her parents feels forced and unnatural especially since the most essential part of Keitaros lie was the way it affected her. Theres an incredibly important moment during a beach storyline where Keitaro is screwed by his friends into royally pissing off Naru and its supposed to be a major speed bump between them that lasts three whole arcs one of them being completely nonsensical for the sake of levity. Here that levity arc is played first and the initial friction arc is combined with another arcthats been shifted to three other characters before being abruptly resolved under some generic fireworks. There are several new characters added including a new romantic rival for Keitaro Motokos harem of admirers and Narus little sister but none of them add anything to the story outside of writers conveniences. Several new ideas like Naru becoming an idol singer and Motoko dreaming shes in a fantasy RPG game are just as pointless and often confusing in their logic. Even when the anime does something genuinely good its still dragged down by mistakes that are even worse. Theres a tight focus on the mystery of who Keitaros promise girl is and the love triangle that blossoms from it is handled well unless youre watching the episode where its suggested that she might have just been a haunted ball joint doll. The effect Motokos sister had on her life is explored thoughtfully but we never actually meet her so it ultimately falls flat. Kaitaros incest crazy sister was thankfully left out which Id give them major credit for if it wasnt for the fact that A: She wound up getting her own movie and B: They wound up giving Kaolla and her siblings an incest episode that was even worse. The story wound up being incomplete because of budget issues that made it unfeasible to continue onto a second season but if the right material had been cut it wouldnt have been an issue. The three movies that followed didnt do the ending justice rather they just animated some popular storylines that were left out. Seeing how Read the manga type endings have affected me in the past you can guess what my thoughts on this one are. Love Hina was originally available from Geneon and after they went out of business it wound up being rescued and redistributed by Funimation. The original Geneon collections are still available online such as the Complete collection set and the Perfect collection set which includes the OVA episode and all three movies or you can buy the two collections that Funimation has released A thinpack box set with cover art that tried to make the material sexier than it actually is and more recently an Anime Classics collection that proves just how far theyre willing to stretch that term. The three movies can be found individually or in a box set and while theyre technically out of print theyre still fairly cheap online. The manga from Ken Akamatsu has been available stateside for so long that you can find the entire 14 volume set on Ebay for as low as 35 dollars which is a deal Id highly recommend. AI Love You is a bit trickier to find and is thus a bit more expensive even at only 8 volumes. A two volume light novel collection is also available stateside. The word I feel best describes the Love Hina anime is incompetent. It does absolutely nothing right and while its fairly easy to tell that it respects the source material its just as obvious that it doesnt understand the source material. The only episode that I found any enjoyment in was episode 12 which had me laughing out loud multiple times and sucked me into its story with a little help from the aforementioned music. Aside from that one exception every single episode of this turkey is tied for worst and they all fail in such unique ways that I could have reviewed every single one of them on its own had I wanted to. The comedy isnt funny the romance isnt romantic the drama has no stakes the characters have no development and I have the strangest feeling that they intentionally meandered throughout the entire run thinking it was entitled to a second season that never happened and were thus in no rush to reach any conclusion. I was willing for the longest time to give this title a few pity points based on its good intentions appropriately goofy nature and killer soundtrack but that incest episode just sealed the deal. I give Love Hina a 1/10.