Love Hina

Love Hina manga, volume 1 (North America English version)

Love Hina (ラブひな Rabu Hina) is a popular manga (and anime) series by author Ken Akamatsu. The manga won the "Best Manga, USA Release" in 2002 Anime Expo.

The manga is published in Japan by Kodansha, and in English in North America by TOKYOPOP. Love Hina is published in Singapore in English by Chuang Yi. The anime is produced in North America by Bandai and it is produced in Singapore by Odex.

Contents

Story

The series centers around 19-year old Keitaro Urashima, a young man desperately trying to be accepted into the prestigious University of Tokyo in order to keep a childhood promise. His obsessive bent of doing so is one of the few shining spots of optimism in his otherwise unlucky life. He becomes manager of the Hinata House (Hinata Sō), property of his family and now an all-girls' dormitory. The story takes place in the Kanagawa Prefecture.

The story is a romantic comedy of the seinen genre about a clumsy but well-meaning young man with an unparalleled amount of personal drive despite horrible luck. The familiar set up of one boy living with a group of pretty but unusual women sometimes marks Love Hina as a harem anime; many fans disagree on the term. This is due to Keitaro's primary (and usually exclusive) interest in Naru Narusegawa, though all the other girls have other sorts of affections for him (including being close friend, a playmate, and nonthreatening crush object).

The series is most well known for putting humorously absurd elements into an ostensibly mundane universe, such as Kaolla Suu's destructive mecha, ghosts, and flying hot springs turtles.

Sub-articles

Related series

Love Hina Again

External links

Bandai Love Hina website
hinalove.com
Hinatalove.net (in French)
Ken Akamatsu's homepage (in Japanese)
Animenfo listing
Ken Akamatsu Forum, place to talk about all of Mr. Akamatsu's works.

Categories: Anime | Love Hina | Manga