Love Hina Recommended

Publisher
Tokyopop
Country of origin
Japan
Length
9
Year
2002

Love Hina - Volume 1

By Joseph (Joe) Wood
12th Dec 04

The Love Hina manga is the base from which the highly popular anime of the same name is based. In fact if you've seen the first DVD volume (eps 1-4) then there is little else new that the first volume of the manga can offer.

Keitaro Urashima is a nineteen year old ronin (a student who failed the college entrance exams), who had a childhood romance and promised his love that they would one day go to Tokyo University together. Unfortunately for Keitaro it seems while he can remember the promise, he can not remember the name or face of his childhood sweetheart, nether can he get the grades needed for Tokyo U. Now in his second year as a ronin Keitaro, after being kicked out of his parent's home, decides to live at his Grandmother's inn as he believes the change of scenery will help him study. Unbeknownst to Keitaro his Grandmother has left on a world sightseeing tour and turned her hotel into a all girls dormitory, yep. This leads to a very... erm... interesting introduction with the five female inhabitants of the dorm. Keitaro is saved in the brink of time by his Aunt, who is under the impression Keitaro is in Tokyo U. The girls believing Keitaro is a Tokyo U student is allowed to stay, but his guilt soon gets the better of him and just before he tells them the girls find out. Keitaro heads for home but his Aunt calls him back with a fax from his Grandmother which makes Keitaro landlord of the dormitory, meaning he has to look out for the building and inhabitants of the dorm.

Love Hina is hilariously funny, the laughs are more or less none stop and we also get a lot of characterisation of most of the female characters in this volume (the ones that don't receive it in the next volume). Some of the stories in the first volume are similar to that of the first few episodes of the TV series; however there are some differences with Shinobu and Motoko already at the dormitory when Keitaro arrives. Also some scenes are expanded upon in the manga.

The artwork is rather detailed but goes for a more comedy style than realism. Love Hina contains a fair amount of nose-bleeds (if you know what I mean), and semi-naked female characters in positions of a questionable nature, of course your too busy laughing to notice and it's more comedic than sexist. This means female readers enjoy it just as much as male (well maybe some male readers enjoy it a bit more -_-!).

The first volume of Love Hina is basically what you can expect from the series for the next 5-7 volumes so if you don't like it you should really not continue with the series. For those that do like it though you can't get enough.

-- Joseph (Joe) Wood 12th Dec 04