I am not particularly a fan of the so-named "harem" genre of anime, which throws a young man with little or no direction into the same living space with a bunch of cute girls who all compete for his affections. These shows are generally constructed to appeal to antisocial video junkies, most of whom are afraid of real women, and some of whom bear sick fetishes ( e.g. pedophilia). But the reason many fail to entertain is not with their target audience so much as the absurd notion that every woman living with the main character would want him for herself - save family members, usually. These shows are often completely character driven, and the results of even one character being received badly by the audience can be disastrous. The irony of the harem genre is that the few series in it that successfully avoided the pitfalls and its image have typically done so by escaping the genre in some way. Ken Akamatsu's Love Hina is such a series, successful not only because it pokes fun at is own genre, but also because its female characters aren't all ga-ga over the main character - on the contrary, they seem to enjoy physically hurting him.

The setting of Love Hina is built around the old Japanese folk tale of Taro Urashima. Without going too deeply into it, the tale is about Taro winning the favor of sea queen Otohime by saving a turtle from a bunch of kids that were tormenting it. She lavishes him with attention in her dreamlike undersea palace, but he grows homesick and leaves her, only to find that more time has passed than he could have imagined. Love Hina alludes to Taro's tale in its setting - the dreamlike Hinata hot springs town - and also in its characters and other artistic highlights.

The main character of Love Hina is Keitaro Urashima, a two-time entrance exam flunkie trying to gain entrance into the prestigious Tokyo Universary, to fulfill a promise he made 15 years ago to a girl whose name and face he can't remember. Keitaro is a classic dream chaser, his promise with her to go to Tokyo U together being his only purpose in life. Due to his chances of succeeding being so slim, his parents want him to start earning his own way. His life changes drastically when his grandmother Hina invites him to visit her at her lodge in Hinata. He goes figuring he can stay with her a bit, only to find out she's taken off and he's been named manager of an all-girls dormitory.

Naru finds out the hard way that Keitaro is male.	Mutsumi discovers Keitaro's horrible secret!

All hell then breaks loose - and that is one reason this show works so well. Keitaro has what one might call a tragic karmic flaw: he has a habit of accidentally peeking at the girls of the house during vulnerable moments. Each transgression truly is accidental, but of course the girls don't see it that way. One girl in particular - Naru Narusegawa - packs a mean punch, and using it gives this show a Looney Tunes quality of slapstick humor. Both the quirks of the characters and the chaos of circumstance lend to the show's laughable fun - and with truly no strings attached. The comedy has a serious side as well. Each member of the Hinata apartments grows with the others, and they support each other as a family. It's a cute example of the fact that it's easier to roll with the punches when you've got help. The fun of Love Hina is its predominant force, though that's not all there is to it.

Where Love Hina makes its escape from the "harem" genre is its romantic love triangle - which even itself contains a bit of the show's zany comedy. For some, this romance subplot will make or break the series. It is certainly unconventional in its execution, if you try to think of it as purely girl- or boy-oriented romance, as the character romances in this tale are formed squarely within the chaos of the plot. In a sense, it is the one thing that grounds the series to reality - but it is also part of the dream. Keitaro develops kinships with two of the girls in particular, one who lives in the dormitory and one who does not. One of these girls seems like the perfect match for Keitaro - being clumsy and flaky herself, among other similar quirks. The second girl is a diametric opposite of Keitaro - her only visible connection to him being that she fell for a similarly flaky goofball at one time. The tale of Taro Urashima parallels Keitaro's dillema between these two women, and the choice between them is not trivial. Keitaro has to decide between his promise and his reality, and the hard part is, he doesn't really know if there's a difference between the two.

The promise is one aspect of the story that perhaps did not balance as well as the others. A significant portion of the plot deals with this, and one can't help but think the contstruct to be a bit elementary - especially when the misunderstandings that spawn from it border on ridiculousness. Another imbalance is the excessive use of slapstick humor. It is used effectively in many scenes, but the silliness does often fail to be amusing. One thing to mention, though, is that Akamatsu always deals with these issues successfully - balancing the silliness with something meaningful. To fixate on the issues is truly to ignore the series' many merits, however subtle some may be.

One merit not so subtle is the series' music, exhibiting a mastery rarely to be found in the harem genre. There is excellent chemistry between the show's various constructs and Koichi Korenaga's music. From the wacky comedy to the sweetness of the romances, the music is yet another reason to be glad to have watched this series. The opening song, Sakura Saku is an example of the wackiness to be found in Love Hina. The song is perfomed by Megumi Hayashibara, who plays the part of Keitaro's aunt Haruka in the show, and who also performs the closing tune, Kimi Sae Ire ba, the obligatory "sad girls in snow" song of the harem genre. The songs of Love Hina span a wide variety of styles, everything from pop-idol tunes to dramatic orchestrations that are full of feeling. Like with the show itself, one can expect to get more than a harem show's worth of an experience with the music of this show.

One aspect of the show that lies squarely within the harem genre is its character designs. Keitaro is the typical scrawny wimp, and his prospects are the usual well-endowed ladies that for all intents and purposes are well out of his league. This is not to say that the character designs were not visually pleasing - they certainly are. It merely means that the voice actors and script were entirely responsible for making these characters individuals, which they certainly did. The animation for the show also fell squarely within the harem genre, emphasizing certain "features" and devoting more time than normal to Keitaro's little accidents. Even though all these things do seem a little dumb in retrospect, I must confess that they really did not drag the experience down for me, during the actual viewing.

Love Hina does well as a television series, but the series covers only a portion of the complete plot (as told in Akamatsu's manga). Apart from the series, there are two television specials and an OVA (and I will cover each of these in separate reviews). Unfortunately, you'll have to watch through it all to obtain a sense of closure on the story began by the series; however, the series does serve as a good setup for the more condensed continuations. And the series does do better than slapping "To Be Continued" on the screen, instead reaching a suitable stopping point. All in all, Love Hina scores points in my book for never taking itself seriously, and for building respectable characters in a genre known for its superficial fluff.

Distributor: Bandai
Creator: Ken Akamatsu / XEBEC
Released: 2000-2001

Plot: A
Character Design: B
Animation Quality: B+
Music: A-
Overall: A-