Oh, Ken Akamatsu. I never thought I would be a fan to his works, but as with most of these titles, they grew on me, Akamatsu's especially. One of his works was the series Love Hina, which I'm covering today.
Love Hina is a harem anime, if you didn't guess by the name alone, and the male character of interest is Keitaro Urashima. He is a student striving to attend Tokyo University, based on a promise he made to a girl years prior. Getting inside is hard enough... and even harder when you're actually flunking the exams, and Keitaro has done so twice already! Just when he is about to get the boot, his grandmother Hinata calls for him to go to Hina Inn, which is owned by her, and ironically near the very university he seeks to go to. Unfortunately, he learns first hand (through misunderstanding) that the dorm is female-only, making him the only male around. As if it was hard enough just trying to get inside Tokyo-U, but thanks to the bustling news from his aunt Haruka, Keitaro is also the dorm's landlord! He has one hell of a job on his hands...
Love Hina ran for 25 episodes and 5 OVAs, three of which known as Love Hina Again, the final piece of the anime overall. through complications, it was difficult for the now inactive ADV to license this, though Bandai managed to do so for North America. When that expired, Funimation took over licensing of the anime. A common gag is Keitaro being knocked into the air, if not into buildings and other structures. Normally, the key female lead Naru Narusegawa is doing the damage, but the other girls and elements play a hand in his torture as well. Thankfully, he's not the only male character, but he is the key character we usually focus on in the anime, more or less. Keitaro is voiced in English by Derek Stephen Prince, while Naru is voiced by Dorothy Elias-Fahn.
Love Hina, in general, was something I didn't expect to like, and it surely wasn't this title that introduced me to him, but this is the title that had me ultimately become a fan. I'm grading this an 8.1.
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