Love Hina

Love Hina: B

This is an older series, one I hadn't watched in a decade, and a very contentious one at that.  Love Hina is infamous for popularizing two major tropes which would become ubiquitously known in anime in the first decade of the 21st century: the Harem Series and the Tsundere.  Both of these tropes are also renowned for being blatant wish fulfillment on the part of the young male audience, which is very much looked down upon by our culture (both the idea that a lot of girls would all fall for the same guy and the entire Tsundere concept, which I could write an essay on alone).  Love Hina was by no means the first series to use these elements, but it was one of the most popular examples, popular enough to be the standard from which all later versions of the theme would deviate from.

I first watched it in 2002, during my first flirtation with anime on a substantial level, beyond just watching what I could on KTEH.  I remembered, at that time, actually really enjoying it, despite the somewhat unfortunate implications of it all, the absurdity of the girls liking someone like Keitaro (who is, like most Harem protagonists, a classic well-meaning loser), and all that.  And since it's been most of a decade since I'd watched it, I figured, why not watch it again.  So I did.

I'm pleased, if surprised, to say that it's pretty much exactly like I remember it.  Judged on its own merits, it ranks a B, just barely.  I almost gave it a C+, but overall, the characters are solid, the humor is reasonable, and a lot of the things which many people rate as "dude not okay" (mostly involving the massive amount of unjust violence perpetrated on Keitaro) just don't register for me.

It's a classic series, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone who is bothered by anything out of the Harem genre, because like I've mentioned, it very much epitomizes it.  But if you want to know what all the fuss is about, and get a sense of the best-known example, here it is.