There’s this moment in the Christmas Special of Love Hina when a festive businessman charmingly gropes Motoko on the train. She turns and, having spent most of the series sending people flying (harmlessly) with swirly blasts of wind, smartly smacks him in the face, breaks his glasses in two, and floors him. A whole series of cartoony ‘girl hits pervy boy’ laughs, then BANG!
It’s a striking (sorry) moment, and a total counterweight to that first moment in which Urashima Keitaro is sent rocketing skyward by the force of girly justice, a moment oft-repeated (very very oft). In this case Motoko really hurts somebody, but she’s also hitting somebody who damn well deserves it rather than a hapless accidental victim. That’s the space Love Hina operates in - it’s half about a boy doomed to get himself hit by irate girls, and half about girls deciding not to hit the boys after all. Yes, it’s the most teenage rom-com possible, welcome to puberty, when you’re an adult Motoko will really hit you - hope you can have a laugh while you’re here.
For me, Love Hina wins when it’s funny and fails when the jokes get tedious, pretty simple. And so, mostly, it wins out. Wins out by being exuberantly silly. It’s the kind of infantile, unrestrained and clearly Japanese silliness that’s fascinating for a foreigner. Quirks abound in the pursuit of laughs. I guess that’s how you run a show with such a straightforward premise.
Oh, and the premise. A Harem? Seriously? This is the first “harem” series I’ve seen, I understand that this is but one distinctive model in contrast to others with alternate realities, or a sense of suspense as to the choice of girl. As far as I’m concerned Love Hina is a romantic comedy, the other girls are a massive part of the series but Naru has it nailed down from ep.1.
The romantic tension moments were largely played for laughs, and when they weren’t they were merely placed as surmountable obstacles in the pursuit of the chosen girl. Is “harem” just an anime with a catalogue of carefully variagated wank-fodder included for the male viewer? I’ve been known to enjoy a dash of fanservice, it just seems a bit odd to decide the genre classification of a show based on its presence - some softcore nudity is perfectly pleasant, but is it really defining? Genres are just tools for reference, is this really the label most relevant to anime fans?
Hell, the OP basically tells you that this is a romance: first shot - Narusegawa dead centre, cast introduced - Shinobu on housework (no comment), Kaola on banana, Motoko displays swordsmanship, Kitsune displays breasts, Naru spins around like Cinderella and smiles straight at the camera like the show was all about her, cast shot- Naru smiles into camera, the last shot pans across her standing next to Keitaro. There’s no element of choice here, she is the chosen one, Love Hina is monogamous - Keitaro is in the hands of fate.
I can see that there’s a divergence between Love Hina as the story of Keitaro and Naru and the experience of the viewer as voyeur. But doesn’t that apply to a whole bunch of shows? Is the presence of a bit of flesh so overwhelming that it turns the show into a harem? I know that the fanservice in Love Hina occurs in spadeloads, but so do absurdist jokes. Classifying it as a “harem” show says a great deal about the viewer, and (being a high minded and lofty individual, above mere physical desires), this viewer would have found rom-com a more helpful tag.
Anyway. Out there on the web are a number of meditations on Urashima Keitaro, many of them blunt and profane [Results 1 - 10 of about 4,970 for keitaro is a pussy. (0.16 seconds)]. He’s the series anchor, a terrifying amalgamation of the worst things about being pre-pubescent, pubescent, unlucky, and generally useless, rolled into a ball of concentrated nerd.
At the same time though, he ends up kind of admirable. He’s the teenage boy as an innocent, pure hearted and kind, but (importantly) far from lofty in his morality. It’s a nicely managed mix, and yeah, I was rooting for him all the way. Or, y’know, up till the point when the Naru-love was so firmly guaranteed that the series might as well have ended.
It is in the nature of the kind of vivid (if stereotypical) cast deployed in Love Hina that the characters will range from the appealing to the infuriating, and I think which they are depends of the viewers’ (cough) tastes. I guess genuine characters are the big thing here though, they’re what makes the show loveable, not “just” a somewhat scattershot comedy.
So then, Motoko and Shinobu genuinely show some depths and undergo change - and it’s nice that the story of each change is presented in a manner consistent with their individual styles. Kaola has a couple of throwaway mystical story episodes, but mainly gets on with deliriously laying landmines for the other cast members to step on. Kitsune gets a sort of mini-revelation to prove she’s more relevant to the plot than Kaola, but remains pretty shallow.
And then there’s Narusewgawa, the tricky one. Narusegawa’s personal emotional journey is repeated in microcosm every other episode, this tsundere thing only really makes sense when the plot is arranged about displaying it. There was a constant need to find new reasons for Naru to cycle through her traits, often rather tediously.
That said, each blushy moment adds something, and we get an incremental build up of sympathy for her. Mainly though, I found myself wondering how far light comedy is compatible with real character development. The core of the show is static, comedy from the interaction of caricatures, with added turtles. It’s kind of surprising that multiple cast members do get developed at all. That’s the trade off you get from a series which is rather too long for its underlying story - moments of artificial stretching of the fabric, but also gratifying opportunities to add nuances.
I’ve considered the significance of the popularity of the manga. Like I said before, it’s the characters that bring this show love from the devoted fans - and the manga sounds like the place to go for character. Frankly though, I don’t feel any need whatsoever to read it. I’m happy with Love Hina the throwaway show, and sceptical of the value of attempting to extract added value from a lightweight rom-com.
Love Hina the anime is a battle between buckets of goofy joy (good) and transparent cliche mining and filler (less than good). After all, only a comedy could support the kind of crap to be found here. The problem must be in making a show funny enough to bear the weight of this inherent silliness without losing the thread of the romance. Love Hina’s route of choice is to be completely unafraid to go for broke at the big plot moments (which can be hit and miss, but at least means that it hits home sometimes), and by being completely bleedin’ crazy every spare moment. Fine by me.
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