YMMV / Love Hina

• Adaptation Displacement: Thanks for being one of the first popular anime from its genre to be subbed during the anime boom in the 2000s, some fans never read or never knew the existence of the original manga version. Also, the fact of the manga being out of print in some regions doesn't help.
• Adorkable:
  • Despite being so bumbling and wimpy, Keitaro always tries to keep his high spirit and kind heart, which makes him quite endearing.
  • Ema is incredibly clumsy and awkward, but still cute in her own way.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Considering what Keitaro said in his last love confession in the manga, about how it was worth it to see Naru naked despite being punched frequently. Is he really an Accidental Pervert or a full-fledged pervert who used an excuse to see the girls naked to compensate all these years being a loser? This of course, depends on whether you take the statement at face value or you consider that he's just being hyperbolic to make a point. There are strong arguments for both sides.
  • At some point of story, Naru started to miss Keitaro's Accidental Pervert antics and later she even tried to say to him with other words that they should have sex. Is Naru a Covert Pervert, a woman who was turned into a Covert Pervert by Keitaro's antics or is just having troubles with her feelings?
  • Motoko and Shinobu not giving up on winning Keitaro's love in the manga's epilogue, despite him marrying Naru. Are both really determined to wait for a chance forever or are they just joking?
  • Kaolla feelings towards Keitaro. It's really love or she likes him as a "big brother"?
  • Granny Hina herself in many fanworks is often portrayed as either senile and deluded, or deliberately manipulative and selfish
• Americans Hate Tingle: Naru. She came in first place in the first Japanese character poll. In the United States, she doesn't share that universal appeal, especially her anime incarnation.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Naru is either a hilarious Tsundere who brings up a lot of the humor and for despite everything, helped Keitaro when needed, showing deep down she cares for him, or is a horrible domestic abuser who should be thrown in prison. Again, this is more her anime incarnation. She's more liked in the manga thanks to her Character Development, although even there, she still tends to push the limits of Unprovoked Pervert Payback very close to Domestic Abuse Territory.
  • Kanako is easily the second most divisive character. First for debuting in a late part of the story where the plot was almost settled. Second, for bringing a incest romance story with her big crush on Keitaro and third, for being a replacement of fan favorite Mutsumi (in the anime at least, although she still steals Mutsumi's screen time). On the other hand, she is often praised as the first girl who shows determination to win Keitaro's heart, for putting pressure on Naru, and for punching Naru.
• Broken Base: Keitaro's character development leading him to become almost a carbon copy of Seta. While some think this is understandable considering their teacher and student relationship and how "badass" he is, critics think Seta is a terrible example to follow considering how bad he is raising his own daughter and how many flaws he shares with Keitaro. Although some people argue that Keitaro still retains enough of his original character traits to remain himself, and that he mostly took from Seta those traits that improved him as a person.
• Canon Fodder: Whenever a throwaway line of dialogue is needed, one of the characters, usually Keitaro, says some variation of "...It had three holes, and I really wanted one." The mysterious object with three holes is never revealed, and is probably an inside joke among the creators.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • Naru is the promise girl. Hinted at the beginning of the story but only confirmed in the last chapter.
  • Keitaro and Kanako are not blood related.
• Character Perception Evolution: The girls were beloved by critics and fans alike when the series first came out for their comedic antics and attractive designs, in part because the Harem Genre was in its infancy at the time and Love Hina would essentially redefine harem series as they're known today. Female lead Naru Narusegawa in particular is one of the popularizers of the Tsundere archetype. But as perceptions of abuse changed and female-on-male abuse started being taken more seriously, the girls beating up Keitaro stopped being funny, especially since so many Tsunderes who did exactly that appeared in many such series, making it into a stale cliche at best. Naru and Motoko assaulting Keitaro for being an Accidental Pervert now gets on people's nerves and is generally seen as Domestic Abuse, to the point of it becoming a Fandom-Specific Plot for a fic to be a Deconstruction Fic that takes the girls to task for their awful treatment of Keitaro. The only exceptions are Shinobu and Mutsumi, who never mistreat Keitaro and are thus far more liked over his canonical choice Naru. And since the series stars these girls, the series as a whole is no longer as well-regarded as it used to be.
• Critical Dissonance: The series was adored by critics, but some people, especially in recent years, dislike it for using or inventing some of the most hated cliches in harem manga and anime, most of the characters being Jerk Asses, or for constantly playing what looks like domestic abuse for laughs. This was Lampshaded by Bennett the Sage in one of his reviews for the series, where he would have quotes from positive reviews on the screen during a really absurd scene.
  Sage: "Depressed yet?"
• Designated Hero: The girls, bar Shinobu and Mutsumi, qualify, especially Naru. They assault Keitaro for minor offenses, and they sadistically torture his friends when they don't know where he is, and yet we're supposed to see them as good?
• Designated Monkey: Keitaro. All his mistreatment and injuries are supposedly to be Played for Laughs, but today, these are so exaggerated and unjustified they hardly can be considered funny anymore.
• Die for Our Ship:
  • Either Motoko is an abusive bitch without any sympathetic traits and wants to steal Keitaro from Naru, or Naru is a cruel domestic abuser who should be tied up and forced to watch as Motoko marries Keitaro.
  • In some circles, both are negative influences, while Keitaro finds salvation with another girl, like Shinobu, Mutsumi, or even Kitsune.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Keitaro's canon love interest Naru is generally the least favored girl by the fandom, with many outright hating her for how she treats Keitaro. As such, the other girls tend to be preferred, with a Fandom-Specific Plot being to have said girl rescue Keitaro from Naru. Shinobu and Mutsumi in particular are the most well-liked choices as they're the only girls who never mistreat Keitaro (even the other girls are depicted as doing a Heel–Face Turn first).
• Fandom-Specific Plot:
  • In the fandom, it's not unusual to find a fic in which Su permanently changes into her older form to become a viable love interest for Keitaro.
  • Deconstruction Fics and Revenge Fics targeting the Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male are also common. Typically, either Keitaro or the girl he is paired with gets sick of Naru and the other girls beating the crap out of him for little reason, and decides to strike back somehow. Other times, the girls will realize they were wrong on their own and try to make amends.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Many fans want to forget the existence of the anime adaptation. The fact that it didn't age well and didn't cover the entire story (some chapters were skipped and the OVA ends at Kanako's arc) doesn't help its case.
• Gateway Series: For many anime/manga fans in the West, this was their first harem anime/manga along with Tenchi Muyo!, even with all its faults.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Love Hina was loved in the West during the 2000s (especially in Latin America) and still has a loyal fandom. As a result, the manga got reprints and special editions in some countries.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Keitaro being brutally assaulted by the girls when attitudes towards abuse changed years after this series was released.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Kanako becoming Naru's sister-in-law (in the manga at least) is quite funny since their respective English voice actresses are in-laws in Real Life.
  • Keitaro and Mutsumi's voice actors reunite together again in Super Robot Wars Z 2 as Crowe Broust and Marilyn Catto respectively. The hilarity came out with the fact Marilyn is not only one of the villains, she was in a relationship with Crowe and her personality is basically like Naru, except raised at its logical conclusion. Crowe also hates pretty women as a result, just to be involved with lots of them anyways.
• I Am Not Shazam: "Hina" doesn't refer to any of the main heroines, but to the inn where they live, itself named after Keitaro's grandmother.
• It Was His Sled: It's common knowledge between anime/manga fans Keitaro marries Naru in the end as shown in the cover art of last volume.
• Les Yay:
  • While Keitaro is away, Mutsumi "dresses up" as him (by putting on glasses and rearranging her hair) in the hot springs and puts the moves on Naru. While the reason she gives is to merely try and make it easier for Naru to express her feelings for Keitaro, Cue Naru Megaton Punching her by mistake.
  • When Kanako first arrives in Love Hina Again, she disguises herself as Naru and feels up a number of the residents of Hinata Inn as research for her disguises. Motoko's "examination" takes place in an alleyway, and draws quite a crowd of nosebleeding men. Much more discreet in the manga, where Kanako-as-Naru attacks Motoko inside the Hinata House, using the convenient pretense of privately teaching her about what could be in the entrance exams.
• Moe:
  • Shinobu. With those vulnerable eyes, Luminescent Blushes, embarrassed stuttering, and that impossibly cute squeal, how could anyone not want to hug her?
  • Mutsumi really stands out in this series for being a Cute Clumsy Girl Nice Girl among a cast of girls who often act like Jerkasses. With a touch of I Want My Beloved to Be Happy on top of this giving her slight Woobie status, not to mention being nice to look at, she is quite moe.
• Once Original, Now Common: The manga was first published in 1998, while the anime first aired in 2000. While it shares a considerable number of clichés with modern Harem Genre works (like the tsundere lead girl and the accidental pervert guy), it still has some refreshing ideas. While most harems are set in a school environment with teenagers, Love Hina is set in a post-school setting from Keitaro's perspective, in an inn with young adults and teenagers. Also, Love Hina never was a fully-fledged harem series, considering Keitaro chose Narusegawa since the beginning and most of the girls are either rooting for them to become a couple or, at best, waiting for a chance if Keitaro changes his mind, while most harems after it have the main character unsure about which girl to choose. Unfortunately, the harem-related tropes the series introduced have been used by so many other manga and anime in the years since that most people would dismiss it as a typical harem comedy, and the liberal use of Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male in particular, while uncontroversial back then, would go on to get it it a lot of backlash once female-on-male abuse started being taken seriously.
• One True Threesome: Keitarou/Naru/Mutsumi is all but canon, but Naru/Keitarou/Motoko is also very popular among the OT3 shippers.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, this series was this for Ricardo Bautista as Keitaro, before his Star-Making Role as both Ayato Sakamaki and Ty Rux.
  • The same goes in the same dub for Georgina Sanchez, who voiced Mei Narusegawa, before her roles as Kikyo, Nami and Asuka Langley Soryu.
• Ron the Death Eater: As a result of the rampant Values Dissonance applied to the series due to Naru and Motoko's treatment of Keitaro essentially being Domestic Abuse, fan fiction tends to either hype up their abusive, hypocritical attributes to make them into outright monsters, or if not that, will simply have people react realistically to their behavior and be openly horrified. Granny Hina also tends to get this treatment, being written as a cruel and manipulative old lady who set her grandson up to be abused by a vicious harpy just because of a childhood promise (which Keitaro didn't even make to Naru in the first place).
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Saying things can get testy between Naru/Keitaro, Motoko/Keitaro, Shinobu/Keitaro, and Mutsumi/Keitaro shippers is a massive understatement.
• Subbing vs. Dubbing:
  • The Love Hina anime has a reputation among voice actors and fans alike for being a royal pain in the ass to dub in almost every language. As a result, almost every dub other than the original Japanese is disliked by the fanbase.
  • Special attention goes to the Mexican Spanish dub, which was so poorly received it practically destroyed the perception of the franchise in Latin America. On the other hand, the Mexican translation of the manga is considered to be excellent, handled by Brenda Nava, who translated the scripts of Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z and Cardcaptor Sakura's animated adaptations.
  • The English dub is infamous among the general anime fandom as one of the worst non-Macekres ever made. This is despite its cast being made up entirely of veteran actors who have produced excellent work elsewhere. Those veterans were placed in roles that did not suit their ranges, making this dub one of the rare examples of invoking Dawson Casting in voice acting. Later on, it became known that the Japanese producers absolutely control-freaked this series, constantly overruling the director on casting and line delivery.
  • The manga has two complete English translations, each with its own positives and negatives. The Tokyopop translation has a natural flow to it, but suffers from severe lack of proofreading (Volumes 2-5 and 9 in particular) as well as a Lost in Translation issue near the end due to adapting a term early on that later turned out to be a plot-important multi-level pun^note see Incredibly Lame Pun on the main page. For more context: Tokyo University is consistently mentioned in the original as Todai — a shortened form of its name in Japanese, Tokyo Daigaku —, but in this translation the terminology used was "Tokyo U". The Kodansha translation by the Nibley sisters has much better editing but is rather literalist and tends to come off stilted as a result.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Despite both Kanako and Naru being Base Breaking Characters, a lot of people cheered when she punched Naru in the face, specifically because of how often Naru did it to Keitaro.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The way most of the girls, especially Naru, treat Keitaro has put off a lot of people from the series. The fact that Keitaro gets married to Naru, despite all the abuse she's inflicted on him, only makes it worse.
• Unintentional Period Piece: While the series doesn't usually exhibit this trope aside from some Values Dissonance, the anime's Christmas Episode is built almost entirely around the fact that it originally aired and is set on Christmas Day of 2000, with an in-universe rumor that anyone who confesses their love on Christmas of that year will have their wish granted. Quite a few problems that the episode sets up would also likely have been easily solved if the characters had cellphones, which weren't in wider use yet during the early 2000s.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Naru in pretty much everything she does, but one scene in the manga stands out: Keitaro and Naru have flunked their entrance exams and are understandably depressed. They go to a bar and start drinking and promptly get into an argument to vent their frustrations. This soon turns nasty and both parties say harsh things, but Naru not only starts it, she proves she cannot take what she dishes out — she calls Keitaro out on being a clumsy, lecherous idiot and accuses him of whining whenever everything goes wrong and tells him the girl of his promise wouldn't look twice at a loser like him. Unsurprisingly, this pisses Keitaro off and he (for once) retorts back that she's a violent, bad-tempered bitch who wrecked her eyesight studying and she still flunked her exams, citing that the person she promised to get accepted at the U (Seta) would have quite some words for her, too. Nothing Keitaro says is any worse than Naru's criticisms, but she bursts into tears, hits him with her bag and runs off, leaving him to pay for their drinks, and hops on a train to just get away from him. And the narrative treats Keitaro like he went too far.
• Values Dissonance:
  • The fact that the majority of the cast is under 18 yet not living with their parents or family will raise a bit of eyebrows in the West — one can argue for Naru being emancipated, but not so much for the others — especially Shinobu, who's the youngest of the girls at only 13 years old. However, in Japan, this is not that strange at all: children are given a lot of independence since very early age, and it's not rare for high school students to live away from their parents' houses in student inns like in Love Hina, or even in a small apartment if their families can afford it.
  • Also, the fact that physical abuse and accusations of sexual assault and molestation are Played for Laughs isn't very well received — especially in this age and in the West, where Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male is more of a social issue that most people and the law will not tolerate anymore.
  • Kanako's huge crush on her brother Keitaro. While incest is a taboo, even for people who enjoy harem manga/anime, some don't see a problem considering Keitaro firmly denies any romance interest on Kanako and the fact they are not blood related. Although this still raises some eyebrows, since he had some Accidental Pervert moments with her and even wet dreams for some nights.
  • Motoko often grapples with Tomboy Angst and feels that she's a failure as a woman because she's not girly enough. This is rooted in Japan's generally strict views on gender roles, and it doesn't help that she comes from a traditional family.

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