Review of Love Hina

Love Hina (2000–2001)
On its own, good, but does the comic no justice
13 February 2005
What can I say, I'm a writer. Don't get me wrong, I love Love Hina; it's quickly become one of favorites - but in comic form. Like I said, the show is respectable, but taking a 14-volume comic and turning into a 26 to 36 episode TV show really doesn't work for me. Ken Akamatsu's writing is incredible - each chapter is religiously 18 pages long, save for about 5 here and there, and his style is such that each of those chapters could easily be turned into a 23 minute TV episode. Admitadly, you could probably cut out a good portion of volumes 10 through 14, considering that the comic started to lose it around there, but that still leaves over 100 chapters available, meaning there could have easily been over 100 episodes. I love anime, but my one complaint with most is that they are too short. Most animes are about 26 episodes; this, most of the time, leaves very little room for character and story development as it should be (this isn't the case with a select few, like Cowboy Bebop and Trigun); this especially applies for shows based on comics, where the characters develop slowly over time, and you enjoy every minute of it.

I still recommend seeing the show, but I also, even more strongly, recommend reading the comics; the show's for laughs, the comics are for everything else.
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