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ラブ ひな [Love Hina] #8
ラブひな ８
とうとう東大の合格発表日。景太郎、成瀬川、乙姫むつみの運命やいかに？！
ひなた荘の住人達も大活躍し、物語は意外な展開を見せる。
ひなた荘の住人達も大活躍し、物語は意外な展開を見せる。
191 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 17, 2000
6 people are currently reading
364 people want to read
About the author
Ken Akamatsu
641 books231 followersKen Akamatsu (赤松 健, Akamatsu Ken, July 5, 1968 -) is a Japanese mangaka from Tokyo.
In his teenage years, Akamatsu failed the entrance exam to Tokyo University, and applied for Film Study instead (it is speculated that this is where he got the idea for Love Hina). Eventually, he became famous as an illustrator featured in Comiket (short for Comic Market, a comic convention bi-annually held in Japan). He used the pen name Awa Mizuno (水野 亜和, MIZUNO Awa). Akamatsu, still in college, then proceeded to win the Weekly Shonen Magazine award twice. His "A Kid's Game for One Summer" was awarded the coveted 50th Shonen Magazine Newcomer's Award soon after he graduated.
After a big hit with A.I. Love You, he finally made a grand success with his new manga, Love Hina. The series appeared in Weekly Shonen Magazine and has been collected in eleven volumes (with fourteen volumes in total), which have sold over 6 million copies in Japan, and received the Kodansha Manga Award for shōnen in 2001.
Akamatsu had added elements of his own life experiences to the story, and this was said to have induced a unique feeling to the manga especially for Western readers, whose lack of familiarity with Japanese culture for the most part added to the effect. The series, published in America in 2002, was especially well received in many overseas countries - Akamatsu was surprised that even foreign readers found Love Hina to be "cute" and to their liking.
He is now married to his wife 'Kanon' Akamatsu, who was previously a singer/idol. He is currently working on his latest manga series, Negima!: Magister Negi Magi, which is his longest running manga so far. Like Love Hina, has also been made into an anime series. A second independent retelling of Negima was made called Negima!?. Both series were produced by XEBEC (Negima!? was produced by SHAFT).
In his teenage years, Akamatsu failed the entrance exam to Tokyo University, and applied for Film Study instead (it is speculated that this is where he got the idea for Love Hina). Eventually, he became famous as an illustrator featured in Comiket (short for Comic Market, a comic convention bi-annually held in Japan). He used the pen name Awa Mizuno (水野 亜和, MIZUNO Awa). Akamatsu, still in college, then proceeded to win the Weekly Shonen Magazine award twice. His "A Kid's Game for One Summer" was awarded the coveted 50th Shonen Magazine Newcomer's Award soon after he graduated.
After a big hit with A.I. Love You, he finally made a grand success with his new manga, Love Hina. The series appeared in Weekly Shonen Magazine and has been collected in eleven volumes (with fourteen volumes in total), which have sold over 6 million copies in Japan, and received the Kodansha Manga Award for shōnen in 2001.
Akamatsu had added elements of his own life experiences to the story, and this was said to have induced a unique feeling to the manga especially for Western readers, whose lack of familiarity with Japanese culture for the most part added to the effect. The series, published in America in 2002, was especially well received in many overseas countries - Akamatsu was surprised that even foreign readers found Love Hina to be "cute" and to their liking.
He is now married to his wife 'Kanon' Akamatsu, who was previously a singer/idol. He is currently working on his latest manga series, Negima!: Magister Negi Magi, which is his longest running manga so far. Like Love Hina, has also been made into an anime series. A second independent retelling of Negima was made called Negima!?. Both series were produced by XEBEC (Negima!? was produced by SHAFT).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
April 5, 2020
It'll be a while until I can pick up copies of the next couple of volumes in this series, so be warned, you might get some current overall thoughts now that I'm past the halfway point in this re-read. Generalized bullet points again because that's about what my stress levels and mush brain can handle at the moment. (Working in a hospital during this pandemic really takes it out of me.) Be warned, I'm probably going to be a bit harsher with my swearing this time around.
- Personally I don't feel this volume started out the best, but it got better as it went on.
- I'm glad that we're finally getting to see some ACTUAL character growth in Keitaro. It only took 8 volumes (out of the 14 in the series) and 62 chapters to reach this point, so it's about damn time, but hey, growth is growth! I love seeing him break away from this constant cycle he's been in and actually maturing, finding joy in the moment, finding rewarding work, and getting an idea of what he wants to do with his life for a career. He has been so focused on getting into Tokyo University it feels like he's not bothered to actually consider what he wants to do once he's enrolled, so it's nice to see him figure some of that out, at least in part.
- Kind of annoyed that it took the introduction of Nyamo, a POC doppelganger of Shinobu, to actually point out to us Shinobu's growth, but that's still something, and I do appreciate the tentative friendship the two girls strike up with each other.
- The more I re-read this series, the less I like Naru. As a teenager, I liked her. As an adult, I feel like, for a character who's supposed to be mature beyond her years, a whole fucking lot of the issues in this series could be avoided or more easily resolved if she'd pull her head out of her damn ass for two fucking minutes and LISTEN to ANYONE ELSE when they try to talk with her.
- Personally I feel like Ken Akamatsu's art style is more same-face-heavy than I remember it being when I read this as a teenager. But considering that a HUGE chunk of the characters in the Negima! manga look just like the ones here in Love Hina, perhaps it needs to be stated? Doesn't help either that when any of the characters in the series show an expression other than their default resting face, the faces start to blend together.
- I remembered the oversaturation of fanservice in this series, but I didn't remember it being THIS bad (regarding all 8 volumes I've read to this point.) Fanservice in any harem manga or anime is inevitable, but when it continuously stalls or derails the plot, there's too much. I love the absurdity of several other aspects of this series, because it does play into the comedic nature, but the level of absurdity with the fanservice no longer sits well with the writer in me.
Please note, I am actually enjoying my revisit of the series. I really am. The actual plot regarding the "ronin trio" struggling to make it into Tokyo University as a group is good. And I am glad that I'm collecting the Tokyopop volumes from Thriftbooks and other used sites and places, because I feel like Love Hina is SO text-heavy, collecting the omnibus volumes and trying to read them probably would have been too overwhelming. But trying to re-read from a more objective standpoint, there's just a lot of stuff I can't overlook now that I'm older. [And even then, please take my words with a grain of salt, because I can't be completely 100% objective; I'm pretty sure I have unfair standards regarding any harem series since I grew up on Tenchi and it set the bar really, really fucking high for me.]
- Personally I don't feel this volume started out the best, but it got better as it went on.
- I'm glad that we're finally getting to see some ACTUAL character growth in Keitaro. It only took 8 volumes (out of the 14 in the series) and 62 chapters to reach this point, so it's about damn time, but hey, growth is growth! I love seeing him break away from this constant cycle he's been in and actually maturing, finding joy in the moment, finding rewarding work, and getting an idea of what he wants to do with his life for a career. He has been so focused on getting into Tokyo University it feels like he's not bothered to actually consider what he wants to do once he's enrolled, so it's nice to see him figure some of that out, at least in part.
- Kind of annoyed that it took the introduction of Nyamo, a POC doppelganger of Shinobu, to actually point out to us Shinobu's growth, but that's still something, and I do appreciate the tentative friendship the two girls strike up with each other.
- The more I re-read this series, the less I like Naru. As a teenager, I liked her. As an adult, I feel like, for a character who's supposed to be mature beyond her years, a whole fucking lot of the issues in this series could be avoided or more easily resolved if she'd pull her head out of her damn ass for two fucking minutes and LISTEN to ANYONE ELSE when they try to talk with her.
- Personally I feel like Ken Akamatsu's art style is more same-face-heavy than I remember it being when I read this as a teenager. But considering that a HUGE chunk of the characters in the Negima! manga look just like the ones here in Love Hina, perhaps it needs to be stated? Doesn't help either that when any of the characters in the series show an expression other than their default resting face, the faces start to blend together.
- I remembered the oversaturation of fanservice in this series, but I didn't remember it being THIS bad (regarding all 8 volumes I've read to this point.) Fanservice in any harem manga or anime is inevitable, but when it continuously stalls or derails the plot, there's too much. I love the absurdity of several other aspects of this series, because it does play into the comedic nature, but the level of absurdity with the fanservice no longer sits well with the writer in me.
Please note, I am actually enjoying my revisit of the series. I really am. The actual plot regarding the "ronin trio" struggling to make it into Tokyo University as a group is good. And I am glad that I'm collecting the Tokyopop volumes from Thriftbooks and other used sites and places, because I feel like Love Hina is SO text-heavy, collecting the omnibus volumes and trying to read them probably would have been too overwhelming. But trying to re-read from a more objective standpoint, there's just a lot of stuff I can't overlook now that I'm older. [And even then, please take my words with a grain of salt, because I can't be completely 100% objective; I'm pretty sure I have unfair standards regarding any harem series since I grew up on Tenchi and it set the bar really, really fucking high for me.]
October 13, 2025
Review for the complete series
Keitaro just doesn't seem to be successful at anything - he failed his university entrance exam twice, was thrown out by his parents and just generally seems plagued by bad luck. Wanting to give the entrance exam another go, he decides to find accommodation in his grandmother's hotel. Upon arrival, though, it turns out that the hotel has now become a girl's dormitory where he is anything but welcome. But luck might be coming Keitaro's way after all when he learns that his grandmother has transferred the dormitory's ownership to him!
Love Hina seems to be a case of people either loving it and considering it a classic, while others think of it as a sexist work full of fanservice. I find myself in neither of these groups, though I have read other works by the author that really deserve being called out for sexism. In any case, let me start by saying that I love Akamatsu's art - especially in Love Hina. His earlier works weren't as nice to look at while I find that post-Love Hina works lost character and just look very generic.
So apart from loving the art, this was also one of the first manga I read and bought and therefore also has some nostalgia effect on me. As I was still new to reading manga and didn't know much about the different genres, because I had seen a lot of pictures of it and just generally liked the look of it, I decided to give this one a try. I didn't realise until much later that I wasn't even the target audience for this series, and even back then, it was never a huge favourite of mine, though I certainly did always enjoy reading.
I first and foremostly enjoy Love Hina as a comedy, it is one of the most hilarious manga I have read and often has me laughing out loud. A large chunk of the comedy can certainly be called 'dirty jokes', yet it's a far call from what people give it - I don't think that these jokes are sexist, indecent or demeaning towards women in any way. The girls in this manga all have very different personalities, but with the except of shy Shinobu, they're all pretty tough and know how to deal with the male characters of this series (although Keitaro is more often blamed when actually innocent than not).
The characters are another strong point in this series. I find Keitaro a very likeable main character - he draws bad luck like no other but is very kind and caring. He learns and recognises his weaknesses and definitely grows as the story progresses. Still, bad luck seems to stick with him all the way to the last chapter. In any case, I love the original cast of the girl's dormitory, they are such a varied but well-balanced group. They are great friends, a bit crazy together and there's at least one for every kind of reader to enjoy. My personal favourites are Naru, Mutsumi, Shinobu and Motoko - which actually surprises me as Shinobu and Motoko were among my least favourite when I read this series initially.
Another thing I love about this series and that speaks against the harem sexist accusations is the fact that not all the girls are in love him Keitaro. I am very sure that several of them are just interested in a platonic kind of relationship, e.g. I don't believe that Su sees in him anything but a big brother. Only some of them are genuinely interested in him and I think all of them have feelings that are well-developed and according to their personalities. I also think the female bodies are nicely drawn and natural-looking - there are no extremely overshaped breasts or curves as one can find in most other 'fan service' series.
Nonetheless, there are a few things that I also don't enjoy about Love Hina. At around the tenth volume, the story starts to drag. Ten volumes seems a good amount to wrap up this kind of story, instead, we get some additional characters that are utterly annoying and just unnecessary. Sara has to be among the most annoying little girl characters I've ever come across! But at least she still adds to the story while the whole Kanako arc felt like a major filler to just drag everything out. The fact that it was never mentioned that Keitaro has an adopted sister made it feel all the more as though it was an afterthought to keep the show running. I find Kanako a very unpleasant character and wish her part would have been left out. Since her appearance, the series felt more and more estranged from its original genre as there was a lot of over-the-top action going on.
But hey, annoying characters and arcs aside, Love Hina has one of the best endings, or rather epilogues, out there. It brings the whole series to a nice round conclusion and gives you a nice idea of what's become of everyone - it was really the best way this series could have ended!
December 9, 2018
Most of this manga takes place on a desert island in the South Seas. That mostly means girls in bikinis trying to find Keitaro, a young man (20) who hasn't even bothered to wait for his entrance exam scores to be posted. He is certain he has failed. Naturally, the girls at Hinata House try to track him down and get him back to Japan to read his exam results like a man. In the meantime he grows as a man, making him more attractive to Naru, and frankly to all the other girls including a new one on the island that looks just like Shinobu.
Sex is discussed, but does it happen? The answer to that question constitutes a spoiler either way, so I am avoiding answering it. All my cautions from volume 4 apply to this volume.
I am continuing with the series.
Sex is discussed, but does it happen? The answer to that question constitutes a spoiler either way, so I am avoiding answering it. All my cautions from volume 4 apply to this volume.
I am continuing with the series.
June 13, 2021
Oh, caspita!
Per un volume ci spostiamo da villa Hinata e finiamo su alcune isolette sperdute del Pacifico e... l'ho letto quasi volentieri... Davvero, mi è quasi piaciuto di più di tutti gli altri sette volumi messi insieme.
Anche se Naru non dovrebbe arrabbiarsi quando Keitaro la guarda se le porta una maglietta che le scopre tutta la parte inferiore del seno...
Tante tartarughe!
Per un volume ci spostiamo da villa Hinata e finiamo su alcune isolette sperdute del Pacifico e... l'ho letto quasi volentieri... Davvero, mi è quasi piaciuto di più di tutti gli altri sette volumi messi insieme.
Anche se Naru non dovrebbe arrabbiarsi quando Keitaro la guarda se le porta una maglietta che le scopre tutta la parte inferiore del seno...
Tante tartarughe!
February 24, 2024
Četru gadu vecumā Keitaro Urashima un kāda atmiņu dzīlēs pēc vārda aizmirsta meitene reiz smilšu kastē viens otram devuši solījumu, ka abi reiz iekļūs Todai universitātē vien aiz tā iemesle, ka jau tādā vecumā padzirdējuši, ka diviem mīlētājiem kopā esot Todai mīlestība garantēta uz mūžu.
https://poseidons99.wordpress.com/202...
https://poseidons99.wordpress.com/202...
October 28, 2020
I am currently rereading this series for the first time since I was like 10 (which is v questionable bc it’s v pervy at times) but I forgot how good and funny it is! I love all these characters so much and always have. So glad keitaro, naru & Mitsumi all finally got into Tokyo U 🥰
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 24, 2017
I was really dreading the fact that Keitarou had to possibly take the exams AGAIN. But luckily everyone made it into Toudai!!
August 21, 2018
Excellent manga.. am I too old for this.. you're never too old for LOVE!
September 27, 2020
Pretty great Romance manga, really good story and love the art style 😁👌❤️
August 13, 2022
This felt the same as a pervious volume in terms of storyline. Keitaro running off again cause he thought he failed. The storyline does differ as the volume continues.
March 28, 2023
Island without technology.
January 25, 2026
Finally, an enjoyable volume. It was mostly Keitaro and Naru, with Seta and a potential new harem member. The gang of idiots was mostly absent. With six volumes to go, I'm sure they will return.
June 17, 2013
The only good part about this issue was the abundance of turtles. Hilarious and Big Tama is very cute.
I really do not enjoy this series, but I have to finish what I have started. Keitaro is a gutless, weak, pathetic character, and Narusegawa is a violent, ruthless hypocrite. I am also REALLY sick of seeing girls who are meant to be 12 years old have their clothes ripped off and have men ogle at them. Disgusting.
The line 'the worms are eating my clothes' was actually in this. Bleh!
I really do not enjoy this series, but I have to finish what I have started. Keitaro is a gutless, weak, pathetic character, and Narusegawa is a violent, ruthless hypocrite. I am also REALLY sick of seeing girls who are meant to be 12 years old have their clothes ripped off and have men ogle at them. Disgusting.
The line 'the worms are eating my clothes' was actually in this. Bleh!
January 29, 2017
The drama really starts up in this one as Keitaro, Naru and Mutsumi finally get into Tokyo University! Only they have to go chasing after Keitaro because he thought he flunked and went running off to a foreign country. Can the Hinata House girls go get him before the deadline for students to confirm their places? The artwork starts to become a lot more detailed and the plot finally begins to move to the next stage.
August 19, 2008
Ken Akamatsu, Love Hina, vol. 8 (Tokyopop, 1999)
The exam results are almost posted, but Keitaro, convinced he failed, has run off on the first boat, only to find himself stranded on Pararakelse Island. Hinata House to the rescue! This one's a light, fun break from the rest of the series, with the gang off on another seaside adventure. Another very good offering in this strong series. ****
The exam results are almost posted, but Keitaro, convinced he failed, has run off on the first boat, only to find himself stranded on Pararakelse Island. Hinata House to the rescue! This one's a light, fun break from the rest of the series, with the gang off on another seaside adventure. Another very good offering in this strong series. ****
February 18, 2018
Si queréis leer una obra realmente magistral de Ken Akamatsu, leed la serie "Negima!: Magister Negi Magi" Una historia bien pensada que te atrapa, con personajes que evolucionan psicológicamente, un dibujo preciosista cargado de detalles y profundidad de planos en cada página, momentos trepidantes y realmente emocionantes, y una aventura interesante que leer. Probadla, de verdad.
October 4, 2007
i watch the anime version :
it is about a boy name Urashima Keitaro who became girls's dorm caretaker, since he fails his ent-exams into Tokyo University for the 2nd time and officially an unemployed plus his parents kicked him out of the house ^_^"
And the story begin ..
it is about a boy name Urashima Keitaro who became girls's dorm caretaker, since he fails his ent-exams into Tokyo University for the 2nd time and officially an unemployed plus his parents kicked him out of the house ^_^"
And the story begin ..
November 29, 2008
Keitaro and Naru get stuck on an Island called Paraparakelse, and meet a girl named Nyamo while there. Will they make it back on time to Hinata House in order for Keitaro to finally get into Tokyo U?
Keitaro discovers a secret, ancient, turtle civilization. Hilarious!!
Keitaro discovers a secret, ancient, turtle civilization. Hilarious!!
February 4, 2008
I didn't like the drama with Keitaro leaving and Naru trying to bring him back/kill him. It was a little over the top.
Read
June 5, 2011very funny
January 21, 2016
Read prior to joining Goodreads.
March 7, 2014
Fun series!
May 17, 2014
Demasiado relleno e este tomo... No me a gustado mucho la verdad...
April 11, 2015
If there was lesa fanserv, it would be five stars.
October 16, 2015
"Here's your fan service!!"
Best. Manga. Ever.
Best. Manga. Ever.
December 29, 2016
The adventure int he island was so funny. I'm so so curios to know if Kei will really enroll in the university!!
December 30, 2016
Alors accepté à Todai ou pas ? :)
June 30, 2019
Ages 16 +
Read
August 20, 2009Love Hina, Vol. 8 by Ken Akamatsu (2003)
June 22, 2017
introduction to the term "fan service"
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews