Ken Akamatsu

The best review / description of this manga is actually contained in the introduction by Adam Arnold in Volume 1, so I suppose I should just copy that.
But that would be boring so I'll summarise, paraphrase, and suchlike instead.
Take the basic premise behind "Weird Science" combine it with a "Hackers" like impression of the internet, throw in seriously out of date computer technology as well as moderately sexist and outmoded views of what typifies the perfect woman; take all this and imagine show more it as the ancestor of Akamatsu's later work "Love Hina" and you basically get the idea.
If you haven't read "Love Hina" read that instead of this. It's better. It's art is better, it's writing is better, it's characters are more engaging, so on and so forth. It is the more mature (well not so much mature, let us say better developed) work of the older man that as a younger man wrote "A.I. Love You". So of course it's better! The guy had years to refine his drawing techniques and writing style between the first chapters of this and that masterpiece of horny loser geekdom known as "Love Hina".
You've probably figured this out, but I really love "Love Hina". I've been reading more of Ken Akamatsu's work lately simply because I couldn't get enough of it. I started with "Negima" which did not disappoint me. It does after all come post Hina. But unfortunately it has been so successful that there are about twenty volumes and counting and no end in sight so I've decided not to get too into it till Akamatsu has come up with some sort of conclusion to the story.
Then I read "Mao-Chan". Somewhat disappointed there I have to say. I gave it two stars but I wasn't really feeling even that much. At most 1 star, and that's being generous. I only gave it two because of all the joy that Akamatsu has brought me with other works. Okay so that doesn't smack of critical integrity but who cares. Who's paying attention to what rating I gave Mao-Chan? Who's even reading this review?
Let's face it, I'm essentially shouting into the void here!
Kind of cathartic really.
But to get back to the point, I do genuinely feel the three stars I gave volume 1 of A.I. Love You, and I genuinely suspect that by the time I get to the later volumes I may be rating them with four. I heartily encourage anyone who has enjoyed Love Hina as much as I to read A.I. Love You as an act of love, to see where it all began. show less

This is my guilty pleasure. Keitaro is a ronin, which means he has failed his university exams, and ends up the landlord of a girls dorm. There he meets, and falls in love with a girl, has another crash into his life, and gets pounded on a regular basis for accidently walking in on naked or dressing girls.

Having started to bog down and feel drawn out towards the end of the last omnibus, things get moving again as some actual changes occur.

In the inevitable way of manga, the romantic plot becomes increasingly complex. I can't really see this as good - it's the usual sort of contradictory, you-promised stuff that tends to feel like it's a device proposed by editors to prolong a popular series. "But what if EVERYONE had given Akira-kun a special ring in their childhood..?" and so forth. Still, show more not egregiously annoying.

I'm still enjoying the antics and interactions of the cast, and now that I've got used to it, the wackiness of the universe keeps things lively. Naru is getting a bit tedious with all this prevaricating though. I'm starting to root elsewhere, and that's bad. show less

A few years ago I read about half of Ken Akamatsu's manga series Love Hina, but for some reason never finished it. At the time, Tokyopop had published the fourteen volumes between 2002 and 2003; Love Hina was a very successful series for the company. Love Hina was also successful in its native Japan. Serialized between 1998 and 2001, Love Hina went on to inspire anime, light novel, and even video game adaptations. In 2001, Love Hina also won the Kodansha Manga Award for the shōnen category. show more Love Hina was selected for the September 2011 Manga Moveable Feast, although for various reasons we held it in October, to coincide with Kodansha Comics new English release of the series. Kodansha was even kind enough to send out review copies of the new omnibus edition, collecting the first three volumes of the series, to some of the participants. I figured it was a good opportunity to give the series another try.

Keitaro Urashima is a second year rōnin. He has applied to the prestigious Tokyo University twice and failed entry both times. It's really not that surprising though if you take a look at his atrocious test scores. Regardless, he is determined to make it in because of a promise he made to a childhood friend (a girl) who he hasn't seen or heard from in fifteen years. Unfortunately, Keitaro's parents are fed up with the situation and have kicked him out of the house. And so he hopes his grandmother will let him stay at her inn. What he doesn't know is that Hinata Inn has been turned into an all-female dormitory. Finding his grandmother away and himself suddenly the manager of the property, Keitaro has a lot more to worry about than just his entrance exams. The poor guy has very little experience with women, and the residents of Hinata Inn are not going to make it easy on him.

Much of the humor in Love Hina involves Keitaro unintentionally stumbling upon the girls in various stages of dress or undress and subsequently being declared a pervert and getting pummeled by them for it. I'll admit that I find this rather amusing, but it does get somewhat repetitive, something that even the characters notice. The resulting fanservice caused by these incidents tend to be fairly mild, more imagined than shown, although there are still plenty of panty shots and the like to be found. I'm actually not all that bothered by the fanservice in Love Hina because it serves a legitimate purpose to the story--there are narrative reasons for it to be there. But much like the repeated gags to which it is so closely tied, the fanservice, too, becomes fairly monotonous over time.

While I don't actively dislike Love Hina, I'm not finding myself particularly engaged by it, either. I'm not really sure why, because there are parts I really like. I appreciate the fact that all the young women living at Hinata Inn have distinct personalities that are, for the most part, independent from Keitaro. It is fairly clear from their interactions with one another that the household has an established rapport and that Keitaro has simply been added to the mix. Unfortunately, once the characters have been fully introduced, there isn't much further development in these early volumes. At this point, I also feel that the narrative flow is somewhat disjointed. Love Hina isn't exactly an episodic series, but some of the transitions between chapters, or lack thereof, can be jarring. Still, there are some genuinely funny moments in Love Hina amongst the silliness and I'm glad that I gave the series another look.

Experiments in Manga show less