This series should get a 10 overall, but the final 'big' adventure (not the grand finale) left a bad taste in my mouth. I won't say more than that it involved visiting the home of one of the mains, and it seemed rushed (perhaps by the mangaka's work on then-new Negi) and made me resent even the very sweetest character, something I thought impossible.

There are times you can adapt, and there are times you so need the full story. One example is the later seasons of M*A*S*H*. These were already weaker stories than the earlier seasons, and syndicated cuts bled them harder than most shows. Another example is Denethor. If LOTR proved to be filmable, Steward Denethor may have been the exception. How could a film not devoted to him alone successfully show how he is a dark counterpoint to Aragorn and Faramir, the embodied flaws of the Great Race Of Numenor while still being magnificent in those flaws?

Love Hina is that for the manga versus the anime, perhaps more so than any other mainstream series. Do you want to know why this guy stuck around, and why the ladies allowed him to? Do you want a Naru and Motoko who don't seem to channel 90's/2000's US sitcom wives, or conversely a Keitaro who doesn't seem to channel their idiot man-child husbands? Do you want actual sexual tension between Keitaro and his youngest harem members (without crossing any bad lines)? Yes, this Keitaro takes beat-downs, a good many of them unfair, but he doesn't seem a worthless wimp while his (evolving) suitors aren't always smash-smash pervert-pervert baka-baka witches. Even at their most tense, the characters all have genuine affection for each other. Only Kitsune really suffers, never getting her own arc and at times almost being to the exception to the 'more depth' defense. These ladies will annoy you and this guy will make you cringe. But they have normal days, and support each other, not merely when it counts, but pretty much anytime they can-and even the sweetest character has her flaws, some coming from her open affection for the male lead.

Until technology enables fan-authors to use the anime models for a full-on manga adaptation, the Flanderization and Up to 11 nature of the anime (which inspires most of the Naru-hate we know) leaves it looking like a pretty picture and not much more. Even those who dislike the ending and a certain coupling outcome will be at least shown why the mangaka went that way.

But as to the final big adventure, it was to me as bad as the anime on almost all fronts, at times incomprehensible, and made all but two harem members look like horrible jerks, even with the premise's built-in Karma Houdini for their actions. Myself, I wrote a fixfic, though I hope never a vicious one. The grand finale regains its footing, and then some. But I can't shake the bad incongruent taste of that last big adventure, and for me that dials a 10 down to a 9--9 and 1/2 if I had that option. You will love Love Hina, a series so strong, its mains were likely homaged/parodied/deconstructed for the mains in Elfen Lied.