Love Hina Ruined Harem Anime for a Decade

John Ohno
John Ohno
Nov 7 · 3 min read

Periodic reminder that Ken Akamatsu, author of Love Hina, popularized (and maybe introduced) the trope of “what if we make the harem protagonist relatable by making him a sadsack who deserves violence against him not because of his actions — which are completely accidental — but because of some essential internal flaw that makes him useless”. This is an incredibly damaging trope, & seems to be based on a misunderstanding of Ataru’s role in Urusei Yatsura.

Like Ataru, Keitaro is cosmically unlucky & some people around him are annoyed by this. However, the…

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John Ohno

Written by

John Ohno

Resident hypertext crank. Author of Big and Small Computing: Trajectories for the Future of Software. http://www.lord-enki.net

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