Love Hina, Vol. 11 by Ken Akamatsu

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I started reading this series 10 years ago. For whatever reason, I stopped a couple books short from the end. Last year I started re-reading them for a series over on Comic POW! ( http://www.comicpow.com/thread/unders… ) Overall, I’ve enjoyed the story almost as much as I did the first time around (when I was closer in age to Keitaro). Many manga and anime are full of Fan Service and, as you’d expect from a series involving a college guy living with HS-College age girls, there’s plenty here. But this entire volume was essentially just one giant fan service episode for 100 or so pages. Given that Akamatsu has actually really provided some of these characters a lot of emotional and personal growth it was just annoying and repetitive. The entire volume feels as though Akamatsu had to make, say, 100 issues and he realized his story only required 95 issues so he’s stalling. Instead of one nonsensical issue within the volume, the whole thing hinges on the girls being fired or quitting over and over as they fight with Keitaro’s sister, who’s running things while he’s in America.