Love Hina, Volume 1: Moving In (Episodes 1-4)

Amazon.com An agreeable loser in the tradition of Keiichi in Oh My Goddess, 20-year-old Keitaro Urashima promised a girl when he was 5 that they'd attend prestigious Tokyo University together. He's in prep school, struggling to fulfill that promise, when his grandmother retires, making him the manager of the Hinata Apartments, which serves as a high school girls' dorm. The residents include an assortment of standard anime females: painfully shy Shinobu, violently anti-male kendo champion Motoko, irrepressible Su, and brainy, pretty Naru, whose temper makes Akane in Ranma look placid. Keitaro has a talent for turning up in the wrong place at the wrong time: he inadvertently infuriates the girls--who beat the sushi out of him. But Keitaro also has a genuinely kind heart, which eventually carries the day, overcoming his low self-esteem, poor study habits, and overactive fantasy life. Rated 13 Up: Comic violence, risqué humor, tobacco use. --Charles Solomon