There are spoilers on this page.

Love Hina is set in a hot springs town, Hinata onsen, and more specifically at a former hot springs resort, Hinata-sou/Hinata-ryokan (Hinata Inn). Hinata-sou is now an all-girls dormitory, but the manager Hina has decided to go touring hot springs of the world. The girls who stay at the dorm now need a manager if they are to remain living at at Hinata, and at that auspicious moment, Hina's grandson Keitaro arrives in Hinata.

Urashima Keitaro once made a promise with a childhood sweetheart. They heard that two people who entered Tokyo University (aka Tokyo U or Toudai) would be able to find happiness together. So little Keitaro and this girl made a promise that when they grew up they would enter Tokyo U and find each other again.

In the present, Keitaro is finding this promise hard to live up to. He's already failed to qualify twice, and his parents are losing patience with him. Finally, they kick him out of the house as they can't afford to feed him any more. So he goes to Hinata-sou and ends up staying, to the initial consternation of the girls who mistake him for a pervert.

But he becomes kanrinin/manager and eventually things settle into a state of general chaos. Keitaro and one of the girl residents of the dorm, Narusegawa Naru, study hard to qualify for Tokyo U. The series follows Keitaro struggling to qualify and to figure out who he made his promise to (he can't remember her name or face) and the antics of the girls in the dorm. He also develops a big crush on Naru which complicates things, as he is at first sort of torn between loyalty to her and to the unknown girl of his promise.

Keitaro and Narusegawa meet a girl named Otohime Mutsumi who is also trying to qualify for Tokyo U. The three start studying together. Things are complicated, as Keitaro and Narusegawa seem to like each other a lot, but can't say so, Otohime likes Keitaro, and a possible rival for Narusegawa's love appears, the archeologist Seta...? And just who was the promise made with?

Love Hina is a somewhat whacky show, with flying, meowing turtles, a psycho little girl who builds gigantic mecha, constant misunderstandings between the girls and Keitaro, romantic tension and a bunch of strange old men who stand around on the streets of Hinata onsen, making cryptic comments.

The five girls who live at Hinata-sou are Narusegawa Naru, Aoyama Makoto, Konno Mitsune ("Kitsune"), Kaolla Su and Maehara Shinobu. There is also the Hinata-sou caretaker, Keitaro's aunt Haruka. Seta's 'daughter' Sara later goes to live there. Other characters pop in and out.

Apart from the main plot (romantic tension between Keitaro and Naru, trying to qualify for Toudai, and who was the girl of the promise), there are a number of subplots involving the other girls that pop up from time to time. Some of the subplots include:
Shinobu growing up and trying to come to terms with her own feelings on things.
Motoko discovering her own identity as she practises her sword skills and finds that they are not incompatible with being a normal feminine girl.
Su, who is from another country, dealing with her confusing feelings about whether she wants to grow up (and marry), and possessing the bizarre ability to turn into an adult at a second's notice.

And so the story goes.

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