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Love Hina
Love Hina
Love Hina, at least as portrayed in the Anime, takes place not in the mortal realm, but in a deep part of the realm of dreams.
When you consider the abrupt nature of plot twists, the location and costume changes, and their ability to produce objects with a thought (including but not limited to Kaolla Su's ability), one gets the feeling that one is viewing, not real events, but rather a dream. The "town elders" are the clincher; they're always muttering about the hazy nature of the border between dreams and reality... They are the immortal caretakers of this section of the realm.

It explains how all the characters can manifest seemingly superhuman abilities without substantially affecting the setting they find themselves in.
  • It could even be inside the Nexus from Star Trek: Generations. Consider how often we run into physical duplicates of the main characters: Shinobu/Nyamo, Keitaro/Molmol's King, Young Naru/Sarah, Haruka/late-chapters Kitsune.
    • I apologize if this is an inappropriate comment, and I respect that YMMV, but, the thought of combining the anime version of Love Hina with Star Trek Generations is very disturbing...

Kaolla Suu is not a Gadgeteer Genius; instead, she has the power to create or summon machines from thin air.
Despite the huge variety of mecha Kaolla has employed in the series, we never see her exhibit the usual props and tropes of a gadgeteer, mechanic or inventor — not even a lab or a workshop. Kaolla's primary activity when not eating or harassing Keitaro seems to be sleeping on a tree branch. Furthermore, there's never any mention of the time she spends allegedly building any of the devices, and she never demonstrates any kind of mechanical aptitude in any other context. And we do know that she possesses some kind of magical power because of the "Red Moon" incidents.
  • My god...Kaolla can Trace! She's a Magi!
  • This theory makes perfect sense and clarifies many things.
  • It explains how she can suddenly "unveil" large and bulky devices that she couldn't have been carrying on her or even in her luggage, such as the turtle tank on Pararakelse island. And it could explain the fake passports for Suu, Sara, and Shinobu.

Urashima Keitaro is a descendant of Wolverine from that time he was bumming around Japan.
Keitaro's healing factor allows him to survive horrendous beatings on a daily basis. And as the series continues, he begins to produce pheromones that cause women to simply gravitate towards him.
  • Well, that would explain his ability to take a bowling ball to the face and not end up in an emergency room.
  • Or why he sees no problem talking telepathically to Naru.
  • His one-time instance of a broken leg that took months to heal could be explained away as similar to one of Logan's down-spells, like after Magneto sucked the adamantium from him. Not only was that a grievous physical wound, but he was shaken on a mental/spiritual level as well. Keitaro unconsciously 'knows' how to use it not to get hurt in the first place, but unlike Logan, does not yet know to direct the healing when he is hurt. Plus, Mutsumi following him around talking about his bad luck while he was having bad luck probably put a whammy on him. But was Logan-San Granny's mate or father? This would also explain Haruka's allowing life-threatening beatdowns on her own blood. She knows—and even abuses her factor by smoking, just like Grandpappy Logan.
  • He was definitely Granny's mate. That lady has a taste for adventure.
    • I think this WMG is somehow related to the Fan Wank theory that Naru is Captain Falcon's great-great-great...etc. grandmother.

All the residents of the Hina Inn are part of a cult
Just hear me out Naru Mokoto and all the other girls who beat Keitaro are the conditioners beating him each time he does something they dont like (like what they were doing in the original but evilier) Shinobu and Mutsumi are there to guilt/charm him into not leaving.The inn is isolated and the chances of someone else coming around to point out how wrong this all is are slim as hell .Thats why they always get so jealous when he talks to other girls they're basically trying to condition him into being their personal slave/sex toy .

Naru is a telepath who didn't learn to control her powers
There are some times there are "talks" that go in thought bubbles, and even though some may be believed to be just whispers some of them are impossible to happen in usual ways or happen with people far apart. And people answer, so they aren't only thinking alike. And all of those impossible ones happen with Naru nearby. She also talked with Keitaro and Mutsumi as a kid, even though her first words are an important plot point caused by another one after they have been playing together for some time. Her amazing strength is actually tactile telekinesis like Superboys. Could evolve to actual one if she had training. That also explains why she was weak when young, she was just too powerful for her body at the time.

The Hinata-Sou is a mage's enclave.
We were just seeing the front they put up for the sake of Keitaro, who is a mundane, and they care about him too much to turn him in. The reason? Simple — we know from hints and a crossover character or two that Love Hina is in the same universe as Mahou Sensei Negima!. Negima heavily features MIB — mages in black, in charge of maintaining the Masquerade. However, waaay too much magic goes on there for it to go unnoticed; magical creatures, supernatural swordsmanship, Kaolla Su and the kingdom of MolMol in general... it's all much too magical for any involved Muggles not to be mindwiped. The solution? They aren't Muggles.
  • Well, the real question is, who's a mage and who's a muggle? Motoko and Suu are givens, and I would throw Kitsune and Sarah in there as well. Shinobu's a tenative case, but I'd say that Naru's probably unaware of the masquerade, albeit with the latent magical talent to launch Keitaro into the Stratosphere.
    • Are you sure about Naru? See the "telepathy" guess...
      • She could be a minor member of the royal family of Vesperina, maybe like Asuna's cousin or something. They look enough alike that they could be related, so maybe she just went the Laser-Guided Amnesia route. The punching is a latent magic ability, as noted above.
    • Mutsumi is practically a given, for one thing. Her family raises flying turtles, and if that's not a sign of being supernatural, then I'm a walrus.
    • Goo Goo Go Choob.
    • Sarah and her father are definitely in on the masquerade.
    Sarah: "Because papa and another person cooperated to fight the dark cult, he got this magical shovel!"
    • I'd take that to mean that her father is in on it, but the way she says it indicates that she either a) knows about it but doesn't understand the importance of keeping it secret or b) she isn't in on it, her father used it as a story correctly assuming that she wouldn't understand the details.
    • The magic shovel part could indicate Seta gained an artifact by having a provisional pactio contract with a mage.
    • Maybe Kitsune is actually Xellos in disguise?
  • In episode 78, Aunt Haruka just suddenly became armed (from Kaolla Suu's stash) while the group was at a hotel swimming pool. Naru and Keitaro were trying to get Haruka and Seta back together, and a lot of old photographs came out, and Haruka became embarrassed, then angry. and then things turned really unpleasant. Anyway, this is evidence that Aunt Haruka is a mage.
  • Kanako's cat, Kuro, talks.
    • Jossed in the official fanbook. Kanako and Kuro are just pulling a damned good ventriloquism act.
      • Or at least, thats what they want you to think!
  • Given the layout of Hinata dorm, which has hidden passage ways, and the skills of Granma Hina and Kanako perhaps even Haruka the Urashima clan are ninjas. Keitaro was not able to reach his combat potential unlike his female relatives till he extensively trained with Seta in America. Also for some reason Grandma Hina also has the title the Demon of Hinata from Motoko.

Keitaro's grandmother knew about the pheromones and wanted him to have a harem
  • *blink* *blink* WHAT?!
    • ...WTF?! Although I do think that a harem is a good solution for any series where multiple girls want one guy (Ranma, Tenchi, Negi, and Hayate, to name a few others)...
    • Ahem, I speak garbled gibberish semi-fluently. The originator of this guess appears to have been going by an off-the-wall assumption, a WMG in and of itself, that Keitaro has unusually strong pheremones, which is why all the girls developed a crush on him after prolonged exposure to him living in close quarters. The original guesser was not only assuming that this was true, but guessing that his grandmother knew about this, and set up the whole premise so that there would be a large group of girls to be seduced.

Kaolla Su is a Spark
A Gadgeteer Genius from a royal family with the ability to pull complicated gadgets from out of nowhere who also happens to be completely insane? Looks like we have a winner, folks!

As to why we don't see any other sparks, there are two possibilities as to why:

  • 1. Othar the Tramawhachamacalit (Gentleman Adventurer) succeeded in killing every spark, except for the ones in Molmol beacuse he didn't know where that was.
  • 2. There ARE still sparks in the Love Hina world, it's just that the audience doesn't see them because that isn't the subject of the series.
    • Using the "Mahou Sensei Negima! is in the same world" theory, we have Chao and Hakase as other probable sparks. One created a robot waaaaay over the present tech level, and the other is a classic Mad Scientist.

Keitarou is descended from Inazuma's family.
Hina the black demon sword is actually her sword with Jei's spirit sealed inside it, so that anyone who wields it becomes temporarily possessed by him.

General little girl (from Keitaro's flashback) theories
She wasn't Naru, but...
  • She was Nekane.
  • She was just part of Keitaro's imagination.
  • She was a time traveller.
  • She died before she could attend College.
  • She was friggin' Haruhi.
  • She was a ghost all along, and the promise was to take Keitaro to the death world and marry with him there.
  • The entire series is part of her imagination.
  • She grew up to be Nyamo-sensei (what, they do look alike).
  • She moved away and never saw him again.
  • She is Chuck Norris.
    • Not a gender-confused child version, not a perverted clone, not subject to any sort of perverted memory edits, just Chuck Norris.

Suu doesn't age normally
Instead, on her eighteenth birthday she will fully transform into the older version she becomes under red moonlight.
  • Alternately, her eighteenth passed years ago; she just refuses to grow up.
    • She could be a vampire with a curse akin to Evangeline A.K. Macdowell, who can only take fully adult form under certain circumstances; it's just that she has a teenage form instead of child form the rest of the time. She doesn't look that much different in the epilogue, contrasted with adult Shinobu... maybe it's somehow due to the suggested background conflicts between Molmol and Pararakelse's turtle civilization?

The Hinata-Sou, like the Brady Bunch home, is the receptacle of a time loop that repeats situations
There are at least two instances of the same type of crush playing itself out as part of a larger romance. In the first instance, it runs Naru-Seta-Haruka, with Sarah's Mom as a distant player. In the second, Shinobu-Keitaro-Naru, with Mutsumi as the distant player. It is heavily implied in the epilogue that Ema may feel this sort of crush towards Shinobu. This repeating pattern may go back even further, and may have led Grandma to stop it being a hotel, because as the Love Dodecahedron plays itself out over and over again, too much damage occurs, even for a place resistant to being blown up by step-cestuous stalker sisters. Her family she can protect mystically, possibly explaining Keitaro's durability. But too many others were involved. The Sou is not as insistent as the Brady Home, locking the same people into the same looks and attitudes forever. But it always reproduces the love string in this fashion.
  • This troper thinks it may have something to do with the magical Love Annex which the Hinata elders had forbidden.
    • This originating troper had considered that as well, prior to posting, but thinks of the Annex as merely being the hard edge of an existing mystic situation. Even its destruction may not end this loop, and its possible repeat at story's end seems to say this as well-so Shinobu may learn how it is to deal with all that from the other end of 'jerkdom'.

Aunt Haruka is a master of reverse psychology

Her lack of defense of her nephew is a ploy. She will speak up for him, in limited ways, but knew, especially when the girls were so resistant to him early on, that any defense of the first baby she ever held wouldn't help him and would only weaken her position, so she let it all play out. She never stopped the beatings, knowing of his immortality in advance, because she herself is. Face it - two women were up for the hand of Seta, and one is dead. Life with Seta is probably fraught with danger, and Haruka learned the family secret after taking a few falls herself. In the Molmol arc, she tells Keitaro to take the initiative with Naru, meaning have sex with her advice he mistakes for an urging that he propose marriage. Haruka knew that the young would-be couple's nerves would never handle the direct approach, and so gave vague advice she knew Keitaro would misconstrue. Had she been more explicit, than like as not Naru would have reacted in a violent way to such an idea, unless she herself 'came up' with it, especially as its not hard to imagine Keitaro fainting/nose bleeding at the thought of trying to take that step of asking her to go all the way. Haruka was also up against a deadline. The other girls were getting more aggressive and stupider in their efforts to separate K/N, and she knew better than to trust any explanations given by Kitsune about their 'true' intent, not to mention having Su abusing her power as Molmol's princess to basically win the 'game' however she saw fit. Haruka may have been the victim of her own best strategy, though, as the man she married, Seta, could be said to be an older version of her nephew.

Ground Defense Force! Mao-chan happens years after Love Hina.
  • Hinata returned to being an Inn. All the girls left the dorm.
  • The unnamed owner of Hinata Inn in Episode 20 is Naru.
  • The archeologist husband of the owner is Keitaro.
  • American envoy Carol Cameron could be related to or is the daughter of Sara McDougal.
  • Since Mao-chan's picture diary only says on the year 20XX we don't know the exact year is.

Nearly every female interested in Keitaro is in reality his chromosomal counterpart from an AU
  • While some diverge more drastically than others, the series is spent essentially having these characters become more like each other, even developing similar skills and able to counter each other. While he never outsmarts her, Keitaro rapidly catches on to Kitsune's lines of bull; He knows how to get through Shinobu's teary outbursts; he even learns to counter Motoko's best techniques, and they of course always knew how to best him. This is because they are all aspects of the same individual, across realities that accidentally connected when the ancient thief stole the artifact from Molmol. The attractions felt all around were utter familiarity, like Luke and Leia's. That was why Seta needed to return it, to keep any more versions of Keitaro from leaking through. This could also explain the various duplicates seen in the series, down to Su's brother in the anime looking like a tropical Keitaro. Kanako's deep resentment of the others comes not just from squicky attraction, but from knowing she literally is not one of them. Naru might not fall into this, but she may have in-universe variants of her own, like Sarah.
    • How far is Su's universe removed?
      • Su and Keitaro are from the same universe; its why she wants him so badly. Catching him would control all the others, once the universe-fracturing ended.
    • I suppose this makes Mutsumi closer than the other girls, then, given the overabundance of immediate similarity noticed by Naru in volume 3?

Naru and Keitaro staged his wedding-day flub

The dress-tearing seems like typical Keitaro. But by this point, the couple is older and wiser. With a few exceptions, they know that their friends, who they love dearly, are completely insane, and they know that Grandma may have some sort of test waiting for them. They don't want to be followed on their honeymoon, nor do they want to be waylaid in Molmol, allowing Su to annul them before relenting. Everyone present is family or friends, so they don't mind looking foolish in front of them, for sake of a peaceful honeymoon. So Naru sets up a second gown, this one velcroed up, and has Keitaro expose her at just the right time. They have a cooperative mole in Shinobu, who wishes to pay the others back for telling her that stopping K&N at the Tokyo U entrance was being done for her benefit, and for love of the couple. They considered Mutsumi, but feared her casually tipping her hand. While the others laughed at Naru's exposure and Keitaro's expected beatdown, they watched them run off. After they were out of sight, Keitaro produced a pair of shorts they had hidden and some bikes. They met a different limo than had been hired for them, and got away while Shinobu made chit-chat that further distracted the mains. Even she wasn't told where they were really going, and the couple kept watch for flying turtles, real or mecha.
  • I SO want to read a fanfic where that theory is presented.
  • This made me think of the plot to About Last Night
  • Given that Keitarou and Naru both openly admit in the pre-epilogue ending chapters that they enjoy their routine, it could also have been part of the celebration for them- the equivalent to symbolically removing a wedding garter for some couples.

Kitsune is Gin and Rangiku's love-child

...Or the product of a science experiment gone wrong or something be she seriously looks like their offspring.

The roots of the World Tree extend all the way to Hinata inn's abandoned dependance.

It is outright stated (and shown) that the abandoned dependance on the hill behind the inn has the power to magically bind together two people who confess their love to one another while they are in it. This makes the dependance identical to the World Tree-powered "confession spots" during the Mahora Festival arc in Negima. However, because Keitaro's erroneous confession to Kanako happens two years before the tree's luminescence, its influence is not powerful enough to stop Keitaro from screwing destiny and getting together with Naru.

Shinobu is an alternate Gender Flip version of Shinji Ikari.
Moe Shrinking Violet who's a Supreme Chef and does the chores around the place? Clumsy, occasional Covert Pervert? You betcha.

Mutsumi lied to Naru in the last episode
Mutsumi really, truly was the girl that Keitaro made his promise to 15 years ago, but because she senses that Keitaro loves Naru, she lies to Naru and tells her that she didn't really make that promise. Point: Naru herself said that she was 2 years old back then, and her mother said that when she returned from Hinata she only knew a handful of words. Naru, at that time, wouldn't even be able of comprehending promises, let alone making them. Though we know that Naru befriended Mutsumi back then, it's is even possible that she never actually met Keitaro until the start of the series.
  • In the Anime at least. In the Manga, the ending shows that all three of them knew each other.

Hinata Urashima is Arcueid Brunestud using a glamour mystic code crafted by Altrouge, and Altrouge is Evangeline A.K. McDowell
Similar whimsical personality aside (with Arcueid's personality before being 'killed' by Shiki being the result of her almost giving in to her thirst for blood), it would explain a lot:
  • Keitaro's regenerative powers? Curse of Restoration inherited from his vampiric ancestor;
  • Kanako's ability to rearrange her skeleton? After being adopted, Kanako was brought to Evangeline, who, out of boredom, accepted to change her genetic make-up to be a descendant of Arcueid. Of course, Kanako has a greater control than Keitaro over her abilities, but has a few issues at getting the hang of the Curse of Restoration;
  • Hinata's leaving to travel the world? She's hunting down Roa, and before finding him sends Kanako (who helped her because she's a better tracker) to Hinata House to protect her and give some Karmic payback to the girls;
  • the curse on the Hinata Dependance? Before they stopped trying to kill each other, Evangeline decided to prank her 'sister' with that curse;
  • Tsuruko being terrified by Hinata Urashima? Come on, it's Arcueid!

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