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Both share way more elements in common than two random shounen shows. Digging into the preferences, sources and/or backgrounds of the author of Nisekoi, how much of Love Hina's influence can be found?

Both shows have the following in common:

  1. Childhood Marriage Promise: The centerpiece of both plots is a blurred promise. Love Hina's is both a marriage promise and a college proposal, but has almost the same weight. Note that several other animes (hit TVTropes for the list) have it too, but not as the centerpiece for the love story.

  2. Naru and Chitoge are almost the same person.

    • Tsundere? Check.
    • In love with the lead male? Check.
    • Denies affection to the deathbed? Check.
    • Hits lead male when some gag puts them in an awkward situation? Check.
    • Hair antennae? Check. (Chitoge's is actually her headband, but is indeed an antennae).
    • Probably the one that made the promise? Check.

  3. Raku and Keitaro are similar too, but as far as shounen lead males go, they are all the same person by design. So not too much here.

My point is, if you swap the Nisekoi setting from a high school to a boarding house, and remove the Romeo & Juliet elements, you have Love Hina.

Looking for credible sources.

nhahtdh
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Mindwin Remember Monica
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  • Even though I disagreed with your conclusion (see my answer), I upvoted your question, since this site has a paucity of nice analytic questions compared with SFF.SE. – Torisuda Nov 11 '14 at 00:26
  • @Torisuda Many thanks for the confidence vote, but I am not getting into any conclusions in the question. I am just pointing some striking similarities I noticed, and then formulating a hypothesis. The hypothesis stands to be proven or disproven. – Mindwin Remember Monica Nov 13 '14 at 06:24
  • I got all lit crit-jargony and said something wrong. You certainly didn't presume any conclusion in your question, and I apologize for claiming you did. Also, thanks for accepting my answer! – Torisuda Nov 13 '14 at 18:59

1 Answers1

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I'm not that familiar with Nisekoi, but I don't find any of the similarities you mention very striking.

  • Childhood marriage promises are very common in anime.
  • The first four things you mention that make Naru and Chitoge similar are all pretty standard tsundere traits. Tsundere as varied as Asuka Langley Soryu, Nagi Sanzenin, and Kirino Kousaka all share those traits with Naru and Chitoge. I acknowledge there is some visual similarity even beyond the hair antennae, but Chitoge also looks pretty similar to MM's Mio Isurugi, aside from the difference in build. Mio is even somewhat of a tsundere, to boot. And it's just a natural part of a story about a childhood marriage promise that the main heroine is probably the one who made the promise.
  • You acknowledge that all male shounen heroes are the same person.

All of these are standard clichés for shounen romantic comedy. Some of them were popularized by Love Hina, and some have been around since Urusei Yatsura or even earlier. The reviews quoted here all call out Nisekoi for being full clichés, bolstering my case that the similarities are just part of the genre.

Also, in this interview, Nisekoi's creator, Naoshi Komi, says his biggest influence is not Love Hina, but One Piece.

Torisuda
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