Keitaro Urashima

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Keitaro Urashima is a fictional character from Ken Akamatsu's manga Love Hina.

Voiced by: Yuji Ueda (Japanese), Derek Stephen Prince (English)

A 20 year-old student (according to the Television episode 1 when he says, "Urishima Keitaro, 20 years. The only girl I liked was... I can't even remember her name..."), at the start of Love Hina, who is trying to get into Tokyo University.

After failing the entrance exams twice and becoming a third-year ronin, he is kicked out of home by his parents, and goes to his grandmother's inn, thinking that he might be able to stay there, after a call he receives from his grandmother (Episode 1, anime).

However, he finds out the hard way that his grandmother has turned the inn into an all-girls dormitory. Through a combination of bad luck and worse timing, he encounters Naru Narusegawa in the open-air hot springs bath and infuriates her. He then proceeds to land on the bad side of the other dorm residents, before Haruka arrives and metaphorically bails him out. Ultimately, he does end up staying at the Hinata House (Hinata Sō), though the reason varies slightly between the anime and the manga. In the manga, Keitaro is granted the deed to the Hinata House itself by his grandmother; as he now owns the establishment, he becomes landlord by default. In the anime, he is granted only the manager's title and duties.

Despite looking like a weakling, he can actually take quite a bit of punishment and still get up from it, which is just as well, for he is always getting into situations where one or more of the girls get angry at him and hit him. This invulnerability comes from Haruka beating Keitaro up so many times for calling her "Auntie" when he was younger. Usually, this involves one of them being naked and him being responsible for it or watching them. Though most of them are constantly accusing him of being a pervert, in truth, Keitaro is simply comically accident-prone, and nearly all of the occasions on which he has seen or touched one of the girls have occurred as a result of his perpetual bad luck. He generally takes all his bashings in good humor though. In the manga, it is strongly hinted that he was gifted with immortality as well as self-healing, as he can almost instantaneously recover from any kind of injury. However, he could not keep himself unscathed for too long, or else such healing factor would take longer to restore his physical condition, as it was found through a series of mishaps when he attends the Tokyo University entrance ceremony, when ultimately the giboshi ornament atop the Nippon Budokan Hall falls over him (resulting of a violent gust), resulting only in his left leg broken (later in the hospital, Motoko even conjectures that "maybe if the damage is high enough, he is unable to recover"). In some cases, he seems uneffected by violence. An example would be in the 22nd episode of the anime where he is sent flying but immediately returnes to the same spot just as if he were to have teleported.

Through the course of the story, Keitaro starts doing quite well in his studies, passes the entrance exams for Tokyo University after another failure and develops friendships with all the girls in the house, but in particular with Naru and (later on) Mutsumi. Keitaro is extremely kind-hearted, and can always be counted on to help out when a friend is in trouble. Later on, almost all of the Hinata girls develop strong feelings for him, up to the point of trying to steal him for themselves. He is also very logical when others aren't but is also very dense on other situations.

Keitaro takes promises very seriously, and it seems that he made a number of important ones during his childhood. First and foremost was his promise of 15 years ago (age 5) with a little girl he barely remembers that they would get into Tokyo University together one day. After taking up residence in the Hinata House, he quickly comes to suspect that Narusegawa Naru may have been the girl of his promise. He later experiences some doubts about this conclusion when he begins to learn more of Mutsumi Otohime's past and her connections with the Hinata House during their childhood, but later on, the exact connection becomes clear and he finds out that Naru was the one he made the promise to after all.

Finally, late in the series, it is revealed that Keitaro made a promise with his adopted sister Kanako that they would one day run the Hinata Inn together.

In the end, he finally fulfills his dream by marrying Naru Narusegawa (see below) and becoming the successor to Seta's archaeological studies.

His name, as the author points at the end of the last tome, is inspired by the name of the mangaka Keitarō Arima.