Shinobu Maehara is a 13-year-old schoolgirl in
love hina who, after a bad start with
Keitaro Urashima, develops a crush on him.
Shinobu Maehara is a boarder at the Hinata Inn, in room 201. In the love hina anime, Shinobu Maehara is first introduced as a grieving girl who has run away from home due to domestic turmoil; however, in the love hina manga, Shinobu Maehara is already at the Hinata Inn when Keitaro arrives and her parents are still together..
Shinobu Maehara
is quite skilled in both cooking and household chores as she became the cook (her family once owned a restaurant in town prior to their divorce). Quiet and shy, Shinobu Maehara is overly caring of other's feelings and this contributes to her own emotional frailty.
Shinobu Maehara is the first girl to fall for Keitaro Urashima and in the love hina manga attempts to avoid him because of this. In both the love hina anime and love hina manga, Shinobu Maehara thinks highly of Keitaro Urashima and will often be at the verge of tears when Shinobu Maehara thinks that he is in trouble or likes someone else. In the epilogue 4 years later she has since grown her hair out and has become more mature, though she retains her sincere personality. Shinobu Maehara still has a crush on Keitaro and hasn't given up on her dream of being his girlfriend (and likely never will).
The reason Shinobu Maehara decided to leave home and live at the Hinata Inn was because of the marital problems between her father, and her mother, whose name is never mentioned. In the love hina anime, their marital problems lead to their divorce. Shinobu Maehara's parents arrive at the Hinata Inn and argue over who Shinobu should live with. However, Shinobu decides to remain at the Hinata Inn, to which her mother is against as she believes the Hinata Inn is a bad place full of rowdy young girls. They eventually concede, allowing Shinobu Maehara to remain living at the Inn.
In the
love hina manga, she was rated the #2 most popular girl by the readers, though since the end of the manga she has become the most popular.
In the
love hina anime television series, Shinobu is voiced by Masayo Kurata in Japanese and Bridget Hoffman in English.
In the
The Love Hina Game she is by far one of the most liked girls and even have her own fangroup leaded by BoBcat!
