Mahoraba

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First-Year College student Shiratori Ryuushi moves into the boarding house, Narutakisou. Under the tender care of Aoba Kozue, Narutakisou provides a home to people whose personal lives are all painful in one way or another; yet together, somehow, they make up a true family. Not only does Shiratori find a home at Narutakisou, but he also finds himself falling in love with a girl who is far more than she seems. Compare with Maison Ikkoku.

With An Aesop or a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming (or more likely, both) in every chapter, Mahoraba is one of those "feel good" sort of mangas. The sort you've likely never read before.

Not to be confused with Maburaho, which sits comfortably on the exact opposite end of the romantic comedy spectrum.

Tropes used in Mahoraba include:

• AcCENT Upon the Wrong SylLABle: Tamami's club mate Erika
• All That Glitters: The episode when the residents embark on a treasure hunt.
• Alpha Bitch: Michiyo acts like an Alpha Bitch Ojou towards Asami, but it's really because she's too insecure that Asami won't like her.
• Amusing Injuries: Inflicted upon Michiyo and Ero-Freak Boy on a semi-regular basis.
• Attractive Bent Gender: Shiratori
• Battle Aura: Tamami and the Occult Club President can see each others' battle auras, but almost nobody else can.
• Beach Episode
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Tamami.
• Bittersweet Ending: Manga Only: Wherein Ryuushi has fallen in love with ALL of Kozue-chan's personalities but his love for her gradually cures her insanity and causes all her personalities, each lovely human-beings unto themselves, to be absorbed into her primary psyche, never to emerge again. Afterwards we are introduced to Kozue-chan and Ryuushi's four daughters, who each bore an uncanny resemblance to the four personalities whom their mother once transformed into.
• Blank White Eyes
• Bokukko: Subverted: Shiratori retains his male speech patterns even after he was made to crossdress, which allows Chiyuri to look at him before she gets used to men.
• Bottle Fairy
• Brand X: Ahashi beer.
• Cannot Spit It Out
• Catch Phrase: "Correct!" and Chanohata's "~desu"
• Cloudcuckoolander: Sayoko at one point practices her significant artistic talents by carving most of the trees in the courtyard into sculptures of her daughter Asami. Haibara spends his days fishing in a tiny, obviously fishless pond in the courtyard and only talks through his hand-puppet, Johnny. And those are just a couple of the less bizarre examples.
• Club President
• Comedic Sociopathy: Ad nauseum.
• Corner of Woe
• Credits Running Sequence
• Cute Little Fangs: Megumi Momono.
• Does Not Like Men: Chiyuri.
• Dojikko
• Driven to Suicide: Played for laughs of all things with poor Sayo-chan in the very beginning of the manga. Due to "network regulations", this was changed to merely severe depression in the anime.
• Dropped a Bridget On Him: Averted, but is an option Shiratori considers when he learns that his unnamed male friend has become single-mindedly obsessed with the time he unknowingly saw Shiratori in drag.
  • In the manga, the unnamed male friend is called Tsubasa Yamabuki.
• Expressive Hair
• Evil Genius: Chanohata Tamami.
• Eyecatch
• Face Fault
• Fan of Underdog
• First Girl Wins
• First-Name Basis
• Flung Clothing
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Kozue is sanguine (so is Nanako, because she's a kid version of Kozue), Saki is choleric, Chiyuri is phlegmatic, Natsume is melancholic.
  • It's probably worth mentioning that this "ensemble" consists of Kozue's alternate personalities
• Funbag Airbag: Asami with Tachibana.
• Gecko Ending
• Gender Vocabulary Slip: Shiratori Ryuushi, Dogged Nice Guy and The Chew Toy of Mahoraba, was dressed up (against his will and while asleep) to look like a very cute and beautiful blonde. When confronted with Chiyuri, one of his landlady's five personalities who does not know him, he accidentally uses "boku" (polite masculine pronoun) to refer to himself. Subverted in that Chiyuri finds this contrast quite Moe, and that although unusual for a girl, "boku" is used by the nicer-tomboys out there as a pronoun.
• Generic Cuteness
• The Glomp
• Hair Colors
• Hand Behind Head
• Hey, It's That Voice!: Hayate the Combat Butler as Shiratori.
• Hidden Eyes
• Hot Shounen Mom: Sayoko and her mother, Minazuki Yu. By the end of the manga Momono Megumi AND Kozue-chan themselves become cute mommies to equally adorable little girls.
• Idiot Hair: Momono. Kozue's Nanako personality has two.
  • The two strand of hair is refer to as "Hair Antennae" and is not associated with being an idiot like "Idiot Hair" is. Well... not as much or as often anyways.
• Image Song
• Improbable Weapon User: Sa-chan and her book attack, Tamami and just about anything (tennis balls, bonsai trees).
• I'm Taking Her Home with Me: When the Club-President takes a shining to Asami-chan, she asks Tamami whether she could do this to the little one.
• Instant Dogend: Haibara does this a lot.
• Instant Seiza
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy
• Jerkass: Tamami to everyone who she believes a threat to Kozue everyone except Kozue.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She only acts like a jerkass because she is extremely protective of Kozue; she deeply loves Kozue and only wants to protect her from anything that might make her mental illness worse.
• The Kanrinin: Kozue-chan.
• Kewpie Doll Surprise
• Kissing Cousins: Shiratori and Kozue-chan are actually second-cousins; a fact that is mentioned once in the beginning with a lampshade on how second-cousins can get married. As such, this fact is fairly quickly forgotten about for the rest of the series.
• Lying on a Hillside
• Loser Protagonist
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Shiratori's male art school friend.
• Love You and Everybody: Nanako pulls this the first time we see her.
• Maximum Fun Chamber: Shirogane-sensei's room.
• Meganekko: Momono
• Meido: Sakura and Tachibana.
• Ninja Maid: Tachibana, who serves the Minazuki family, has a habit of materializing in rooms like one. She even goes through a car chase sequence to rescue Mahiru from the Italian mafia.
• Noblewoman's Laugh
• No Name Given: Shiratori's three art school friends. The plot for one of the drama CDs revolves around their trying to get names.
  • Averted by the last chapter of the manga. Ero Freak's name is Yamabuki Tsubasa, the yaoi fangirl is Aizawa Risona, and the 'normal' girl with the nail bat is Amane Mizuho.
  • The Occult Club President also was never given a name, until the end when it was revealed to be Erika Vermillion.
• Oblivious to Love: Asami concerning Michiyo's feelings for her.
• Official Couple: Loaded with them, Including two nameless background characters.
• Ojou
• Panty Shot: None for the audience, but a character-only version provides the page image for the trope.
• Psycho Lesbian: Tamami, otherwise known as "Evil Tomoyo." Though admitedly, she's really just kind of a bitch, and eventually accepted that Kozue loves Shiratori and quit hassling him over it.
• Puni Plush
• Romantic Two-Girl Friendship: Michiyo definitely has a crush on Asami, which might even be something more.
  • And Shiratori's arrival likely disrupts such a relationship between Tamami and Kozue, which explains Tamami's hostility toward him rather well.
• Scary Shiny Glasses
• School Festival
• Secretly Wealthy: Sayako and Asami
• Selective Obliviousness: Kozue's personality switching is a defense mechanism against hard times and problems, justified by her rather horrifying past.
• Shout-Out: In chapter 58, the books that won the novel contest share the same titles of games made by Treasure such as Radiant Silvergun or Ikaruga.
• Split Personality: One of the main points of the series, unique in its harem-like adaptation.
• Theme Naming: The main characters are named after colors, including Kozue's different personalities, which are named after their eye colors.
• The Power of Friendship
• The Voiceless: Haibara. It's his puppet Johnny who speaks, often ill of him. The man actually never says the word... except for once.
• Token Loli: Asami-chan.
• Token Yuri Girls: Chanohata Tamami admits to Shiratori Ryuushi that she is in love with Aoba Kozue (who is completely oblivious), explaining her mean-spirited attitude.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Kozue loves pickled plums.
• Tsundere: Kozue's "Akasaka Saki" personality.
• Tsurime Eyes: Tachibana.
• Unlucky Childhood Friend: Tamami.
• Unwanted Harem: Subverted. Shiratori lives with five cute girls but four of them have no romantic interest in him.
  • When Momono appears to take Shiratori on a date, it turns out she was just "testing" herself.
  • Kozue's five personalities are a harem unto herself... themselves... whatever.
• Ventriloquism: Haibara and his puppet Johnny - or actually Johnny and his pet Haibara.
• Verbal Tic: "Almost every one of Kozue's personalities besides her main one, and a fair number of other characters... kamo"
• Victorious Childhood Friend - Shiratori and Kozue met as children about ten years before the start of the story. Shiratori has forgotten about it, but Kozue still remembers their meeting quite well.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Tamami and Momono.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: Kozue-chan's primary personality.
  • Shirogane-sensei's front is like this, but don't you dare to mess up your homework.
• Zettai Ryouiki: Part of Kozue's leisurely wardrobe.