To LOVE-Ru
To Love Ru

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I don't normally read these non-serious manga's so please forgive me if I'm a bit harsh, but after a while I got the tone of the manga and enjoyed it.

Story: So the story is good and funny, but I only rated it a 6 because I found there's a lot of filler. I know it's kind of a sitcom type manga, where every other chapter there is SLIGHT character growth, etc, but I got used to it. The situations are very ecchi, and are funny too, so I didn't mind. But again, the lack of plotline and character development (minus the main character) kind ... of sucked.

Art: The art is excellent. Actually, the only reason I decided to give this manga a shot is because the author is one of the people who's writing the darling in the franxx manga. Naturally it's very sexual, ecchi, but it's done really well so I don't mind. It's not over the top.

Character: Characters are good, actually my favorite character isn't even the main character but the main character's sister. Actually, you get the sense she's grown up as an individual by the end of the manga as well, and that was really cool.

Overall, it's a good manga. Not something serious, and you can read it quite casually.

tl;dr: A pure ecchi gag manga without much else that although done incredibly well, does feel repetitive to the point of dullness.

To Love-Ru is at it’s core an incredibly simple manga. There’s some veneer of there being some sort of romantic plot involving the protagonist Rito being in love with his classmate Haruna but an interstellar princess named Lala suddenly appearing in his life and falling in love with him. However, the romance just kind of sort of there in the background and doesn’t matter most of the time. The setting involving space is somewhat important because although the story takes place in contemporary Japan, ... there’s still a lot of futuristic and really bizarre technology ass well as a myriad of crazy lifeforms. Still, that’s the only source of the supernatural aspects as the manga is fine with veering into other areas like ghosts and such at times, so it’s not like the setting matters all that much either. Thus, ultimately the manga is simply about Rito getting into various ecchi hijinks with the myriad of girls that surround him.

The girls that surround him have a pretty decent amount of variety and overall I found them pretty likable. Reading the character profiles, it’s clear that the author put in a lot of effort trying to make each girl stand out and not seem to similar to any other, and it very much does show. However, the effort seems to extend to as far as their personality and role in the web of relationships of the cast. In terms of background, story, character arc, and relationship arc, essentially every character is the same in that there’s not much there at all. Some characters have a minor amount of background and story, but it’s mostly confined to their introduction with very little expansion beyond that and thus not enough to feel like actual plot threads. Character’s become closer after spending time together and there are hints of characters acting differently from how they usually did at times, but it isn’t really focused on and doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere.

These issues largely stem from the way the manga flows in that nothing about the manga is long term. Essentially every chapter is a full short story. Each story may take elements from previous chapters, but it gives less a feeling of there being any sort of long term plan. Rather, it feels more like it’s just taking toys it’s put in the toybox out to play with them for a bit. And it just playing around can certainly be fun, a lot of fun even. How much you’ll enjoy it will depend on how fond you are of the heroines and how much you like the continuous stream of lucky pervert type gags. And although the execution of both of these aspects is as solid as it can get with really high quality art to boot, it still starts feeling pretty repetitive eventually. This feels like a manga that works really well in short doses, such as in the weekly format it was originally published in, but reading through it volume by volume it definitely feels like it’s dragging on and getting kind of dull. This is even true for the ending which doesn’t really seem to stand out from the rest of the manga at all and is ultimately a complete non-ending. Though there’s a direct sequel so that’s not that much of an issue.

A wise man once said of this manga, "How is this so popular? Is it the nipples?" and he was completely right.

After going through like 6 different harem series to get a full idea of what the genre has in store I finally ended up on To Love-Ru. The plot is as simple as it it gets: alien comes from outer space and says she is going to marry the MC, but the MC already has a childhood crush and every girl they meet ends up falling in love with him. From there it's just random series of events where the MC ends up fondling ... or seeing every girl naked pretty much. It's super generic and is about what you'd see in every other harem manga.

So then are the characters any good? Well, everyone is super generic also. We got the classic airhead, shy girl, kuudere, tsundere, younger sister, younger twin sisters of the main girl, straight laced girl, and the list continues. Honestly, trying to fault a harem manga on it's characters just seems unfair, but the main thing To Love-Ru lacks is that it doesn't really build up nearly enough chemistry between the MC and most of the cast. We only see things building between like the two main girls but everyone else is just thrown in, so it's hard to see anyone winning in the end besides the two mains.

And that brings me to one of my biggest gripes with the manga: that there is no ending. It was so disappointing that I spent 160 chapters seeing who the MC will end up with in the end only to have him end up with no one. There is a sequel to this that I will check out, but as a standalone series it ends up cheating all its readers. Maybe this is what it's like to be one of the side characters in a harem manga...
The other thing I disliked was how much fanservice there was. Now, I'm not one to say that harem manga shouldn't have it at all, since that's one of the main appeals of it. But when it seems like every chapter had to have at least 3 pages worth of fondling or naked girls, it gets to be really tiring. There's such thing as overexposure, and this manga brings it to the max. And honestly how can you even find a way to add 5 separate slimy tentacle scenes in one manga? I wish there was a little more actual plot to hold this thing up, but it's just not there.

So overall this was one of the most disappointing harem manga I've ever read, and the harem genre doesn't have the best rep for begin good to begin with. It just doesn't do anything right for a regular story and messes up what makes a harem manga good too, besides the fanservice. So honestly the only way for me to recommend this is if you're really only here for those uncovered nipples.