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To Love Ru is quite honestly a show that has left me conflicted in almost every aspect, even in regards to how to rate and review the show. What I will say is this: if you're looking for a lighthearted, ecchi show which is based around just being plain ridiculous for the sake of comedy, then this is the show for you. However regardless of the Romance tag, if you're looking for any kind of deeper romance within the show then don't bother, you would only be disappointed. If you are also looking for I suppose what you could consider a story and story progression then I would also not recommend this show. Aside from the introductory episodes and the last 3 or so episodes, there really isn't story progression. The show is episodic in that (outside of the parts I mentioned), each episode isn't really going through a story and is individual, because at the start of the next episode it's as if the previous didn't really happen. Therefore the main chunk of the series in the middle between the introduction and ending 3 episodes is like this. Now personally I don't have a massive issue with this as I feel like this was the intention as it is hardly a serious series. But it's my warning if you are looking for some kind of progressive story.
Now with that said, onto why i'm personally conflicted. I love the characters in the show. A lot of them are vibrant, individual characters with lots of personality. Lala is a good example of this. However the problem is that barely any of the characters thrown in are fleshed out whatsoever. Because of that, a lot of the characters just lack something for me. Now as this is a silly, over the top show aimed at being a comedy, I hardly expected massive individual episodes for characters with character development; but if there are gonna be characters popping up each episode I want them to at least have some substance or development. This is the main problem with the characters for me. That every single episode, every single character is forced into it for the sake of them doing individual roles that they always do. I think the hot springs episode is a good example of this, where every character turned up for seemingly no reason just for the sake of them being there. 90% of the characters just do the same thing every episode and that's why they're there. For example how Golden Darkness is there to just do the whole 'Yeah i'm trying to kill you but i'll help you this one time' thing and how Haruna is just there for Rito to be attracted to and for them to do the same 'trying to confess but speak over each other and then be interrupted' thing which happens at least 5-10 times. Personally, as much as I love the character designs and some of the actually developed ones, most of them I don't as they're completely one-dimensional with no development and are simply there to fulfil one comedic role in each episode.
Now this is a personal opinion of mine about the show. I'm not 100% as I haven't read the manga, or at least not yet, so i'm not sure if the adaptation from the manga is the reasoning but.. I don't feel as if the season should have been 26 episodes long. Getting towards the end it just felt far too dragged out. If the season had been 12-13 episodes in length I believe it would have felt like a better use of time. In these 12-13 episodes they could still have had the first 2 or so as introductions and the last 3 how they were too with actual progression. Then between this they could still have had a decent amount of the filler like, ridiculous episodes in the middle chunk. Because personally having around 20 episodes in the middle of the show be the ridiculous stuff was just far too much to sit through. However, as I said at the beginning, I haven't yet read the manga and so they may have wanted to try and keep the anime exactly to the source material which is why everything was included. But regardless, as I stated I believe the season could have been better in 12-13 episodes.
Now. The harem aspect of the show really confused me. Whilst Rito was in fact surrounded by plenty of females, again most of them felt underdeveloped and irrelevant. Lala is the main female, being engaged to Rito and living with him. There is also Haruna who has a thing for Rito and Rito has had a crush on since he was a young child. There is also Run, the female version of Ren, who has a big thing for Rito, however this is only really shown in 1-2 episodes. Aside from this, everything else is irrelevant. Every other female shows no actual romantic or love interest towards Rito, as is suggested in it being a harem. The other females just pop up in episodes to push the comedy of specific situations and that's really it. So therefore you're left with Lala, who makes sense as they're engaged, Haruna, who became annoying to me as her only purpose of every coming into the episode was the crush thing between her and Rito, and also the 1 or maybe 2 episodes around Run having a crush on Rito. That's it. To me, it felt bland.
Now, on the note of the harem, I unfortunately did what I decide never to do with harems and settled for the person I wanted to see the MC (Rito) end up being with. This was Lala. However, there was reason behind this. To me, it's what made the most sense. They were engaged from the start, and regardless of this being an accidental situation it was still the best choice for me. Lala and Rito grew and developed around each other. Not only were they practically the only characters to get real development for themselves and the relationship between them, but they were also the only two characters who had different purposes in different episodes and weren't just one-dimensional characters. Unlike all the other females in the show, Lala had lots of personality and developed a lot from first arriving on earth up to the end. Now there's mostly two sides to this. A lot of people want Lala and Rito to be together, and a lot seem to want Rito and Haruna together. To me, this was a big part of the plot. Due to the romance tag I was hoping for Rito to end up with someone. Also honestly Rito was a pretty hopeless MC, so I was hoping he would at least go through and marry Lala as planned.
I don't like Haruna. Haruna is Hinata from Naruto but far worse. And by this I mean quite literally all Haruna does is blush and says 'Yuki-kun..', that's all. She's one of the most bland girls because that's all she does every episode. Rito only considers her because of his child crush he has had on her. That's why I always wanted Rito to take the Lala route and so the season could end with Rito ending up marrying the most fleshed out and best female character.
HOWEVER.
As you can imagine, this doesn't happen. I saw a lot of praise for the final episode however I wholeheartedly disagree with all of my being. I like the final 3 episodes with actual progression. Firstly Rito at last exclaims his love for Lala, bringing her back from her flu. When this happened I was finally satisfied as things were going in a good direction. However, towards the end, firstly for whatever reason Rito still can't get over his ridiculous thing for Haruna.. I understand the idea of having a crush on someone since you were young, but really? That VS actual love and care you've built up from living and spending time with someone?? Seems far-fetched. Especially when Rito barely develops anything with Haruna, he simply speaks to her a few times and even then the conversations are basically nothing. Whereas with Lala Rito lived with her, spent time with her, actually communicated with her and so had actual reasoning for his feelings towards her. Whereas the thing with Haruna is nothing more than just a crush. But regardless of that, Rito finally gets through all the trials and tribulations put forward by Lala's dad so he can have permission to marry Lala and save earth. So everything is finally going in a good, progressive direction. So what could possibly go wrong, right? Well. WELL. Last minute, quite literally just as they're about to get married, Lala for the first time does a complete 180 and cuts off the marriage. IT HURT. Her personality had remained exactly the same throughout the entire series (besides the one episode where the joke is her personality changing each day) and so it was out of no where. Rito had finally confessed his love, and then suddenly with basically no explanation given she cut off the marriage and tried to erase everyone's memories.
I guess i'm just most upset because it was so sudden and there was no reasoning given outside of her briefly saying something along the lines of 'I've put Rito through a lot of pain' and that's it. Now, this is true, however that's the point! Lala was always a handful. She arrived suddenly on earth and Rito and her were suddenly engaged to be married. She was very hyperactive and crazy, doing crazy things, making crazy inventions etc. But that was really part of her charm. Lala and Rito built their relationship up from that, learning about each other, taking care of each other and spending time with each other. This led up to Rito confessing his love to her. I'm in belief that the whole reasoning is that she could see the conflict Rito felt in his feelings between her and Haruna, and that just annoys me. Because if that's the case then if Rito could have just realised that his feelings towards Haruna are pretty much completely superficial then everything could have worked out fine and the marriage could have taken place. My second theory is simply that this was done intentionally by the writers for the sake of the rest of the series as there are plenty more seasons. That i'm not sure of at the moment, but will come to find out when I watch them.
But as I said earlier, Rito was a seemingly useless MC, and so all I wanted was for him to go through with this marriage so he could at least have done something worthwhile.
The ending honestly just left me feeling empty. I got a similar feeling to when I watched the Oreimo ending (though i'm obviously not going into detail about that, but if you know then you know).
It just made me sad.
SO IN CONCLUSION:
Due to everything aforementioned I found it very difficult to judge this anime. This is the first review I've done on this account and just wanted to do it since I was left with so many conflicting emotions. So overall, I really like the characters. I think that they're all very vibrant and different design wise and all fill very different roles and there is a character for each common anime trope such as a tsundere etc. I liked the art in general, it all looked pretty good consistently and there weren't any moments where I thought the animation was particularly poor. I got a relative amount of enjoyment out of the season. It was designed to be very lighthearted in many senses and just be a ridiculous, over the top comedy. So to that effect, I enjoyed it. However:
As also mentioned before, I feel like either the personality of the characters should have been fleshed out and developed more as they had 26 episodes to do so, or that they should have done the same but made the season only 12-13 episodes so it doesn't feel like there's just some over abundance of filler. And finally, in terms of a romance it left me dead inside. There was one obvious choice for the MC, one in which it would have been a good ending and would have shown some kind of progression for the MC, however this was cut off literally within the last 10 minutes of the season. I'm still sad.
So my overall review would be if you wanted to watch the series: If you don't mind the notion of there being almost no story progression, character development for most characters and all ideas of a romance being tossed in the trash last minute and instead you're just looking for a typical, over the top harem comedy, then this is definitely for you.
Oh but also that if you end up loving Lala as is very easy to do so, and want to see the romance progress, you'll be left empty like me.
As for me, I may be left dead and empty inside; but because I loved the characters and foolishly hold onto some false hope i'm going to continue to watch through the other To Love Ru seasons and maybe one day write another review for one of them if they effect me to quite the same extent as this one did.
