So the manga series, To-Love-Ru (also pronounced, Trouble), has come to a close recently. As it so happened, I was reading this series pretty faithfully, so I finished reading it soon after the last chapter was scanlated and released. Now the big question though, why? I didn’t find this series particularly interesting or anything, so I’m not really sure myself. I’m hoping that writing this review will clear it up for myself too.
This will be a paragraph on the story, since about a paragraph is all you need. The story revolves around a boy named Rito, who encounters a beautiful alien girl named Lala. During through some course of random events, Lala ends up living in Rito’s house. From here on out, you will witness the daily lives of Rito and his harem, which entails much fanservice and some comedy. Some of his harem includes Haruna (his crush from the beginning of the manga), Mikan (his younger sister), Yami (an assassin sent to kill him), Yui (the class representative), as well as many other female characters. I’m not really sure when, but some time during the manga, the characters just started pouring in.
So the manga is a love-comedy. I think we already got that out of the way. What are the other redeeming qualities of this manga? To be honest, I can’t really think of much. Sometimes, it is pretty funny, however not every chapter made me laugh. The mangaka, from the very beginning, poured tons of fanservice into this, so I guess that’s a plus (sort of). For the most part though, there really isn’t much development going on though. At all. At first, I thought the story was progressing at a slow pace, but would come to an overall climax somewhere; there was none of that to be found. I’m not asking for drama or anything, but some kind of story would have been nice. There were times when a chapter or two will pertain to what the characters are feeling, but after a while the sentiments don’t really change and nothing happens. I guess whatever story the mangaka had in mind just kind of collapsed or ceased to exist altogether.
Unfortunately as well, for the amount of plot development going on, there seems to be even less character development. Almost none of the characters matured much at all. There may have been small tweaks to their mentalities, but nothing profound or meaningful ever happens. At least in my eyes, none of the characters really changed much. Except maybe Yami, but even her development was minimal.
The drawing style for this manga does appeal to me though. For the kind of manga that To-Love-Ru is, the style was suiting. As you can probably already tell, it’s definitely a shounen manga. Although I say that I liked the art, there was really nothing I particularly liked or disliked about it. It was just appealing to me – probably on almost preference alone.
I guess part of the reason why I’m bitter is from the way the series ultimately ended. I think the manga fell out of popularity so much that the ending was rushed and basically thrown in after some random event. Even with that explanation though, and my non-existent expectations for it, it was still pretty bad. Nothing changed and the open-ended way it was written was just awful. The ending could’ve been done in about half a dozen ways that wouldn’t have been much better, but still. Ugh.
So by now, I guess I sound like I hate this manga. Which isn’t really true. I did keep on reading it for a reason. Most of the time, it was because I had nothing better to read at the time, but it did give me good filler. The comedy was par and there were enough cute moments between Rito and his harem to make me go “aww” a few times (I’m a sucker – yes). Sometimes the scenarios for providing fanservice got to be pretty ridiculous, but hey – it’s manga. I read through it all and didn’t find it too hard to finish, so I guess somewhere deep inside I liked it. Unfortunately I probably can’t recommend this series since it wasn’t very good in general though. Unless you want a story-less, fanservice-filled, comedy manga. Then by all means – go for it.
And I really liked Kotegawa Yui for whatever reason. Supporting character or not, she was my favorite. She’s in the last 3 pictures if you couldn’t tell.
