Disclaimer: This review covers Season 1 of the 2008 Japanese anime "To Love Ru," episodes 1 - 26.It's a long-running tradition in anime for stories revolving high school boy and supernatural harem of girls fawning for him, with humor, action and oodles of sexualized fanservice. They remain prevalent in media and advertising and the general consiousness several years later. In the 2000's decade, the defining shows are probably "Ikki Tousen," "Rosario + Vampire" and "To Love Ru." "Ru" in particular still gets erotic artbooks and merchandise around the franchise (in addition to multiple long-running seasons and manga), and I held off on the anime for a long time: perhaps it was for the best, since Sentai Filmworks would release an English dub of the series for the first time in 2020, a theorized strategy for the publisher to increase profits to compete against increasingly high licensing bids from bigger conglomorate companies (after years of insisting that dubs were costly to produce for unproven shows, this paints a desparate picture to return to such an old show rather than something more recent). Whatever hypothezing one might make of the reason, you can also assume the choice to dub the show now was due to its popularity, which surely means something?Set in modern Japan, hapless protagonist Rito Yuki struggles to muster up the courage to confess his love to fellow classmate and crush Sairenji (the slapstick behind what has stopped him in the past is great in the first episode: just before confessing, he might get hit by a train, a random stampede of elephants, etc.). But he's finally ready to go through with it, and... that's when a pink-haired alien girl on the run teleports into his house. After helping this new girl, Lala Satalin from the planet Deviluke, she teleports at exactly the wrong time the next day as Rito confesses his love to Sairenji: Lala thinks the confession was for her, and wasn't just a proposal for a date, but for marriage! Poor Rito is stuck between a rock and a hard place, trying to explain the situation without hurting Lala's feelings and confessing properly to Sairenji, while avoiding threats from her servant or father (leaders of an intergalactic army that could wipe out Earth in an instant), and dealing with a bizarre variety of past alien suitors that visit Earth to challenge to groom-to-be. Hilarity ensues. Similar shows to "Ru" tend to tie in some attempt at a "real" story in-between the comedy and sexy times, usually some war between good and evil, fights for power, angels versus demons, battles between alien races, etc. Typically, the stories are lousy, distracting, and time-wasting to why the viewer tuned in. It sounds like "To Love Ru" would fall into the same trap, but on the contrary, it's much more of a slapstick comedy sitcom, a refreshing change. In many ways, it reminded me of older anime, "Urusei Yatsura" in particular (a quick search shows the comparison is common). I haven't seen much of the 1980's show, only knowing it involved the hijinks and romance of alien girl Lum, characterized by her strange personality and bizarre leopard-bikini outfit (for these reasons, and for the show's age, I'll probably never get into watching it). By comparison, "To Love Ru" features the hijinks and romance of alien girl Lala... characterized by her careless personality... and her bizarre poofy outfit...Yeah, stating that "To Love Ru" is "Urusei Yatsura" for a new generation isn't far off, and perhaps that and the lack of apparent personality to distinguish the characters from other shows is why I had never given "Ru" a chance before. The show's design philosophy takes from aliens, devils, princesses and magic, ticking as many random anime tropes as it can. To be clear, Lala is charming in her overbearing way. In addition to being an alien princess with a devil tail, she's an inventor, always quick to pull out some invention to fix a situation, or make things more fun, but typically making things worse and simply saying "oops." The thought that she might have had several past non-serious relationships is fun, but her love for Rito seems genuine. After watching a couple episodes, my reaction to seeing her on a poster is completely different (before, it was just "oh look, generic pink-haired anime girl"). The show feels old in other ways, both good and bad. I appreciated the lack of a serious subplot as a break from other shows, but this does get a bit old as the episodes go on (it's a 26-episode series, and we're not even counting the seasons and OVA that follow, resulting in over 70 episodes in total). The character designs across the cast are OK, but range from either being lazy or downright weird-looking. Pacing feels old-school (like a mid-2000's comedy, that is). And production values are lackluster, from limited animation to barebones colored-pencil background art. Released in 2008, it's one of those anime that feels at least 5-years older. Even the poppy music and theme songs feel like they were ripped from 2001 radio.
To it's credit, the animation is actually not as bad as I imagined, especially compared to other anime of this genre. Both slapstick scenes and erotic close-ups get extra attention, and result in a lot of fluid and expressive movement in those key moments. One scene involves a CGI giant squid composited with the 2D girls it grabs... content aside, that was an impressive production effort. However, these types of scenes don't appear as frequently, or don't get as much love, beyond the first several episodes. Is that English dub worth revisiting the show? Probably not: following the "old-feel" theme, even the brand new English dub sounds like a Funimation dub from 2004. It brings extra confidence to Lala's personality, but there's something awkward about the rest of the cast and their scripts. I genuinely wonder if this was an intentional match to the show's feel, or if dubbing comedy is still that difficult. Even so, as a general dub viewer, I still preferred the new dub to the lackluster Japanese version (knowing full well that most anime viewers will gasped that I preferred that here), and it has a place to make the show more accessible to audiences that missed it before.Where does that leave "To Love Ru?" The show is pleasantly fun as a romantic-comedy, doubly so if you don't mind falling bath towels or the lead boy falling face-first into a girl's crotch. The fanservice works fine, with Lala in particular baring her nipples in the first episode, but most episodes that follow show only the edge of the nipple, which might disappoint some viewers, and most of the content is cute relative to the more extreme content of modern anime. Unfortunately, there are a few scenes that are uncomfortably distasteful, usually at Sairenji's expense. This is one of those shows where other characters typically slap the kid the instant he sees to much, but instantly forgive him, no matter how many times he (accidently) does it that day. There also a short, perverted principal that occasionally goes to far in exercise class, and a large-breasted nurse that assists aliens and provides occasional exposition. You get the idea. The stories are entirely episodic, with no significant developments from one episode to the next. Lesser shows like this would receive a lot more disdain from me. But typically, a lower score from me is reserved for shows that are aggressively uncomfortable or offensive, or overtly boring to the point of every minute being a waste of time. The fanservice in "To Love Ru" isn't extreme enough to be shocking, and treatment of female characters is relatively pedestrian (not great, but better than some other anime in the genre). There's no serious story, but this removes excessive exposition to focus on comedy filler. And the comedy itself is fun... not riotous, but pleasant enough. In not taking itself seriously, it walks a fine line. I'm certain some viewers will aggressively hate how mediocre its elements are, but if, like the show itself, you don't take it or yourself too seriously, it's an easy show to get behind, even to the point of rewatching on repeat. If this sounds like it's up your ally, I can confidently recommend "To Love Ru" as a fun, lighthearted, older fanservice comedy, even though it's production quality varies and it lacks a story to care about. I don't imagine I'll bother investing time in the rest of the franchise (once you've seen a few episodes, you've kind-of seen them all). If I did, "Motto to Love Ru" follows, and then "To Love Ru Darkness," each named after other key characters, and each getting more sexually explicit than what came before. One can argue there's a benefit here: there's a lot of content for fans, including sexier versions to build up to, but it's easy to stop midway if the comedy is your main draw. And if you can't choose between the two, enjoy both!