As far as other ecchi series go (I especially enjoyed the Onegai series), the TLR anime does seem to fall very short of what basically makes an ecchi anime work: tons of fanservice and comedy(usually). The TLR anime attempts to use these two key features, but does not really get any done effectively. The fanservice is scarce and often covered up to the point that you can’t even see anything and the comedy is typically lukewarm at best. What I’m still doing by watching this show is probably waiting for it to redeem itself. As a fan of TLR I can only hope that it gets better from this point on.

@Randor: I’m not sure if you knew, but Eve from Black Cat is a creation of the main artist of TLR. He did Black Cat and now he’s doing TLR. But yes, I suppose that can be considered a reference.

Also, Yami-chan… :3

I’m just surprised that the production studio has managed to take a good concept (in theory) and completely trash it (IMO, Onegai Teacher had a similar concept and a better execution). I look at similar ecchi harems like Inukami! or Kanokon and can’t help but think TLR has a long, long way to go. Fortunately, they have another 15 episodes to go to rectify both the humour and character development. I just don’t know if I’ll be able to stomach sitting through them all.

And this is coming from a guy who actually sat and watched G-On Riders in its entirety. There’s a few hours of my life I wish I had back. -_-

@Halcyon: I’m assuming you’re familiar with the manga already since you mentioned it in your comment. To me, the TLR manga was fanservice + comedy… not GREAT comedy, but comedy nonetheless. I think it’s been branded as an ecchi harem comedy series which the manga does pretty well, but the anime seems to fall short of being anything but mediocre at this point. I can only hope that the series improves since they do have a chance at giving the series some structure that the manga severely lacks. I’m certainly a fan of this series with the amount of attention they give to the side characters which almost overshadows the main ones (besides Rito). I’m usually a “side character” kind of guy anyways.

@LDC: If you’re talking about the visual “cuteness” of Yami then I would have to say I prefer any of the character’s manga version over the anime. The art quality of the anime can’t even compare to how good the manga looks to me.

@Calawain: She’s indeed awesome and hopefully we do see more of her. Her appearances in the manga weren’t that often so maybe they might change that in the anime.

It doesn’t know whether it wants to be a harem, romance, or comedy series and in trying to be all three simultaneously it fails at each individually. These episodes mostly seem like filler. One-shots which really don’t move the story forward at all. Which isn’t very surprising considering the source material -_-

I just wish they’d do something more with this series. ;/