FREE AT LAST! FREE AT LAST!

Okay well, it was a nice way to end the series even though they basically took the ending from the manga. This was actually probably the best way to end it too without finalizing any relationships or anything. But, yes, it’s finally over and I’ll be taking a nice short break from blogging until Fall season comes out and I find something I like (which is like a week or two away actually ¬.¬).

Summary

It seems like there’s at least 3 characters that act tsundere for Rito in the anime version of this series. What’s up with that?

We continue where we left off with Mikado driving Rito, Yui, and Saruyama towards Gid’s spaceship. They are eventually stopped by a giant hole opening up in the ground, preventing them from moving further on land. Saki arrives in her personal helicopter and manages to get them across before they are attacked again. Yami shows up and saves them from a crash landing right before they encounter their next obstacle.

Poor Saruyama… at least he gets to see nekkid people unless he passed out or something.

The gang is surrounded by a living blob that restricts movement and eats away clothing. Rito manages to get away with the help of Yami, but everyone else gets trapped by the blob. Just as Rito gets to the final stretch before the spaceship, Rito gets put to sleep by a gas emitted from flowers planted right in front of the spaceship. Rito experiences a dream where Lala, Haruna, and himself are naked and they both are willing to satisfy him.

Shock! Okay, not really…

Haruna shows up with the help of those two girls (I refuse to learn their useless names) and Ren/Run and manages to wake Rito up from his dream. Rito barely makes it to the spaceship (there was actually a finish line set up for him?) where Lala and Gid are to congratulate him. Gid immediately sets up a wedding for Rito and Lala, however, Lala refuses to marry Rito just yet. It seems that Lala finally understands how Rito feels and doesn’t want to force a marriage on him. Lala attempts to wipe everyone’s memory of her so she could start over, but this doesn’t work out as her invention fails and no one’s memories were erased (except Zastin but they didn’t show that in the anime =P).

Impressions

Who ever thought of using naked people in space to express an emotional scene anyway?

I find it kind of funny that this ending holds a bit of resemblance to an older anime by Xebec that I just marathoned several weeks ago, Busou Renkin. While not all the elements were in the last episode, the thing about everyone screaming the protagonist’s name and the whole naked thing with your partner(s) just seemed too similar to me… and it really doesn’t help that they’re both by Xebec. But putting that aside, this episode was pretty good for a TLR in my opinion.

Ren magically changed to Run when we weren’t looking. I’m guessing it’s an attempt by Xebec to squeeze them in at the last second.

For some reason, the art quality in the episode seemed a little better than most or perhaps any episode from the series. It’s been a while so my memory may be a bit fuzzy, but the art was definitely a lot better than recent episodes. Of course, it’s the final episode so it’s understandable to put a lot more effort into it. But then again… after re-watching the episode for screencaps, the art was still a bit iffy at some spots. At least there weren’t any QUALITY shots I could find.

Should have gone with the MIB standard “flashy thingy”.

The resolution of the series was to be expected. You’re not going to get much of a conclusion when the source material isn’t even close to being finished. However, I really didn’t expect them to use the memory erase bit from the manga, especially when the last two episodes had nothing to do with the manga. I was hoping they would come up with something more original to end the series, but like I said before, this was probably the best way to do it as it left it open-ended.

Series Review

Once more… with feeling!

I’m sure most of you who have read my TLR posts know by now how disappointed I was with the series and I still am pretty disappointed. But I must say, they really tried to improve it towards the end of the series and I think they did a decent job at it. Of course the entire series as a whole still sucks noodles, but I certainly don’t regret watching it. “Why?” you ask? Well, despite all the good and bad things that have happened with the series (mostly bad), I think I still actually enjoyed the experience. It was kind of fun writing about all the stuff that was terrible or the stuff that actually was worth watching. Overall, To Love-Ru may be a bad series and a pretty pitiful manga adaptation, but it’s still a bit watchable even for those few episodes that were decent.

It’s a trap!

If you’re not a TLR manga fan then you should probably stay as far away from this show as possible.
If you ARE a TLR manga fan then you should probably stay as far away from this show as possible.
If you’re crazy (like me) and don’t mind a couple few several terrible episodes then by all means WATCH this show.

What’s the deal Xebec? Do you guys always wait until the final episodes to come out with some decent stuff? I don’t know about you guys, but aside from the emofest, I actually liked this episode. I’m guessing it’s because I’m used to all the bad episodes and once a decent episode finally comes I get all excited. Hell, I’m actually looking forward to the next episode. Oh gawd. Did I actually just say I’m looking forward to a TLR episode? *shudders*

Summary

He’s no Gordon or Kurtis, but he has his moments. (reference to the post title ¬.¬)

Lala’s father, Gid, declares that Rito must be able to reach his spaceship or else the Earth would be destroyed. Rito’s trial starts the next day at noon and has till sunset to reach the ship. Rito shuts himself in his dark room lamenting over the fact that Lala is gone and that he’s the only hope for Earth’s survival.

I jokingly thought of the exact same thing when Mikado first entered the room.

During Rito’s emo-mania, he gets encouraged by some of his friends and family, including a visit from Mikado and a letter and text message from this dad and mom respectively. Haruna also gives Rito a call asking him to come out and meet with her at the park. During their meeting, Rito clears up the misunderstanding that occurred last episode where Rito told Lala that he liked her. He tells Haruna that he will try to defend Earth the next day by reaching the spaceship and that if he is successful then he would like to tell Haruna his true feelings. Haruna encourages Rito to do his best and even gives him a hug.

He was just showing a little gratitude. =P

Rito starts his run for the spaceship the next day with a crowd of people cheering for him. Gid sends down a bunch of giant seeds that sprout into giant vines and entangle anyone who gets near them (or in this case, they only seem to go for Rito and women ¬.¬). Just when Rito is about to get captured, Mikado, Yui and Saruyama arrive in a Hummer(? that’s what it looks like to me) and drags Rito into the vehicle. Yui explains that the only condition is for Rito to reach the spaceship and there was no restriction that states that no one could help. The episode ends with them riding off towards Gid’s spaceship.

Impressions

Hey the tone in this episode is too serious. No one is going to like that!
Maybe we can add some random and shameless fanservice shots?
Brilliant! Make it happen.

I’m a bit amused by the fact that they slipped in a bunch shameless fanservice (much more than most of the other episodes) in, what was supposed to be, a pretty serious episode. I mean it’s the end of the world and they still have time to slip in a few unmodest shots. Not that I’m really complaining… it’s just kind of funny when you think about it.

A little uncharacteristic for Haruna, but I’ll let it slide this time.

The scene with Rito and Haruna was a bit rewarding even if it wasn’t a full blown confession. It down-played the confession to Lala from last episode and it didn’t set RitoxHaruna in stone either. I doubt the next episode will finalize anything either as the manga hasn’t even come close to finalizing a relationship for Rito.

A liquid that melts clothes? Haven’t we been down this road already?

Based on next episode’s preview, it sounds like Lala might be leaving Earth for a while. I doubt that will really happen, but who knows.

We’re pretty much on the brink of ending this series once and for all. With how the this episode ended, it’s pretty clear that they’re going to focus the next two episodes on wrapping everything up in some grand epic finale. Will this mean it’ll be any good or worth watching? Who knows…

Summary

So Rito digs this kind of stuff.

Lala catches some sort of space cold and suffers from a case of changing personalities. Lala’s first personality change results as her becoming sort of a shy character much like Haruna which also gets Rito’s hormones raging. They ask Mikado about Lala’s condition and they find out that the cure must be ordered from outer space and will arrive in a few days.

Six Million Yen Rito

We find out that Lala’s condition has her changing personalities daily as the next morning she becomes more like an underclassman cheering on an upperclassman, Rito in this case. The next few days has Lala going through more personalities including a tsundere version of Lala and a military commander version.

Yes, your highness!

As a military commander, Lala decides to try and take over the Earth for Rito using an army of robots that she has created. Rito decides to go ahead and try to stop Lala from doing this instead of waiting for the cure to arrive.

Love the outfit. Need to see Yami or Yui in one.

Rito discovers that Lala has already assembled an entire army of robots and is ready to launch an attack on Earth. Rito’s classmates, Saruyama, Haruna, those other two girls, are also acting as generals controlling their own battalion of robots. Rito tries to get Lala to stop, but Saruyama and the other two girls order their robots to stop Rito. Since Haruna doesn’t want Rito to get hurt, she orders her battalion to assist him. Yami also appears to deliver the cure, but is stopped by Zastin.

Push the button!

Rito goes on ahead and is stopped by robots a short distance away from reaching Lala with the cure. As Lala is about to start the attack on Earth, Rito shouts out “I like you” which brings Lala back to her senses. Just when things look like they’re over, Lala’s father appears over Earth taking Lala back and will likely declare war on Earth.

Impressions

Mikado is such a tease as always, but not as much as this.

Not too shabby. I think it was another normal episode for this series and by far not as bad as a lot of the other episodes like I’ve been saying over and over again. I enjoyed the multiple personality thing from Lala, but I could’ve done without some of the ideas they had (like the senpai thing and the comedy duo act). They could of had more screen time for tsundere Lala and maybe some other personalities in there. The whole robot army thing was kind of bland as well, but I did like the outfits for the girls (lol).

That looks so wrong.

The whole “I like you” bit was kinda cliche, but I wasn’t really expecting it to happen in this series. More so because they never progressed that far in the manga (he came close in the chapter where everyone was transported into that video game, but he never really went that far). I suppose they’re going to have to end the series some how and they did kind of cover it up since Lala doesn’t remember what Rito said.

No, it’s not.

Not much we can tell for what the next episode will bring us just by watching the preview at the end. My guess is that it might be an emo fest with Rito thinking over everything that’s happened so far and nothing really happening untill the last and final episode.

Despite how hesitant I was about watching this episode (and how little sense it made), I didn’t think it was too bad. Overall, I didn’t like the episode that much, but there were parts that particularly made me laugh or I somewhat enjoyed. So I can’t really call this a terrible episode even though I kinda want to out of habit.

Summary

Licky, licky.

Well the premise of the episode is Saruyama having nightmares about being in feudal Japan and meeting the other characters of TLR as characters from various Japanese folktales or other fictional stories. Saruyama’s “harem” consists of a bunch of female creature-like aliens who creep him out more than anything else. There’s not much else I can summarize with this episode as it was completely random and didn’t really make much sense to me.

Impressions

Dammit Yami, stop being so cute.

There was a few moments I found pretty entertaining. Not that it was particularly funny or anything, but the episode did make me laugh a few times… although I’m not sure if I was laughing at how stupid or bad a particular part was or if I actually found it humorous.

Are/Were there actually any female sumo wrestlers?

Mikado as a sumo wrestler was pretty funny and the few characters that Yami portrayed were pretty entertaining as well since they were a big contrast from their normal personalities.

OMG nipples! Okay, not really.

Speaking of contrasting personalities, Saruyama was a bit out of character when he was yelling at the girls to not strip in public. I suppose there may be another side to Saruyama or maybe he’s just had enough of his nightmares.

Poor Saruyama.

I particularly liked this part where Lala got scared and yelled out “Saruyama snapped!”. I dunno why, but I thought it was funny the first time I saw it.

Love the new costume.

The next episode seems to take from the manga again where Lala gets sick and her personality changes. Of course there will be some original content in it so who knows how it will go.

Okay, honestly… I didn’t think this episode was that bad. It was actually relatively good compared to most of the crap that they’ve released in the past. However, this by far does not mean that this was a spectacular episode at all. But, I think this episode was a lot closer to being “acceptable” than the few previous episodes.

Summary

Everyone at school is preparing for the school cultural festival. Yui naturally tries to take charge and offers two (boring) options for what the class should do for the festival. This gets immediately taken over by Saruyama who proposes an idea that fits with everyone’s opinions, an animal cosplay cafe.

Meanwhile, Yami tries to look for a job as she cannot forget her profession as an assassin. And of course, since she lacks much knowledge about Earth, she ignorantly tries to search for a job in assassination. It’s also revealed that Yami is actually 24 years old in Earth time (not sure if I really want to believe Xebec on this one).

Everyone works on getting everything ready for the animal cosplay cafe. Yui gets a bit depressed and loses her self-confidence after having her ideas turned down by everyone. Haruna comes along and cheers her up and everyone is happily working on the festival again.

During the day of the festival, one of the waitresses was not able to make it due to a fever. While everyone was trying to figure out what to do with the extra costume, Yami appears looking for a “job”. Of course, due to the extreme coincidence, Yami fills in the spot for the missing student. It also turns out the Saki was trying to do an insect cosplay cafe that pretty much failed, attracting only one customer.

Impressions

Nothing really special happened this episode. Cultural festival episodes were always more about fun and stuff anyways. The animal cosplay cafe idea turned out nicely as it gave some decent fanservice. I’m not sure how I felt about the whole Yami trying to find a job or the emo Yui bits of the episode, but at least with emo Yui it felt like the writers were trying at least. I guess the job hunting Yami was just a lame excuse to include her in the cosplay cafe in the end. Overall, I kind of liked episode as there wasn’t anything too stupid about it. It was a bit boring at times, but at least it wasn’t retarded.

Next episode looks like it will definitely be retarded. I think we’re going back to “To LOATHE-Ru” here with idiotic episodes. I mean with Saruyama as the main character again and the lame filter over everything to make it look like it’s in the past or something can’t really prove to be a worthwhile episode.

Before you all ask me why I’m still blogging this series let me say this… While I do think this series has gone down the toilet several episodes ago and has no chance for redemption, I feel that I should stay committed and finish blogging a series that I started. I’ve flaked out and dropped a few series in the past and I feel like that I should make up for it here (although this is probably the one thing I SHOULD flake out on).

So while I’m reluctant to do so, I will be finishing up the series and blogging it as well. I hope anyone who actually reads these episode summaries will join in and continue my journey of joy and pain (mostly pain).

Summary

Mikan’s outfit ain’t too shabby neither.

Rito and Lala are introduced to an alien who creates guides for traveling aliens. He mentions that there is currently no hotels on Earth that is catered specifically for aliens. Rito is suddenly inspired after hearing “number one in the universe” and decides to make a hotel out of the old schoolhouse. Rito gets Yami, Mikan, and Oshizu to help out around the hotel as he has no other help other than Lala.

I wouldn’t be surprised if she brought out a gundam or something.

Business was slow as there were only a few guests to stay at the hotel in the beginning. However, things seem to turn good when a large group appears wishing to stay at the hotel. Unfortunately, these aliens seem to be a small army preparing to attack the planet Deviluke, Lala’s home planet. As Rito and Lala were offering tea to their guests, the aliens find out that Lala is from Deviluke and all hell breaks loose. The episode ends with Rito losing his hotel and everyone sent to the Mikado’s infirmary.

Impressions

Random fanservice.

This episode actually wasn’t all that bad. It wasn’t necessarily good, but it wasn’t really bad either. It was a pretty normal episode, nothing really awful about it. The comedy was bland and the fanservice was minimal, but what can you really expect at this point? Yami in a maid outfit was pretty awesome… little aliens groping Yami was not awesome though. Giant alien babes were kind of cool, but not really. The gravity room reminded me of DBZ sort of. And there’s not really else much to say about this episode.

The next episode will be the culture festival and Rito’s class will be doing an animal cosplay cafe. This was done in the manga, but I can’t really expect them to follow it exactly as it was done in the manga this late in the game.

What in the hell…?

Okay, so I guess this episode is considered a “filler” episode since it has nothing to do with the main storyline. However, given the quality of most of the episodes from this series, I can’t say that the fact that it’s a filler episode really means anything. Some have said that this episode is really bad, so bad that it could be considered the worse episode of To Love-Ru. But seeing how most of the episodes have been pretty bad, how much worse can it get? Well let’s find out.

P.S. I think I’ve mentioned in a few previous posts about the remaining episode count. I apologize since I was thinking it was a 24 episode series instead of 26 for some reason. Yes, more pain and suffering for me.

Summary

This episode is simply an episode of Magical Kyoko Flame (apparently a really poorly made anime in the world of TLR) that Rito and Lala are watching. Kyoko is your “average” high school girl with the ability to shoot flames from her mouth with a perverted upperclassman as a sidekick (she’s also from Black Cat).

Ikemen (the sidekick) informs Kyoko that the evil General Mojack has appeared and is giving everyone afros. Kyoko “transforms” into Magical Kyoko and battles with Mojack. The battle causes Mojack to turn bald and forces him to flee. Despite her victory and returning everyone back to normal, she gets in trouble with the chief of the fire department (who looks exactly like the principal… and as perverted too).

Mojack returns with his mother and attempt to get revenge on Kyoko. In one way or another the chief is given an afro by Mojack and the chief rejoices since he now has hair… and some other crap happens with a long lost dad showing up and some weird folk dancing… I dunno. The plot really falls apart here and I don’t even want to bother summarizing it… not that it was any good to begin with.

Impressions

So, worst episode in TLR? Possibly. However, with six episodes left there’s plenty of room to ruin it even more. I realize that the people who came up with this episode were probably trying to make a parody or spoof of generic “magical girl” anime since it was so terrible and didn’t take itself seriously. Most of the time these parodies would be funny and entertaining to watch. But you see, TLR has to be unique in that it has to fail at comedy or anything of the sort. Thus giving us an episode that relatively made no sense at all and not in a good way either.

I really have no idea what this next episode is about, but when I saw those miniature aliens groping some unknown person (I think it’s supposed to be Yami), I cringed. I really don’t think this next episode will have any merits at all.

Six more episodes… someone save me!

These TLR posts are getting later and later with every episode. I don’t know if it’s because of my laziness or if it’s because I’m caring less and less about the series… maybe it’s both. Anyways, with only five episodes left, I figured I’d just finish up blogging the series (I hate leaving things unfinished).

Summary

Lala gets inspired by a television program about hot springs and decides that she wants a hot springs for herself. Lala eventually decides to build a vehicle that would allow her to dig into the Earth’s core and locate her very own hot springs. A few other people, including Haruna, Yami, Mikado, Saruyama and those two other girls (their names aren’t really important), show up as well to find the hot springs.

After digging around aimlessly and passing up lost treasures, the crew finally find an area with many different colored hot springs. Due to the open and free environment, Rito and Saruyama get confined to a tiny hole in the ground hot spring for the sake of the other girls’ privacy. However, this doesn’t hold the two for long as they escape to explore the other hot springs.

After a bunch of events, Lala continues to drill and accidentally causes an underground volcanic eruption. Said eruption causes the gang to flee and even wipes out an entire underground nation of mole people (who were apparently planning to take over the surface world… go figure). The episode ends with sort of a cliffhanger as to what had happened, but due to the nature of these episodes and seeing the preview for the next, I doubt we get to see (nor do I really care) what happens in the end.

Impressions

For a “hot springs” episode, this one was really boring. The fanservice wasn’t anything special either. In every harem/love comedy anime you’d probably get at most one or two hot springs episodes and you’d make it the best damn hot springs episodes you can (tons of fanservice and hilarious moments). However, TLR just ruined it and wasted their token hot springs episode.

Despite having Yami and Mikado at the hot springs, I’m surprised they left out some of the other characters. At least have Saki (who showed up for like a minute or two of the entire episode) in the damn hot springs as well. I wanted my Yui fanservice dammit.

Next episode, to much of my surprise, seems to include Magical Kyoko (the same Kyoko from Black Cat with a different setting). I’m wondering if this will be a side story in Kyoko’s “world” or not since she’s considered to be a fictional character in the TLR reality and the next episode looks like it has either the principal or someone who looks very much like him. But, since there’s no signs of any of the other characters, I doubt this will include any of them as a major part of the episode. Seeing as how many of the other episodes sucked anyway, I doubt it’ll matter much.

Saruyama x Female-Cat-Alien-Assassin-Whore

Okay not really. But the alien really is female, a cat(like being), an assassin, and kind of a whore. But hey, she’s an animal and animals have their wild instincts. You can’t really blame her right?

Summary

Lala gets a delivery from space and is called up to the roof to receive it. However, the box contained a female cat-like alien assassin that has come to take Lala’s life. During the fight, the cat alien falls over from stomach pains. It turns out that the assassin is actually pregnant.

Rito and Saruyama bring the assassin into the nurse’s office and Saruyama is left alone to watch over her. For some reason, Saruyama seems to be experienced at delivering babies and is able to deliver the assassin’s baby successfully.

It is revealed that the assassin does not know who the father of the baby is and eventually it comes down to the assassin wanting Saruyama to be the baby’s daddy. Of course, Saruyama refuses and tries desperately to get away from becoming a “souvenir”. It is only when the assassin finally leaves that Saruyama realizes that he may have been happier leaving Earth.

Impressions

So basically, all this episode was about was how an alien mommy got the hots for the guy who delivered her baby and how he didn’t want to be no baby’s daddy. I’m all for giving side characters their own episodes, but why the hell does Saruyama get one? Not only that, but the episode did not make you appreciate the character that is was so focused on. It actually made me think Saruyama was even more of a pathetic idiot than he was portrayed to be earlier. I guess the main purpose of the episode was to show off Saruyama’s hidden baby delivering skills huh?

I’m glad Yami is getting more screen time, but he role in these episodes seem to be relatively useless. If you’re not going to make her do anything, then why even bother putting her in? Even the other girls got the pleasure of beating the crap out of Saruyama.

Next episode involves the traditional hot springs episode every harem/love comedy series seems to require. I would say that I’m looking forward to seeing what this episode might bring, but I just don’t feel like it this time.

Yay! It’s Oshizu! Okay enough of that.

This episode is based off one of the chapters from the manga where Rito and the gang enter the old school building. After encountering all sorts of spooky stuff, they encounter a friendly ghost by the name of Oshizu, a young girl who died in that area many years ago.

Summary

Rito and the gang hear a rumor about a ghost who haunts the old school building and decide to check it out for themselves. In the building they find Yami who’s there to check out all the old books and Yui who decided to follow them.

Shortly after meeting up, the gang starts encounter all sorts of mysterious and supernatural-like things going on. However, it turns out that it’s just the work of refugee space aliens trying to protect their home.

Doctor Mikado shows up and decides to try and get jobs for the aliens at a friend’s haunted house. After the aliens leave with Mikado, Oshizu appears and introduces herself. It appears that she has not been able to get much sleep due to the rowdiness of the aliens.

Unfortunately for the aliens, Mikado’s friend is closing down the haunted house and building an alien cabaret instead and would only hire female aliens. Oshizu comes up with the idea to teach the aliens how to sing and dance and ultimately make them more feminine.

The aliens agree to the idea and go through training under the guidance of Oshizu. Eventually their hard work pays off when they get hired to work in the cabaret with Oshizu as the “Big Mama”.

Impressions

Okay, the first half of the episode was really the only part worth watching for me. The first half was mostly based on the original material with a few minor changes and such. That was all fine and dandy for me, but the second half of the episode was really way out there and the thought of transforming male aliens to act more feminine really didn’t tickle my fancy. And Oshizu’s part in the episode didn’t really do her any justice either.

I’m not sure why, but I found Yui to be particularly funny during this episode. The parts where she would try to faint was particularly humorous. Nothing straight out “LOL” funny in this episode, but it was a bit entertaining at least (for the first half of the episode anyway).

The next episode looks straight up retarded. It seems like there’s going to be a cat-woman alien that comes to Earth and possibly falls in love with Saruyama. I don’t know… maybe it’ll turn out okay, but judging from their track history with anime original content, I wouldn’t count on it.

This episode involves most of the cast of characters hanging out at a public pool/water park and Run is trying to grab Rito’s attention. Her plans eventually escalate to her trying to become an idol to impress Rito, but things don’t go as well as she wants them to.

Summary

Rito and the gang arrive at the water park and engage in the usual activities with Lala, of course, pulling out many of her odd inventions. Run tries to get closer to Rito and tries almost everything to get to him. She eventually thinks that everyone else is trying to keep Rito for themselves and tries to embarrass them by trying to strip them in front of him. However, this plan only ends up embarrassing Rito as she repeatedly pulls off his swimsuit instead.

Just as they find out that Run is behind all the trouble, everyone immediately puts the blame on Rito. But after Rito angrily expresses that it has nothing to do with him, Run gets a bit heartbroken and runs off. Run later comes across the idea to become an idol so Rito can look up to her. Run’s own imagination takes her on a wild trip on the path of supposed “stardom” (which apparently only lasted a few minutes or hours as they were still at the water park).

Run is confronted by a group of thugs and Rito arrives just in time to stand up to them. Despite his bravery, he’s not strong enough to take them on himself. Everyone else arrives and confronts the group of thugs as well and Lala comes in and finishes them off with a giant water gun.

And the episode ends with some sappy feelings of friendship and crap, blah, blah, blah…

Impressions

This episode started out okay. It had me laughing at some points and it was pretty good at first. But for some reason, once Run started the whole idol thing, it just got really boring. Run’s antics are pretty amusing since they always backfire in pretty amusing ways. But whenever she goes on those self-dramatizing (is that a real word?) trips it just makes me want to go in and slap the crap out of her.

Speaking of Run, I think the anime version of her might be a lot different from the manga version. In the manga she seems a little bit more mature and doesn’t go on those drama trips like she does in the anime. I think I like her in the manga a little better. Even the chapter when Run becomes an idol was done much better in the manga than the anime.

They really need to give Yami more screentime. These short scenes of her doesn’t do her any justice at all. Let’s have some Yami and Mikan bonding going on (not in that perverted way either).

Surprisingly, next episode seems to include the ghost, Shizu(Oshizu… I’m not sure which is correct version). I didn’t think they’d move this far into the series, but she might not appear much past this episode since there’s only about 8 episodes left.

I’m going to stay committed to blogging this series whether it’s a good or TERRIBLE episode. This one I think falls in the latter half yet again. Well some parts weren’t too bad, but the whole premise of the episode and the execution was done so poorly that I almost kicked my monitor.

Anyways, in other news, I got a chance to watch episode 2 of Pantsu Strike Witches and I must say that it’s getting slightly better. They aren’t flashing ass and crotch in your face every 2 seconds anymore and the action sequences are kind of cool. I probably won’t blog it (unless anyone wants it blogged) as I’m losing my drive to blog and there’s not much material to blog on the show anyways. For now, I’ll just remain blogging TLR and my small portion of the Natsume posts with Maipeisu.

On another random note, I was looking up a word in my handy dictionary and stumbled across the word “anime”. At first I was impressed to actually see the word in there, but was quickly disappointed when I read the definition. Keep in mind that this dictionary was published in 2001, but it’s still amusing.

“A style of animation marked by colorful art, futuristic settings, and violence.”

Gee, why not just put sex, nudity and killer lolis in there too while you’re at it. -_-

Summary

Earth gets a visit from an ally of the Devilukes, Prince Kata. As Lala is the only Deviluke royalty on Earth, she must meet with him along with a few locals of the planet; those locals being Rito and Haruna. Kata explains that he’s on Earth to do some hunting on Earth. Everyone is dragged into the hunt as well and are required to use nothing but primitive technology such as stone axes and boomerangs.

Haruna is captured by a giant ape named Ginga Kong and Rito is dragged off by Amazons before he could save her. The Amazons apparently want Rito to become their husband since he “proved” his bravery and manliness against the giant ape. Right when Rito is about to give up his man-juices to the Amazons, Lala arrives on the scene and tries to stop them. Lala manages to fight off a few Amazons but is subdued when they manage to grab her tail.

Haruna arrives shortly after with Ginga Kong and chases away the Amazon tribe. Just as Rito and Haruna were about to reunite, Ginga Kong tosses Rito away in jealousy and Lala and Haruna go chasing after him. When they arrive back in Kata’s spaceship, Haruna is awarded the trophy for being the best hunter by being able to control Ginga Kong.

Impressions

Possibly the only redeeming shots of the entire episode and one’s not even part of this episode.

There are so many problems with this episode that I don’t even know where to begin. First of all, the part where Lala gets revealed as an alien to the rest of the school was really lame and the way everyone reacted was very anti-climatic. I mean she’s a freaking alien, and all they do is basically go “Oh, okay.”

Another problem is all of the useless, one-time, characters they’re bringing in. I’m not sure, but I think this Prince Kata guy got about many five minutes of screen time at most and probably won’t show up ever again.

I don’t want to know who came up with the idea to put them in a prehistoric environment with giant apes and even Amazons.

Anyways, next week seems like it’ll be a Run centered episode. Maybe it’ll actually be good… maybe.

I really don’t know why I’m still watching or even blogging this series. I’ve been disappointed time and time again with many of the episodes that they’ve somehow came up with. I guess deep down inside I’m still grasping on to that little shred of hope that I have left for the series that will probably never extinguish until the very end of it… or maybe it’s masochism, who knows. But, whatever, it’s just a silly fanservice show anyways.

Summary

Rito contemplates over the words that Gid told him last episode. Rito decides to go out for a jog and bumps into Haruna who is out walking her dog. Haruna asks Rito what he’s doing and Rito tells her that he’s trying to change and improve himself. Haruna decides to support Rito with his training and the two start to meet almost everyday before school.

On a rainy day, Rito arrives at the usual meeting spot and wonders if Haruna will actually show up. She eventually arrives despite the poor weather and asks Rito if he’ll show up on Sunday as well. She tells him that she’ll even make a bento for him on that day.

The two meet up again on Sunday and Rito goes through more training. While Rito and Haruna take a break to eat the bento that Haruna made, Haruna’s dog escapes from his leash and tries to chase a duck into the water. Rito saves Haruna’s dog, but ends up getting his clothes soaked. Haruna tells Rito to come to her house before he catches a cold since it happens to be close by.

Rito ends up taking a bath in Haruna’s house while he gets his clothes dried. However, his clothes are still not dry by the time he gets out of the bath and has to sit in Haruna’s room with just a towel on. Haruna ends up tripping on a stack of books and Rito goes to save her. Rito ends up on top of Haruna and right as the two are possibly about to kiss, Haruna’s sister shows up causing Rito to run all the way home.

Impressions

New ED: kissの行方 by Anna

Haruna has been getting a lot of attention and screen time lately (possibly to make up for her lack of appearances in the other episodes). Even the new ED has her has the main focus. I don’t really have much of a problem with Haruna, but she is indeed kind of a boring character. We need to see more of the side characters, but I’m afraid that the main focus on this anime series will be on Haruna and Lala. A pity because I’m hoping to see more of Yui and Yami. Hell, they could even put in a Mikan-centered episode or two.

I don’t know… maybe it’s kind of good to see this kind of development with Rito and Haruna. They never really had much development between them in the manga so it’s a nice change of pace. I don’t even think Rito has ever been in Haruna’s house (let alone her bathtub) in the manga aside from that one time he turned into a dog.

Well now that Kure-nai is over, there isn’t much for me to do in terms of blogging. Sure I still have TLR, but nothing worthwhile has really happened so far. I thought this episode would have been pretty interesting with a new character, but it turns out that it wasn’t even a real person (more details later… I guess). All I can do now is wait for the next season and hope to find a few gems that I could blog on. Otherwise, these episode summaries of TLR might be the only time you hear from me.

Summary(condensed)

Earth gets a visit from Lala’s very own father, Gid “Supreme Ruler of the Universe”. Gid hangs around Rito’s school to observe him and finally calls him up to the rooftop in order to test him with a fake doll of a woman. Rito apparently “fails” this test as he acted too cowardly with her advances. As Gid is about to destroy Rito along with the Earth, Lala stops him. Lala explains that Rito is the most important person to her and Gid backs off. He instead tells Rito to become the number one man in the universe or else the next time he sees him, he will kill him and destroy the Earth.

Impressions

As you can tell with the very short episode summary I posted, there wasn’t much that happened in this episode. Lala’s father came into the picture and placed a heavy burden on Rito. Lala gets sad, Rito gets troubled, then he finds his resolve to become a better person, blah blah blah. Anyways you get the picture. The only saving grace for the episode is probably how awesome Gid looks and the bits of fanservice here and there. But other than that, another mediocre episode for TLR.

It’s the sports festival at Sainan High and Rito is eager to impress his crush, Haruna with his efforts. However, due to several mishaps, he becomes depressed thinking that the girl he likes the most, hates his guts. Meanwhile, Saki challenges Lala to show who is superior and stops at nothing to prove it.

Summary

At the sports festival, the students of Sainan High go through the usual events, but with a few twists. During the initial stretching exercises, the principal leads with a variety of strange and perverted stretching poses.

The first event of the sports festival is a collection race for the male students. Rito, Ren and Motemitsu (the long forgotten baseball player from the manga) are participating. However, the events here are never as your usual events. Each person has to find something almost impossible to find such as a legendary sword from somewhere in the world or a pair of female bloomers that were recently taken off.

The next event is an obstacle course for the girls. The obstacles they have to go through are far from normal either. Obstacles such as an obstacle of unexpected pregnancy, having your boyfriend locked up in jail, or even being with a man who is in debt with yakuza.

Next up is the baton race with Yui, Ren, Rito, and Haruna. However, once Yui gets to the relay point, they find out that Ren is still out looking for the legendary sword from the first event. After a bit of a delay, Ren arrives carrying a gigantic sword and Yui is able to pass the baton over to him. But Ren is unable to slow himself down since he was carrying such a big sword and accidentally lodges the sword into the ground and causing it to split.

The calvary event comes up next and Rito is participating again with Haruna. Although it was originally supposed to be on the ground, Saki makes it into a pool event where everyone has to change into their swimsuits. Saki uses this opportunity to deploy swimsuit-seeking cutting fans. This causes many of the participants to lose their swimsuits including Lala. Lala simply uses Peke to recreate her swimsuit which causes Saki to deploy more fans. However, the fans start to go berserk and start hitting anything including the spectators. Haruna gets knocked out by one of the fans and Rito quickly brings her to the nurses office. As Saki is about to eliminate Lala, her swimsuit is cut off by one of the fans and Lala is able to defeat Saki yet again.

Haruna wakes up inside the nurses’s office where Rito is also. Rito takes this opportunity to apologize for all the embarrassing things he’s done to Haruna and for some reason, Haruna forgives him and says that it was her fault as well(?). Not sure why she’s saying it was her fault too, but at any rate the two make up right before Lala comes crashing in, ruining the moment.

Impressions

Not too bad of an episode for an anime only episode. The premise was pretty normal, but it had some interesting parts to it that makes it a bit unique and interesting. I actually found myself laughing at some parts which is a good sign. Maybe I was just hysterical, but it may be a sign that the series could be getting better. Of course, not much happened (nor does it ever) in terms of plot development. Just more and more of the random craziness and fanservice that makes TLR.

No problems with the animation quality for this episode. Maybe they picked it up ever since the Yami episode. I was really irritated for all those other times where the quality just went straight to hell and never came back. But I’m glad that it’s looking decent again… of course, not as great as the manga’s artwork.

In terms of side character screen time in this episode, not many of them got in actual screen time that was really noteworthy. I guess the main players in this episode were Rito, Haruna, Lala, and Saki. Yui, Ren/Run, and Mikado showed up as well but didn’t really bring anything to the episode besides a few lines (with the exception of Ren and the legendary sword bit =P).

I think the biggest thing I like about the TLR manga was the attention they put on their side characters and their interaction with everyone in the series to bring dimension to every character and not just the main ones. I think it makes it more interesting to say the least. But, I don’t think you can get much done by placing as many characters you can into a single episode. I think in the manga they usually had chapters dedicated to specific characters at a time and everyone else was pushed aside for a bit. The anime might be great that way as well, but due to time constraints, it might not be the best idea.