Kita ze Inbou! - キタぜ陰謀!

ANN Encyclopedia | AniDB | AnimeNfo
OP: “forever we can make it!” by THYME
ED: “Lucky Tune (ラッキーチューン)” by SANTOS ANNA
Production: Xebec
To LOVE-Ru

[ Episode 1: The Girl Who Descended ]

THIS IS SO UNFAIR. How come male characters in those shows can fondle with breasts as much as they want and don’t get their balls kneed to the groin?

I have been hearing a lot of negative feedback about to LOVE-Ru, saying it’s juvenile, trite and filled with fan-service. To be honest, it is everything I just stated. Even so, I can’t help but liking it, as it’s somewhat became my guilty pleasure this spring season. The first episode wasn’t anything me, or anyone of you, haven’t seen before, but for those who like the genre can find some enjoyment thanks to the slapstick comedy. How many anime do you know where there are jiggling breasts during a space chase scene?

First of all, the main guy, Rito, is without a doubt one of the most boring lead males I have seen in recent memory. The only thing special about him is that he is in love with another girl from his school, Haruna and throughout his middle school years he failed to express his feelings, failed miserably. When he meets with Lala, the alien princess, and witnesses her being attacked by her bodyguards, all the guy has to think about is as she trying to get loose from their grasp, she grinds her shoes and make his carpet dirty. Come on, I know he doesn’t suppose to like her right away, but this is kind of stupid. What’s even more stupid is a second later he gets some balls and saves Lala. So he is very uneven, and the only thing that makes Rito mildly entertaining is the humorous situations the guys gets beaten up or screwed. Probably one of the best scenes of the episode was him getting run by an elephant stampede before confessing.

Now let’s move on to Lala, the brighter spot of this show. I had to sit through Steel Angel Kurumi, so I have had my fair share of overly happy busty pink-haired anime girls. Even so, I find her voice and personality a lot less grating thanks to the effort of the newcomer Haruka Tomatsu. I also love her design, her outfit is adorable and you can’t just help it and give her a hug, even though when she is transforming to that outfit, it seems to be more… “painful”… than it should, if you know what I mean. Design asike, instead of acting like the moe girl Kurumi is, Lala shows more of a personality as she does want to live independent life with no interference from her father who wants her to marry in her young age. Oh yeah, that’s the premise of the show if you guys didn’t know, sorry for leaving it out.

It is also one of those shows that the girl has some weird gizmo that helps at first but causes mayhem a moment later, in that case, the “vacuum-kun”, or how I call it, the “Tentacle Sucker”. Not only I have seen inventions that go wrong a million times, even in American cartoons, adding insult to injury is the fact that the Tentacle Sucker was made in CG. I am going to state it only one time here: I HATE CG IN ANIME. It’s cheesy, detracts from the overall animation quality and simply unnecessary. It has lots of boobs and CG, but if that turns into another Dragonaut I’m going to be pissed, and it’s rare to get me pissed that much about anime.

What else? The vocal talent is pretty much composed of newcomers with one exception: the busiest Seiyuu of them all, Takehito Koyasu is there as the commander of the Lala retrieval platoon, Zastin. You know if that guy is an anime, you sense his authority even if his role is minor. You know the guy likes to have fun when he is menacing at one moment, and goofy when he is sucked into a giant octopus vacuum. I also liked the OP theme “forever we can make it” by THYME, though I have yet to hear about them. It’s a catchy song filled with all the girls of the series wearing bikinis, revealing outfits or plain naked in the case of Lala. The ED is much slower, but it has a nice beat to it when the chorus kicks in. The soundtrack overall is nothing to write home about, but since I don’t mind pop-ish songs, I don’t hate it either.

I’ll stick to “to LOVE-Ru” for the time being as despite all of the glaring flaws, like how obvious the next episode is going to deal with Rito avoiding Lala because the alien princess wants him to marry her, although the entire thing is a misunderstanding. I am a little worried that the show is suppose to last for 26 episodes, which isn’t ordinary. All I really want of to LOVE-Ru is to rely more on the slapstick jokes than the fan-service, and if they do have to resort to that, at least no every five seconds please.

7/10