Friday, December 14, 2012

"To Love-Ru: Darkness" Episodes 3-9 Thoughts



So while I do not hide the fact that I watch anime (actively) to my friends, To Love-Ru: Darkness is an anime that I will never tell a soul (that I personally know) I watch. I sometimes wonder why I do watch the show since the main focus is well…not really the plot.

So yeah To Love-Ru: Darkness in case you somehow didn’t know is an ecchi comedy from the animation studio XEBEC. This season marks the third season of To Love-Ru and it has a running manga which the show is based off of. I shamefully raise my hand again by confessing that I have been keeping up with the manga and actually have been enjoying it. I tend to usually not want to watch or read ecchi related content but the wacky events that happen in the To Love-Ru universe are actually quite fun to watch/read.  To Love-Ru: Darkness has so far proven to be just as wacky as its two predecessors and of course has kept up with the fan’s demands for the…animation!-___-
"What?! There is inappropriate content in this show!!?
Episodes three through nine have kept the same pacing and structure as the first two. My post on the first two episodes can be found here but if you do not want to read up on what happened in the early parts of the show all you have to know is that the show revolves around a male high school student named Rito. Rito becomes involved with a space princess named Lala very early on in the To Love-Ru time line but plays more of a sideline role in Darkness. The main female protagonist for this season is Momo (Lala’s sister) who wants to create the perfect harem for Rito. Other than that, you shouldn’t fret about the plot because every episode wants to exploit two things; comedy and ecchi content. So the comedy: if you do not like slapstick type comedy then please steer far away from this anime. Everything that is considered a joke in this anime comes in very short bursts and is usually recycled themes and gags. Ecchi content: there is a lot of it and I am willing to bet that at least eighty percent of each episode shows the trademark awkward camera angles and rays of light blocking certain body parts. I will put my two cents out here and say if you are only wanting to watch this for the ecchi related content, I would wait until the Blu-ray and DVD (…people still watch DVD’s?) versions of the anime come out because there is so much censoring in this show. Every little thing has annoying rays of bright white lights coming in from no where. It has gotten to the point where it actually distracts me from the overall visual elements of the anime. It’s a shame too because the anime is quite beautiful. The backgrounds are very well defined and the characters models are amazing. All the females are visually attractive and even though the facial expressions are represented in a comedic way (sort of simplistic if that makes sense), they still express emotions fairly well. 

The characters in this anime are strangely easy to like. The show boasts a pretty large cast (not Negima!?big but pretty close) and I can honestly say that I can remember at least seventy percent of them. Each character has a pretty unique personality even if some of them sport the typical tsundere or super shy stereotypical personalities. What really shines is Momo the main female lead of the show. She sits behind a façade not wanting people to really know what her goals are really aiming for. She’s also becomes fairly vulnerable with her feelings towards Rito by episode nineish. Overall the cast is pretty well done and each of the female leads should offer you something that makes you want to see them succeed with catching Rito’s affection.

So bullet points: Slapstick comedy, overwhelming ecchi content, beautiful animation with fairly annoying censorship in the forms of blinding light, and a quality cast. Should you watch it? I say yes but wait for the Blu-Ray copies to be released. Also support the anime industry by BUYING THE DAMN ANIME AND NOT PIRATING IT. Like the gaming industry the anime industry is really struggling at the moment and every time you download something without paying for it you put the people of the industry’s jobs at stake. Please if you do not have the means of purchasing anime, please watch whatever you can find on legal streaming websites such as Crunchyroll.

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