"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.

"Negima! Magister Negi Magi" Manga Review

***This is a spoiler free review***

After a run of over five years, Negima! Magister Negi Magi has finally come to a close. With thirty eight volumes and 355 chapters, the series is a very long and drawn out story that at first strikes as a normal high school harem but it suddenly transforms into a magical epic.

Story: 8.5/10
As I stated in my intro, the manga is very, very long and is split up into many different arcs. Within the first 250 chapters I never felt bored with the story. Unlike many other manga and anime, the plot actually gets better as the story progresses. It does not pull a Bleach and start to slow down after an amazing first arc. There is always a bigger picture in the future that makes the main cast get into deeper and deeper conflicts. Each arc was unique and interesting from start to finish. The final chapters suggest that the creator was semi-rushed to make an ending, causing a huge build up to be ended so abruptly. Despite this, the creator still pulls of a somewhat decent ending that will satisfy most people. The plot starts out as a normal school type harem but soon develops into a tourney style plot structure. From there it goes into a more adventure type story while still keeping the comedy and character development. Oh yeah the characters; there are more than thirty plus characters that are in the story at a given time and not a single one seems unnecessarily put into the story. The overall aesthetics of the plot are very appealing and from start to finish I felt very immersed into the manga. The only issue I had with the manga was the amount of ecchi related content. There are many scenes of almost completely nude characters but most of the scenes lead into a very humorous moment which in the end made it worth dealing with.

Art: 8.5/10
The artwork starts out a little on the plain side but it is very obvious that the artist improved over the years the manga was being sterilized. By the end of its running, Negima! and it’s characters are stunning to look at and every battle scene is very well drawn.

Characters: 9.3/10
Now characters are very important to any type of story; whether there are two or twenty. Negima! has over thirty characters at a given time and to be honest I remember each and every one of them. Each character is unique and has their own personality that I can say is not a total cliché (although there is your typical bookworm and bi-curious teen). Each character gets massive amounts of character development time with and without the main character. I was pretty much attached to each one by the end of the series.

Overall: 8.8/10
What can I say about this manga? It evolves from a typical school harem into an epic magical adventure that keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire way through. The only flaw with the plot is the anti-climatic ending that was still excuted well. Also, there was an unnecessarily high amount of ecchi scenes in the manga but the way they pan out and are used were very clever.  Never have I been so attached to an ongoing manga as much as Negima!. This series will go down in my book as one of the best manga of this generation.

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Such a great read, it really is a shame that both anime adaptations are no where near as entertaining -__-