Heavens lost property is pretty much what you’d get if you took To love-ru cut out like 90% of the first two seasons and pretty much went straight into the darkness portion from the tail end of season 1. While To love-ru starts off as a slapstick comedy romcom not really becoming more plot driven until like 30-40 something episodes in, Heavens lost property more or less starts of with the suggestion of an underlying story right from the start even if the series starts of more comedic in tone as To love-ru does. For some this may actually sound like the ideal replacement of To-love ru as the first season of that series is probably the most disliked for those who wanted to get into it for the plot..you know..the actual plot, but unfortunately as far as comparisons go thats kind of the only thing heavens lost property has going in its favour against the likes of TLR.

Like many shows I’ve watched recently this is a show I seeked out mainly for it’s fanservice more than anything..its promo art especially gave me the impression this was going to be… as one would say…visually stimulating. I was especially intrigued because my friend who tends to have a slight prude-ish attitude towards fanservice-y shows really seemed to strongly dislike this show and a part of me kinda just assumed that it was probably because of that, meaning it’d actually be the perfect show for me lol. The fanservice wasn’t all that bad I suppose so it met expectations there, but everything else was..not great. This show wasn’t offensively bad or anything like that..just kind of boring and it started to become noticeable just how boring this show was whenever I’d look at the timebar of an episode I was watching and be genuinely stunned that I was only about half way through. This is really unfortunate for a series thats meant to be a romcom too because if I found myself feeling that bored throughout most of its runtime then that betrays the fact that this show isn’t all that funny. I’d be lying if I said this show never made me crack a smile at least once, but I suppose if your constantly making jokes it’s only a matter of time before one them actually lands. While I certainly found To love-ru to be funnier than this I’ll say that much like TLR I found myself being more engaged during the points where they were focusing on the actual plot or moving the plot forward. My investment in the characters was so little that seeing them in their casual day to day moments where by far the least interesting and I feel like if the characters are well written enough theyd still be fun to watch even in more laid back scenarios. Ironically despite me saying this I think if the show had as much regular life time before the characters start having to defend their live on earth the investment would be a lot stronger too. While I don’t disagree that TLRs first season is kind of a slog the fact that you get to spend so much time with the characters before entering a more serious plot kinda serves as a strength that HLP does not have.

I didn’t really care much for the series characters…as to be expected of this kind of show they’re basically made up of a bunch of typical anime archetypes. Our protag is Tomoki a perv with a heart of gold..your typical harem fanservice protag who no real woman would ever actually fall in love with, but I guess because their redeeming qualities outweigh the fact that they’re a sexual deviant in the eyes of the women surrounding them..thats pretty standard, however honestly I’d be lying if I said Sugata wouldn’t serve as a better protag than him.

I say Sugata would serve as a better protag because his actions and motivations seem to concern the actual plot a lot more than Tomokis. Even before the plot actually kicks off he’s interested in finding the new world from which the angeloids come from, conducting various experiments, research and asking the questions that move the plot forward. Simply put he feels preferable as a protag cos he’s an active character rather than a reactive character in the way Tomoki is.

Then you have Sohara, Tomokis childhood friend, who honestly looks like she could be the long lost triplet of the twins from Kiss x Sis to a point where it was kind of distracting. My initial impression of this character was pretty low to start with as the first thing we see her do in this show is go into Tomokis room..yank off his blanket and then proceed to attack him becuase he happened to have morning wood like she wasnt the one to yank his blanket off when he could have been nude under there for all she knew.

I’m generally not a fan of the violent tsundere girl archetype especially if more often than not the reasons why they attack the guy are unjustified..ofcourse as the series goes on it becomes increasingly apparent that Tomoki isn’t a Rito type protag who generally doesnt deserve what he gets and is actually a legitimate pervet so thats at least another thing this show has over to love-ru…at least this show doesnt have it’s girls acknowledge its all accidents and thus confirming they just assault the protag for no reason lol. As the show goes on it becomes pretty clear that Sohara has feelings for Tomo and even has dreams where she embraces him lusting for her and as is usually the case with the childhood friend she feels herself getting progressively more cucked by Ikaros as the story continues. I wouldn’t exactly describe her as the possessive type or the type of character who feels entitled to Tomokis affections without expressing her own (as many characters of this type tend to be written as) there are however some moments where she expresses clear jealousy which can make her character kind of confusing at times. One minute she’s expressing jealousy over Tomoki spending almost all his time with Ikaros…the next she’s encouraging him to go out on a date with her during the school festival. Maybe she’s just resigned herself to her fate as the childhood friend character lol.

Honestly not very much you can say about Makiko..she’s a rich girl who’s kind of a bitch. So far it really feels like she doesn’t add much other than I guess having a balanced cast of human girls aswell as angeloid ones.

And speaking of the angeloids..theyre easily the most interesting of this shows cast by far..dare I say theyre even kinda cute in their attempts to become more human. First you have the main girl herself Ikaros who upon landing on earth from heaven itself declares herself Tomokis personal genie..surprisingly despite Tomoki being the perv he is while he does entertain the idea of well..taking advantage of her sexually he actually never does. Now if you want me to be completely honest as weird as this sounds this seems completely in conflict with who he is as a person….there are a few times throughout the show where he physically or sexually assaults girls who don’t want it (for gags ofcourse) so it’s kinda hard for me to buy that he wouldnt immediately try to have sex with a woman who dresses in a very sexually provacative way saying she’d do anything for him including strip which she does.
It’s clear as day that the reason why they do this is because they don’t wanna make Tomoki out to be too much of a sleeze, but doesnt work given what most of the jokes surrounding him are. I personally wouldnt have given a shit if they did have Tomoki do that maybe it’d become a part of his character the immense guilt he feels from having done that, but theres probably some folks out there who’d consider that too problematic lol…hell you dont even have to have that arc but if you wanted to appease those folks you could attempt that. Back to Ikaros herself her whole deal is that she basically has all her memories locked away and her emotions shut down, presumably someone activated that shit as it turns out she was an all powerful angeloid that was wreaking havoc everywhere she went under the orders of the true antagonists of this series. This is why she’s emotionally stunted..although even after when those limiters are removed while she becomes slightly more expressive particularly when showing distress, she’s more or less the same person (more of that anime not wanting to change a character from their base archetype for marketing BS which I love oh so much).

Its pretty much in the episode where all this is revealed that I felt myself develop even the slightest amount of investment in this show especially seeing how reluctant and unwilling Ikaros was to kill Nymph and how sad she was to learn that she was the exact kind of weapon she believes her master to hate. Honestly the way that arc was resolved kinda felt weird…Ikaros has a tendency to get physical with anyone who threatens Tomoki which seems to be behaviour that Tomoki doesnt approve of. With the way it’s presented throughout the show it’s not hard to see how Ikaros would come to the impression that he’d hate her for being a weapon..its not really presented as concern at all and more like a side of her he doesnt like seeing, but then by the end of the first season they hand wave it away by saying that he just didnt want her to have a life as a killing machine and he was just concerned about making sure she wouldn’t have to live such a life..something which until the last couple episodes he had no reason to actually be concerned about.

If that all sounds familiar..well thats because it should. When I say this series feels like what you’d get if to love-ru went straight into darkness I mean that right down to the very plot surrounding Ikaros and Nymph. Their stories kinda feel like the author just wholesale ripped the plot of Yami and Mea and their whole story about being WEAPONS and applied it here…it doesnt help that WEAPONS in to love-ru also fly with angel wings….Oh right Nymph.

Nymph is basically the Mea to Ikaros Yami, initially sent to retrieve Ikaros she grows more accustomed to being on earth and grows more attached to those around her while developing feelings for the Tomoki. Her story is actually quite sad and I found the way they communicate how she feels about being a slave through the empathy she has for captured animals to be kinda..well..for the lack of a better term..cute..but in a sad way lol. That being said whenever we see her go to heaven or see flashbacks of when she’s there it does kinda feel cartoonishly edgy at times, theyre really trying to get you to feel sorry for her as much as possible. She’s also kind of a tsun but without the violence, feeling more like the kind of tsun you’d expect to see in modern anime next to Sohara who is more classical in how she’s written. I do find Nymph to be the cuter of those two and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find seeing past her walls just a tiny bit endearing especially when you consider where this character is coming from.
At the end of the series she’s liberated from her slavery by them breaking her chains, howver..for some reason the cuffs are still there because like many anime that criticise slavery they can’t seem to do it without fetishising it at least a little bit.

And that’s pretty much all there is to Heavens lost property (s1) kinda underwhelming…probably didnt help that I was already sleepy as I was watching it and theres always the feeling as I’m watching it that it feels like a poor mans to love-ru. I’ve seen some youtubers suggest that this is the better one between the two and I legitimately don’t get it. The main cast is pretty bland by comparison, it’s most interesting plot beats feel like theyre ripped straight from another anime that did these plots much better…but at this point I’m just repeating myself. There were some aspects I appreciated but not enough for me to move from my position of describing this show as kind of boring.