THIS REVIEW COVERS BOTH DARKNESS AND DARKNESS 2ND
I hated To LOVE-Ru's first season. Hated it. You can read my 20/100 review of it for the complete details, but essentially my complaints boiled down to it having 1) bland characters, 2) a needlessly convoluted filler-filled plot, 3) surprisingly little fanservice.
I was completely shocked, then, to find that To LOVE-Ru Darkness was... actually good?
Yes, to get straight to the point, To LOVE-Ru Darkness is good. And this is not some kind of run-of-the-mill goodness, no, this is genuine article high-quality content.
But wait, before I get too far ahead of myself, let me first clarify exactly what To LOVE-Ru Darkness is and how it differs from the original series. Though its title implies that it is a spinoff, in reality, Darkness (as it shall henceforth be called) is nothing more than an ordinary sequel to the original To LOVE-Ru manga. We need not let this be discouraging, however, because while it may technically be a sequel, Darkness is an entirely different beast from its low-quality predecessor. Though it features a mostly unchanged cast of characters in fairly similar scenarios, it manages nonetheless to be very distinct thanks to its extremely unserious tone, revamped plot, and a small selection of new key characters.
Of these three distinctions, the first—that Darkness is less serious than the original series—may immediately seem the most suspect. After all, while To LOVE-Ru often failed spectacularly to be funny, it was at the very least intended to be a comedy-heavy harem ecchi show. In other words, to begin with, it never had any seriousness to speak of. Even so, Darkness somehow manages to top this. Not only does it not take its plot seriously, it doesn’t take anything about itself seriously. Whereas To LOVE-Ru often felt insecure—as though it kind of wanted to be a fanservice show, but also didn’t really want to offend anybody—Darkness feels like an older and worldlier sibling. It is content to throw all kinds of licentious filth in our faces and not feel the least bit ashamed about it. Though it may be strange to say this of a piece of television, Darkness could best be described as feeling like it has high self-esteem. It is self-aware of the kind of show it is, and rather than letting this get it down, it is completely forthright about it. This is what I mean when I say it feels less serious than its predecessor: it has the ability to not only laugh at its silly characters and plotlines but also to laugh it itself. Of course, if all it did was laugh at its problems rather than addressing them, Darkness would not be much better than the original. But Darkness doesn’t just laugh at its old flaws, to a certain extent, it also embraces them.
In order to really understand this point, it is important to first understand the three main ways a work can approach its problems. The first way—and this is mostly what the first season of To LOVE-Ru does—is to simply ignore them. The major advantage of this method is obviously that it is extremely easy for the creators since they don’t even have to make any meaningful changes to what they were already doing. On the other hand, it also has a major drawback in that, well, it doesn’t actually fix anything. The second, and perhaps most effective, action a creator can take is to buckle down and actively try to diminish the presence of the flaw in their work. Unfortunately, while it sounds very pleasant, going through with this method is rarely all that feasible considering problems usually exist precisely because they are difficult to eliminate. As a result of this difficulty, creators might try the third method of approaching a problem—addressing it without truly ridding their work of it. A common way to achieve this would be through acknowledgment, that is to say, calling attention to the existence of the problem without solving it. Effectively this is the author giving the audience a wink and a nod to show that they are as aware as anyone of the problems their work has. To LOVE-Ru did this from time to time when characters would mention something along the lines of, “Wow, Rito sure falls down on top of girls a lot…” showing us that the writers knew they were overusing that gag but were unwilling to go through the creative strain of coming up with a more inventive way of getting him into sexual situations.
Noticeably, Darkness does not do any of these things. Rather, it employs the rarely used fourth way to approach problems that I mentioned earlier: by embracing them. Utilizing this method requires both subtlety and creativity to prevent the problems from merely being exacerbated, but I firmly believe that Darkness manages to achieve spectacular success. Almost none of the problems from the first season of To LOVE-Ru (and there are many) are really absent in Darkness—instead, they have been retooled to work in the show’s favor. For instance, take a look at some examples below.
1.
The problem - Out-of-whack romantic progression: Rito regularly gets into sexual situations with random girls, yet at the same time he can’t even muster up the courage to ask out the girl he has had a crush on for 46 episodes.
The expected solution - Have Rito make some kind of romantic progress with his dream girl or at the very least have him show some form of assertiveness.
Darkness's solution - Make the romantic progression so impressively out-of-whack that it no longer bears any comparison with reality. No one can levy any criticism against it when it’s so far removed from anything real that they can’t even properly apply normal logic and reason to it.
2.
The problem - Rito falls on top of girls too frequently: Nearly every episode seems to rely on the same gag where Rito falls on top of a girl and touches them in some vaguely sexual manner, to the point that the joke becomes tired and hackneyed.
The expected solution - Create new gags and new ways of forcing fanservice so that the show doesn’t have to rely on the same thing happening over and over again.
Darkness's solution - Turn Rito into the God of falling—a being whose ability to unintentionally sexually harass others is unparalleled among mere mortals. As Yami astutely observes at one point, “this man’s sexual harassment has reached the level of a superpower.” Rito is no longer a man, he is a fanservice deity.
3.
The problem - Over-reliance on panty shots: Too much of the show’s fanservice consists of little more than contrived situations that lead to the viewer being able to see a girl’s panties for one brief, joyous moment.
The expected solution - …Use fewer panty shots.
Darkness's solution - Bring out the avant-garde camera work. Turn even the most mundane of conversations into a fanservice-fest by angling the camera so that the audience can see up the nearest girl’s skirt. After all, why waste time on a shot that has no fanservice when you can just tilt the camera?
In this way, Darkness feels, more than anything, like a parody of itself. Of course, in order to joke about itself so effectively, it has to be completely self-aware. It knows exactly what it is and what it aspires to be and it announces this fact loudly and proudly at every passing opportunity: “I am a gross affront to taste and decency!” it says. “Behold, fanservice the likes of which you have never seen before!” it proclaims boldly. “I am the very distillation of debauchery in animated form!” it bellows assertively.
While its unserious and parody-like treatment of itself may be wonderful, though, I do think that it would be rather reductive to suggest that the entirety of Darkness’s success comes from these facets. Even on a more conventional level, it puts the original to shame with its more cohesive and engaging plot. Yes, believe it or not, Darkness actually has a plot. Granted, it’s no work of timeless art or anything, but it certainly gets closer to art than I, or indeed, anyone, could reasonably expect the sequel to To LOVE-Ru to get.
On the most basic level, Darkness continues to follow our hapless protagonist, Yuuki Rito. Beyond this, however, it carries few traces of the plot (or lack thereof) present in the original series. Instead, the focus has shifted significantly from Rito and Lala’s haphazard romance to what I can only describe as the greatest plot idea to ever grace harem anime. An idea of such endless quality that it must surely have been the result of divine intervention: the so-called “harem plan.” Devised by Lala’s younger sister Momo (who I will describe in greater detail shortly), the end goal of this plan is simply to have Rito enter into a polygamous marriage with every single one of the countless girls that are attracted to him. That’s it. By and large, gone are the convoluted and pointless alien politics that sometimes clouded To LOVE-Ru, and gone are the tiresome and hopeless struggles of Rito to confess to Haruna, his dream girl. All that remains is a perennial quest to get as many girls as conceivably possible to join Rito’s harem. One can immediately see why such a plan is so ingenious an idea for this anime. For one thing, the seemingly unavoidable problem that plagues all harem anime—choosing a single girl to date at the end—is easily resolved now that the goal has become for Rito to marry them all. But beyond that, this plot is a resounding success for exactly the reasons described in my earlier point: it allows Darkness to be utterly unabashed about its ecchi harem nature. No nonsense. No excuses. Just an increasingly large number of sexy girls.
This is not to say, however, that all sexy girls enter the harem with the same degree of ease. For some, a few minutes of screen time dedicated to Rito performing some minor act of kindness is all it takes for them to fall hopelessly in love with him, but for others, entire episodes or even story arcs may be necessary. In particular, Konjiki no Yami—The Golden Darkness—(the dispassionate assassin who was at one point sent to kill Rito but now lives peacefully on earth) proves to be an unusually stubborn candidate. In fact, so much of the plot of Darkness is dedicated to her very belated entrance into the harem that she ends up being the titular character. I suppose there are more honorable things to have named after oneself than an ecchi anime, but at least she was lucky enough to get a good ecchi anime. Indeed, as someone who previously noted that “if there is one character in [To LOVE-Ru] who deserves to be a part of a better anime then it is surely the ‘Golden Darkness,’” the fact that she receives the brunt of the attention in this good anime surely makes me very happy. What is most astonishing to me about all this, though, is that Darkness, the most lowbrow of television, actually manages to develop her in a reasonably well-written way. Over the course of its 26 episodes, comprising two seasons and two special episodes, we gain insight about her mysterious backstory, see her come to terms with her tumultuous past, and watch as she finds herself entering into more meaningful relationships with the people around her, especially Rito’s sister Mikan.
All of Yami’s development builds masterfully towards the series’ stunning conclusion in which her master, a (sexy) girl called Nemesis, releases the “darkness” within Yami, turning her into a world-destroying, godlike being. Following this, there is a lengthy and dramatic action sequence wherein many girls’ clothing is destroyed but no real damage is caused. Eventually, Lala’s sister Momo reveals to Rito that there is only one way for this situation to resolve itself: he must rebel against his sex-averse nature and engage in some “lewd acts” with Yami. Though he is initially skeptical, he is urged on by an underclassman named Mea who informs him that his “shamelessness will save the world.” In the end, he subdues the now nearly omnipotent Yami by casually walking up to her, taking off most of his clothes, and then groping her a bunch. If that is not the very apotheosis of ecchi anime, I don’t know what is.
As beautiful as that may be, though, Darkness’s plot would not be able to achieve any real success unless its characters were there to support it. The “harem plan,” for instance, would be pointless and insubstantial without girls of sufficient sexiness and quality of personality to join its eponymous harem. And so, it is here, with the characters, that Darkness elevates itself the most beyond the intense mediocrity of To LOVE-Ru. Yes, despite being made up of largely the same characters, Darkness’s cast is vastly superior to that of the original. The new characters are more fresh and inventive than those from the original series, and the old characters are either given more proper character development than before or appear less frequently. Of particular note are the new additions of Lala’s younger twin sisters Momo and Nana. Though these two were technically first seen in the To LOVE-Ru OVAs, their real importance becomes apparent during Darkness when they (along with Yami) replace Lala and Haruna as the show’s main heroines to great success. But who exactly are these two sisters and what makes them so successful? Let’s look a little deeper.
Momo Belia Deviluke: Momo is Lala’s younger sister who eventually decides to move in with, and attend the same school as, her sister (and Rito) on earth. Outwardly, she is a kind and gentle soul who immediately draws the admiration of her classmates, both male and female (but let’s be honest here, mostly male). Inwardly, however, she is an entirely different beast. Behind her cute façade, she is a dangerously creative schemer who harbors a deep-seated obsession with the erotic. Of course, regardless of how creative she may be, she still falls wildly in love with Rito before the viewers can say “fanservice.” Unlike her compatriots, however, she does not merely sit by and let that poor boy make a fool of himself with every girl in sight. Rather, she decides to take matters into her own hands and concoct the ingenious “harem plan” of which I have already written so highly.
The “harem plan” is really only one example of Momo’s escapades in action though. Throughout the show, she continuously makes her influence known, as she often goes out of her way to get Rito into lewd situations (much to his chagrin) in an attempt to expand the harem. These sorts of situations really go to show that Momo is exactly the kind of character this show needed. Her sexual-mindedness and conniving nature endow her with the ability to turn even the most mundane of situations into an entire fanservice-y pageantry. In fact, on the whole, Darkness owes a great deal of its success to Momo. Thanks to her salacious influence, it is able to bring about its fanservice far more gracefully than the contrived situations that were required in To LOVE-Ru. And it certainly seems that the writers were well aware of this fact because Momo appears with great frequency throughout Darkness—probably more than any single other character besides Rito himself.
Overall, then, I do not think it would not be an exaggeration to say that Momo is not only the best character in Darkness but one of my favorite anime characters of all time. Honestly, even having written this entire section of the essay praising Darkness, it still astonishes me that a character of such quality could have graced a show like this one. It astonishes me that the writers had it in them to make a character this good yet still wasted my time with the congregation of clichés that made up To LOVE-Ru’s cast. In a sense, Momo is so perfect a character, so precisely crafted to target and fix the first season’s fundamental issues, that she makes the rest of the cast look even more incompetent than they already were by comparison. Regardless, her addition to Darkness is one of the show’s greatest assets in allowing it to become more than the generic harem farce of Motto.
Nana Astar Deviluke: Nana is also Lala’s younger sister and also eventually decides to move in with, and attend the same school as, her sister. Unlike Momo, however, Nana makes no attempts at concealing her real personality. She is loud, easily angered, and takes great offense to Rito’s acts of unintentional sexual assault, regularly calling him a “beast.” Like most of the viewers, she finds it inconceivable that this man has amassed so substantial a harem, although in traditional To LOVE-Ru fashion, she does come around and eventually falls in love with him in a begrudged kind of way.
In comparison to her sister Momo, she is neither as plot significant nor, frankly, as interesting a character. Even so, Nana’s inclusion is by no means a misstep on the part of the writers. For one thing, her smaller-than-average boobs bring some much-needed balance to the average boob sizes among girls in this show. This may not sound very important, but the show feels the need to bring this fact up every few episodes just to make sure the viewers haven’t forgotten. Momo especially appears to believe that the matter of boobs is of such paramount importance that she acts as though Nana’s small ones constitute some sort of crippling disability. It’s really rather tragic.
Beyond the realm of boobs, Nana generally serves as a strong contrast to her sister Momo, particularly with regards to her attitude towards Rito. Whereas Momo is uncontrollably in love with Rito from the show’s beginning, Nana acts spitefully towards him for most of its run. Even when she does eventually develop some feelings for him, she still treats him quite harshly. The most important effect of this is that she serves to keep Momo and Rito in check. I think if Momo were the only new character added, the show might quickly devolve into total debauchery, but with Nana present in the Rito household, there is always someone there to yell at one or both of them when they begin to take things too far. In essence, she exists to stop the show from veering into hentai territory. Of course, being the preventer of lewdness is certainly a thankless role and one that can be easy to hate from a viewer’s perspective, but I believe it is an integral one. This way, Momo can stay in character (exhibiting her usual constant desire for eroticism) and the show can still air on television.
As I have hopefully demonstrated, Momo and Nana work together to great effect to form the backbone of Darkness. Add in the new and improved Yami, and we have a cast of central heroines that make To LOVE-Ru’s cast look like a ragtag band of clichés in comparison. Of course, Rito is still the same old sex-averse loser that he has always been, but surrounding him by such an excellent group of girls does undoubtedly serve to mitigate his problems—even if it cannot completely do away with them. Ultimately, as much as I have come to like this show and its characters, and as much as the changes that Darkness brings cause him to be less of a nuisance, I still do not really like Rito. Comparing Darkness’s Rito to the original’s Rito, though, is like comparing stubbing one’s toe to sticking one’s leg through a wood chipper. Neither are pleasant by any stretch of the imagination, but one is a mild inconvenience and the other is unbearably agonizing. By now, Rito’s greatest sin is really only that he is boring, and this is not a sin that bears much weight when he is able to play off of so many vastly more interesting characters around him.
Besides characters, there is one more topic that I think is worth discussing before I finally stop rambling on about Darkness. This is a central topic which I have been ignoring for quite some time—the most important topic of all: the fanservice. Though I have mentioned it at various points throughout this portion of the essay and hinted strongly as to what I think of it, I have not outright stated what I think of Darkness’s fanservice. To put it clearly, the fanservice present in To LOVE-Ru Darkness is of extremely high quality. There is a little bit of everything here: from gender-bending to a girl being suggestively force-fed a popsicle while wearing a school swimsuit and yelling “master” repeatedly. I won’t deny that it is an acquired taste, but I firmly believe that this quality selection of ecchi moments pairs well with the excellent character designs and art-style in Darkness to make its fanservice a resounding success.
It’s also worth noting that Darkness blows its competition out of the water not only in quality but quantity of fanservice. I don’t think I have ever seen an anime with more fanservice than this one. Granted, I don’t pretend to be an infallible authority on all anime, but I have seen more than enough to know that Darkness has, to put it crassly, a fuckton of fanservice. The show might as well be titled Fanservice: The Animation. Every episode of this show is a non-stop barrage of lewdness—23 minutes of Rito and his endless erotic escapades. And I for one love it. I relish the feeling that every moment spent watching this show is one spent, as the weebs say, “straying further from the light of God.” I relish the feeling that every person I know, have ever known, or will ever know would be profoundly disappointed in me if they knew that I watched this show. But above all, I relish the feeling of catharsis from having suffered through so many hours of To LOVE-Ru’s pathetic excuses for ecchi moments and now—finally—seeing some of the fanservice I felt so robbed of. Nothing can truly make up for the time I squandered on the early parts of this series, but at the very least I received some vindication in the end. It is a sad, hollow sort of vindication—no doubt I would rather have avoided the first season of To LOVE-Ru entirely—but it’s something to show for this time that I once considered totally lost.
In the end, I have probably vastly overstated just how good To LOVE-Ru Darkness really is. Certainly, as much as I can praise it, this salacious celebration of sexy anime girls will never go down in history as one of the all-time greats. Even so, I will not soon forget this show. Something about this particular selection of sexy anime girls, I think, will stick with me for a long time...
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