To LOVE-Ru DarknessTo Love Ru: Darkness Edit What would you like to edit? SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links   6u6v22

To love Ru was a phenomenal manga, for it is own genre it made a revolution - ecchi manga with an enormous amount of fanservice, yet the series didn't forget about anything else - good characters, interesting stories, great art, when it ended, after some time To love Ru darkness came out - the best harem manga of all time, while also being one of the best manga ever. Let's talk about it.

It was my third time rereading the whole series again, this time all chapters were coloured and I was reading in Japanese. Recently I came to the conclusion that rereading anything is ... a waste of time - you already know everything that will happen, nothing new. Yet for some reason I have decided to do it for the third time. It was completely worth it.

Let's talk about the core of everything - harem project. From the very beginning we see a very big difference from the first part of to love Ru - changing directions. While we all like harem manga, we all know that in reality the first heroine that we see will be the final girl that mc will choose, to love Ru was the same, a love triangle, yet Darkness is different, it wants to pursue the harem plan, and the main culprit of the idea is Momo.

Momo is... a miracle honestly, a side character that appeared at the middle of the manga, at the beginning she was just that - a cute side character, yet Darkness made her a main heroine above Lala, Sairenji and any other girl. Just thing about it - she stole main positions and time of every single girl. She even more important than Rito itself sometimes. She is the one who wants to make harem project, she knows that a lot of girls loves Rito, so what is the only solution to make everyone happy? A harem! It's not legal in japan, but If Rito will marry Lala, then it is possible, since she is an alien. Let's do it!

Since the beginning the story focuses on three girls - Momo, Yami and Mea. While I would say that Mea is good overall, she cannot compete with Momo and Yami. They have the best story out of any single girl. Seeing Yami vs her darkness mode, while listening to music from solo levelling is a blast. A truly action manga!

To love ru is nothing without ecchi, in full color we see the best ecchi that is literally a borderline hentai. It is not a secret that Yabuki Kentaro wanted to push the limits beyond as much as possible. It is true, I don't know why he is so talented in the area of drawing girls and their very important parts, but he is a GOD here. Art is phenomenal, it is not only the best ecchi manga, but one of the best manga in of art.

But art is nothing without a good story, and here we have some problems - the most important one is ending. We don't have a proper conclusion, it just ends. I hope Kentaro Yabuki and to love ru scenario writer will finish To love ru, it needs a great ending. The second problem is Lala and Saenji. Lala is good overall, yet she shares much less screen time then in the first part of to love ru, it is not bad because I love Momo and Yami, but she is the main character, it is sad a bit. And we also have Saenji - she is the worst girl here, nothing happens with her, Yuki likes her, but it is not believable, she does nothing for him and he does nothing for her. I know the reasons for it, the cheating of Yabuki's wife, but the character is bad even without it.

Let's talk about Rito, honestly, he is not simply a harem protagonist that we can associate yourself with him, he is much more than that. When he was saving girls, he didn't hesitate any minute. I think that he is peak was at Yami vs darkness and Nemesis versus King Deviluk, at this moment to love ru darkness became one of the best manga that I have read and Rito became a great protagonist that you believe that he deserves the harem.

The last thing to talk is ecchi, probably the most important thing . We all like seeing girls naked, yet a lot of harem stories just show us panties or boobs for a while, a lot of time switching to other things and it doesn't feel organic. Darkness and original to love ru is hot as possible. Every single chapter we see tons of how stuff multiple times. Ecchi is everywhere - during fights, slice of life, during serious moments and funny ones. It is simply wow. The best ecchi ever. Yabuki is a genius. Another great thing about it is all girls are pretty average in of their sizes. They don't have a gigantic boobs or asses, and that works very well, because Yabuki proofs that you need a talent to make them shine, not a size.

In the end, it is a phenomenal manga, the best ecchi harem manga that actually pursued the idea of harem, a fantastic art and great story. Waiting for the final part.

tl;dr: An incredibly well made ecchi harem manga with a surprising amount of depth, though one that still doesn’t have a proper conclusion.

To Love-Ru Darkness is a direct sequel to To Love-Ru that picks up pretty much exactly where its predecessor left off. However, there are major differences between the two such that a change in title felt very much warranted. The first the most immediately obvious difference is that Darkness is much more explicit with its ecchi as compared to the original, and seeing as that was one of the core elements of the original it’s hard to see that as anything other than ... a plus. As the comedy is heavily tied into the ecchi, the comedy also gets a major boost and the manga overall is much funnier and feels much better paced.

The other difference is that this one has much more depth than the original, though this comes from it having a completely different focus. In the original, the main characters were clearly Rio, Lala, and Haruna and it was a chronicle of the love triangle between the three. Here that’s still somewhat present, but there are various other plot threads that take priority. The biggest would have to be Momo and her Harem plan, which as one would expect is her master plan to have Rito marry all the girls that love him and thus give everyone a happy ending. Momo was already shown to be somewhat manipulative in the original, but in Darkness this is cranked up a good deal for a much more interesting character. Although it’s a bit messy, she gets really good relationship development with Rito and a pretty good character arc too. On top of that, she ends up being the impetus behind relationship development and fun situations with a lot of other characters which is a core part of what makes this manga so enjoyable. And on top of all that she’s just really fun all around which makes her a really likable character, and if I was to pick one stand out character in Darkness it would definitely be her.

In addition to that, the other core focus plot wise in Darkness is a tangle of plot threads centered around characters from Yami’s past: Mea, Nemesis, and Tear. Yami already had decent character and relationship development in the original, heavily carried by her friendship with Mikan. This continues those arcs quite well while tying them into the arcs of Mea and Nemesis. Mea has a very similar character arc to Yami’s in the original, though at the same time Mea is very different from Yami so it plays out very differently. Furthermore, Nana serves a similar role to Mea that Mikan served to Yami, but while Mikan just naturally fit into the role and was able to pull Yami forward, Nana isn’t quite that kind of character, and thus she goes through a pretty solid character arc of her own in trying to connect with Mea.

While this is this biggest and strongest example, it is certainly not the only instance of there being a large emphasis on the heroines in this manga playing off of each other and forming really strong bonds with each other beyond their relationships with Rito. This allows the heroines to have considerably more depth and be fleshed out more which results in the manga overall having much more variety. And to be clear, this doesn’t just apply to the characters just mentioned, but to pretty much everyone including Lala, Haruna, Yui, Tear, Risa, Kyouko, Rin, Shizu, etc.

Unfortunately, the one character that stands out in not growing or changing is the protagonist, Rito. Even after 36 volumes, he’s the same indecisive guy that has no clue what to do about anything and just goes with the flow. To a degree that made sense, especially in the original, but as Darkness progressed into its latter stages it became much more frustrating, especially as everyone else seemed to be getting so much development. It kind of feels like his lack of development was a conscious choice by the mangaka, in that they wanted to make him the type of character whose primary trait is how consistent they are. However, Rito as he is now doesn’t really fit into the harem plan plot line at all, and thus it kind of feels like the manga wrote themselves into a corner. It’s absolutely clear pretty early on in Darkness what the ending needs to be, a harem end, plain and simple. But at the same time, there’s no way to make that work with Rito as he is without it feeling incredibly forced.

Thus, I suppose it shouldn’t be any surprise that Darkness ends pretty much exactly the same as the original did, stopping at a pretty powerful point, but one where nothing has really been resolved yet. And I suppose I can also understand why there hasn’t been a sequel series yet either as it sounds quite hard to pull off. The sequel series would require that Rito go through major change in order to reach a proper conclusion, but Darkness already established that Rito can go through quite a lot without changing, and thus the sequel series would have to be a major jump over Darkness in order for any growth in Rito to feel warranted, which feels like it would be really difficult to do while also keeping the spirit of To-Love-Ru has maintained throughout its lengthy two part run. All I can say, is I hope the mangaka figure it out and come back to deliver a satisfying conclusion eventually.

The art as one would expect is stupendous. A major jump in quality over the original To-Love-Ru which was already great. And the design work is also a major improvement over the original, wherein while the original was pretty hit and miss with designs, the designs in Darkness are excellent pretty much all around. Honestly, the art is good enough that this manga is worth reading for the art alone.

To LOVE-Ru was a very enjoyable series. Likeable protagonists such as the gleeful Lala, appreciable plot (when there was one), nice fan service from time to time.
And then came Darkness.

Most of the likeable protagonists became secondary characters. The plot became unnecessarily serious. And as for the fan service, well, in a way... it completely disappeared as the series became softcore hentai.

By the way, on a completely unrelated note, Lala ? Yes, the prequel's protagonist. A joyful maiden who's apparently in her 16. Wait, 16 ? Fan service ?... No it's okay, the fan service shouldn't matter since it's completely censored.
Anyways, if you ... didn't know, Lala has a younger sister, Momo, the protagonist of Darkness. According to the wiki, she's two years younger than her older sister.

Now you might say, "Ok nice but come to the point". how Momo is 2 years younger than Lala (16), so 14 years old ? when I said this series is basically softcore hentai unlike its predecessor, with bare breasts and practically uncensored genitals ? Connect the dots and you will understand why you should stay away the hell away from this.