*ona przedstawia mnie* XD
*A ona przedstawia moja kuzynkę *
^as me^
^as my cousin ^
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So it's no secret at this point that I have a deep, seething hatred for To Love Ru, considering
it's my goto example when talking about terrible anime.
Hell, the very first frame of Part 1 where I open up by talking about shitty harem comedies
is a clip of To Love Ru, and I assure you, that was no accident.
To me, To Love Ru embodies everything wrong with this genre, and my anger towards it is
only grows the more I hear mentioned in the same breath as SnO.
Now, I'll admit that they do share some superficial qualities, both are harem comedies
with a focus on over the top humor and perverted situations for example, but that's where
the similarities end, because one of them is incredible, while the other is absolute
shit.
Everything To Love Ru does wrong, SnO does right, and everything SnO does right, To Love
Ru does wrong.
And that's a petty bold claim to make considering how popular To Love Ru is, so let's prove
it, shall we?
I want to compare and contrast SnO and To Love Ru, to put them into an arena, and to
see who comes out on top.
"But Syy, it'll take forever to compare everything about the two shows!
YouTube is gonna run out of hard drive space eventually!"
And right you are, but lucky us, I've found the absolute perfect point of comparison.
Two episodes, one from either show, that are nearly identical, but at the same time could
not be any more different.
That would be Episode 11 of SnO, and To Love Ru's first OVA.
So, let's take a look.
Starting off with SnO, Episode 11 begins with Tomoki sitting in his living room sipping
tea, as he thinks "Ahhhh....
I'd love to go inside the girls bathhouse."
Bamn, that's the plot of the episode.
Tomoki tells everyone that they should go to the bath, and was going to use one of Ikaros's
cards to sneak in, but Sohora cuts that plan off at the head.
However, Tomoki remembers that Suguta still has a card, so he tries to convince him to
help, in what is probably one of my favorite scenes in the entire show.
Tomoki goes to him and Suguta initially wants nothing to do with it, so Tomoki says "But
Suguta, what if the New World is hiding inside the girls bathhouse?
We would never know!" and he goes, "You're right!
It could be!" and that's all the convincing he needs.
So Suguta summons the Quantum Transformation Device from Synapse to transform himself into
Tomoko, his female alter-ego.
So, after transforming into a girl, he spends the afternoon shopping for girls clothes,
and then proceeds to go to school the next morning, and I think it's hilarious that
the only way he knows how to act as a girl is to be the most stereotypical, cliched anime
girl in history.
Running to school with toast in his mouth, bumping into a random dude and flashing him,
making cookies for everyone in class, pretending to be a ditz, and showing up in a maid uniform.
And I think it's even funnier that it totally works, and he wins over every guy in the class
in half a day.
And then he does it.
Tomoki makes it into the bath, and just watch the reaction Tomoki has to Mikako letting
him wash her back.
[YESSSSSS] That's.
Fucking.
Hysterical.
Anyway, Tomoki goes on a rampage after that, to the point that he even starts shooting
lasers out of his eyes.
[We're all girls here!]
Finally, he gets so worked up that the Quantum Converter breaks, he transforms back, and
gets his badly deserved punishment.
At it's heart, this is just a fanservice episode, but it's done SO WELL.
The comedy is 100% on-point.
Tomoki convincing Suguta to help him was great, seeing Tomoki scheme and lie his ass off to
get everyone to trust him was great, and that one "YES" never fails to make me laugh.
Also, you remember how I said that each episode of SnO has a different Ed?
Well the Ed for Episode 11 is one of my favorites, showing off Tomoki doing a Rocky style training
montage to become a better girl.
There's this one moment where Tomoki tries to do a cute pose, and Suguta is like, "No
no no, you're doing it all wrong.
Like THIS".
And Tomoki's like, "Ohhhh."
This is also without question the most fanservice-heavy the show ever gets.
Any episode that manages to work in scenes of Nymph both in lingerie, and naked is already
a work of art, but they go one step further by introducing us to Tomoko, who is SEXY AS
FUCK.
Seriously, I don't care if it might technically be gay, I'd fuck his/her/it's brains out
at the drop of a hat!
So all of that's impressive enough, but they go above and beyond by managing to work
like, 5 minutes of character development and foreshadowing for the finale sprinkled throughout
the episode, which in any other show would be jarring and tonally-off, but because it's
SnO, here it all works together seamlessly.
It's just a fantastic episode.
*sigh*...So, let's talk about To Love Ru and it's nearly identical episode, and how
it's somehow 1000x worse.
The episode opens with Rito's friend (who I'm not even sure has a name) watching all
the girls run during track, and talking about how much he loves boobs, because he's a
side character and has no personality besides that.
Rito of course, is eternally uninterested and sexless.
Lala, being an alien unfamiliar with Earth culture, notices this, and runs around school
asking all the girls what they think about boobs, finding out that everyone has different
preferences.
She then builds a device to make the boobs of any girl however big or small they want,
and it's shaped like a penis, which is probably the only good joke in the episode.
Rito then accidentally breaks it, and the explosion transforms him into a girl.
This makes Rito unhappy, so then they spend the next few minutes trying to transform him
back.
That doesn't work, so they contrive a reason to have a bath scene, and despite To Love
Ru being primarily a fanservice show and showing nipples, is decidedly less sexy than anything
in SnO.
Then they have a scene where the girls attempt to make Rito try on a bunch of girly clothes.
This freaks him out, so he runs out of the house.
While out in public, every guy in the city starts to fall in love with him... for literally
no reason.
He's just random girl walking around, but every guy in town is trying to marry him.
So while running away, he gets kissed once, and passes out.
Then the rich ojousama girl comes along, and takes him to her house.
Rito wakes up, and all the other girls drag him into a bath house, where he gets freaked
out.
Then Lala busts in, and transforms Rito back to normal, and he gets beat up.
End of episode.
So like I said, this OVA has SO MANY of the same plot beats as SnO that you'd think
they were cheating off the same homework.
Both episodes revolve around the main character gender bending, acting girly, trying on girly
clothes, wooing all the guys, and going into a bath house, only to get transformed back
and beaten up for it.
But despite how freakishly similar the two episodes are, To Love Ru's is considerably
worse.
First of all, it was a comedy episode that barely made me laugh.
That of course is a particularly subjective complaint, but I think the source of that
is because SnO has this energy running through it that To Love Ru lacks.
Everything in this episode is just so slowwwwww.
There's 5 minutes of Lala just talking to girls about boobs, then there's a 2 minute
scene where they try to transform Rito back which ends in failure and was meaningless,
and there's this recurring gag that comes up 3 times where they cut back to the ghost
girl and the joke is that she's a shitty artist, I guess?
It feels like this episode could've been a 10 minute short, but they had to double
the length of to get it to fit standard running time, so all the comedy just feels like padding
rather than an honest effort to make you laugh.
There's also no character development or plot of any kind happening in the background
of To Love Ru's episode, which again in fairness, isn't a requirement for me.
If a show wants to have a dumb fanservice episode that doesn't relate back to the
plot, I don't care, but I do think it's worth mentioning that SnO was able to make
a better fanservice episode while also leaving time for advancement of the story.
But here's the big problem with To Love Ru's OVA... and To Love Ru as a whole...
and the vast majority of other harem shows actually, which you might have picked up on
just from my plot description.
None of what happened in this episode was Rito's choice.
Rito accidentally becomes a girl, which makes him unhappy.
He gets dragged into the bath.
Lala and MIkan force him to try on girls clothes.
All the guys chase him around town.
The Oujosama brings him to her house, and drags him in the bath.
None of it was done willingly.
Honestly, if you watch To Love Ru with the headcanon of it actually being a story about
a gay guy who continually gets setup to fail by God, and then gets beaten up for it, it's
actually kind of depressing.
By sharp contrast, Tomoki DECIDES to break into the women's bath house, and schemes
how to do it.
He convinces Suguta to help him.
He transforms into a girl in order to accomplish his goal.
He tries on girls clothes because he wants to.
He goes to school and deliberately acts girly.
He goes into the bath to see boobs.
In To Love Ru, the plot has to constantly conspire around placing Rito into situations
he doesn't want to be in, whereas in SnO, everything that happens is because of Tomoki's
choices.
In To Love Ru, Rito goes "Ehh?"
whereas Tomoki goes "YESSSS!".
That may not seem like a big deal, but it really does make all the difference.
For example, that's why seeing Tomoki get beaten up feels so deserved.
He was an asshole, and he got what was coming to him, and it was all funny.
But I don't laugh when Rito gets beaten up, because he didn't do anything to deserve
it.
The most he did wrong this entire episode, was not opening his fucking mouth and explaining
what was going on to anyone, despite being given ample opportunities to do so, which
I don't feel is crime enough to deserve being shot at.
But this problem of Rito not making any choices is just symptomatic of the much bigger, inoperable
tumor that's grown over the harem genre.
So let's reverse engineer this.
What makes Tomoki a more interesting and entertaining character than Rito?
Well, as we said, the fact that he makes his own choices.
Tomoki is in control of his own story.
Okay, so why doesn't Rito make his own choices?
Because if his current character made choices, To Love Ru wouldn't be an ecchi show.
It would be a show about a guy who sits in his room all day, because we're continually
shown again and again that Rito would never willingly do any of the things he's forced
into.
Okay, so the problem then is obviously Rito being written to not care about girls?
So, why not just rewrite that part then?
Well the issue with that, is if Rito was written like an actual teenager, the show would turn
into a hentai pretty much instantly, because there are plenty of characters who constantly
proposition him for sex.
Here: you know that cliched scene where the guy falls on the girls tits and then she leans
her head back and goes "be gentle."?
Well just as an example, let's imagine that happening with every main female character
in the show, and think about which ones would then go on to willingly have sex with Rito.
Lala: She'd say yes.
Haruna: Probably would be flustered, but yeah I could see it happening pretty easily.
Mikan: No, but only because she's his sister.
But whatever, that makes one.
Kotegawa, Yes.
Hell, it's already almost happened several times.
Run: Yes.
Momo: Yes.
Nana: No, but only because she's a tsundere.
Yami: According to the manga?
Yes, although it might take her a bit to come around to the idea.
So of the cast of 8 main female characters, only two of them would definitively say no
if Rito was actively seeking sexual gratification from them, and really only because it would
require breaking out of their cliches.
So Rito is written this way, not because it makes sense for the character, but because
To Love Ru has to be PG 13, and if he acted like an actual teenager, as Tomoki does, it
would turn X rated pretty much instantly..
And this finally leads us to the question that's at the heart of the matter.
How does SnO do it?
How does SnO have a main character who is relatable and acts like an actual teenager
would, while not devolving into porn?
The simple answer?
SnO writes its characters to be characters, whereas To Love Ru writes it's characters
to be wish fulfillment.
That test we just did to see which To Love Ru characters would have sex with Rito?
Let's run through that with SnO's female cast and Tomoki.
Ikaros: At the very beginning of the show?
Yes as we discussed in Part 4, but later in the show?
Maybe?
I admit, I'm not sure.
But she's the main love interest so I wouldn't care regardless.
Sohora: No, she'd kill him.
Nymph: No, she'd kill him.
Astraea: No, she'd kill him.
Mikako: No, she would kill THE CRAP out of him.
Chaos: She'd say, "What's sex?"
So no.
The Harpies: No, they'd kill him.
Hiyori: You see I might've said yes to her, but that scene actually happened in the manga
and it turns out the answer is still no!
So aside from the main love interest, none of the characters would just jump into Tomoki's
bed if he asked.
So what's the difference between the cast of SnO and the cast of To Love Ru?
Again, To Love Ru writes it's characters primarily as wish fulfillment.
Of course all the girls in that show would jump on the main characters bone at the slightest
provocation, because, well don't you wish girls would do that, teenage boys?
So we'll write our characters like that so we can fulfill more of the audience's fantasies,
thereby selling more blu rays.
But in SnO, as in real life, you don't just have 8 girls who would jump in bed with you
if you asked.
That's generally not how life works, and SnO reflects that.
SnO's female cast are actual characters, with their own struggles and goals, whereas
To Love Ru views it's female cast as a waking pair of tits to fulfill the audience's fantasies,
as is perfectly exemplified by this Op showing us a shot of the characters bouncing tits,
before zooming out to show the person they're actually attached to.
That's why every character in To Love Ru has had all personality sandblasted off of
them, and been reduced to the most boring standard cliches with as much mass-market
appeal as possible.
There's the [inset sci-fi/fantasy stereotype] ALIEN, the childhood friend, the little sister,
the tsundere with big boobs, the idol, the tsundere with small boobs, the OTHER tsundere
with small boobs.
Honestly the only character I can't box into an archetype is Momo, and only because
her whole reason for existing is to force Rito into situations he doesn't want to
be in.
For example, why would Rito ever want to be transformed into underwear?
Well, he wouldn't, but some of our audiences has fantasies about that, so we'll make
Momo do it to him.
(Minor tangent: this is ALSO something Tomoki ends up doing because HE wanted to.)
So Momo's more of a crutch for lazy writers than a character, but I think that just furthers
my point.
And this problem of writing characters as wish-fulfilment first is endemic in the ecchi
genre, and that's one of the reasons SnO towers above its peers.
It writes its characters as actual humans, even the fucking robots, which makes them
more relatable, which in turn, makes the comedy that comes from them, and happens to them,
even funnier.
It also makes them more likeable, and more memorable.
That's one of the many reasons SnO persists in my mind to this day, where so many other
shitter ecchi anime have long since been forgotten.
That's why I've named Nymph as my waifu for 7 years now.
Not because she was written to fill out a checklist of fetishes that I happen to have,
but because I got invested in her as a character.
I hated her at first when she showed up and acted like a bitch, but then you find out
why and she becomes sympathetic.
And you see all this emotional trauma she has to go through, and sometimes it looks
like things in life are getting better for her and she's working through her issues,
but then something from Synapse shows up to drag her back down into depression, I have
never wanted to go up and hug a fictional character more in my life.
THAT'S how you know you wrote a good character.
But the problem with writing good characters is that it's hard, and what's even more
depressing is that it's usually unprofitable.
To Love Ru, despite being a considerably worse show, has had a billion times more success
just because of its broad mass-market appeal.
The manga is around 250 chapters long, and the anime has 4 seasons, totalling in 78 episodes
of anime.
Meanwhile, SnO got 25 episodes and two shitty movies.
The sad fact of the world we live in is that a lot of people don't care if the pair of
tits with a different colored wig on top has an in-depth personality or is complex and
interesting.
Some people just care about what fits their preconceived notions of what they'll like.
Now, believe it or not, all of this is not to say To Love Ru is 100%, an unredeemable
piece of shit.
Season 1 was the closest the show ever got to being good.
Back then it had much more of an emphasis on wacky comedy than fanservice, and combine
that with a few funny ideas, a couple of those episodes almost threaten to be kind of sort
of okay!
But starting in Season 2 and continuing from then onwards, each episode is divided into
3 little vignette sections, each of which is only concerned with getting X girl into
Y perverted situation.
It feels like the show sold what little remnants of a soul it had left, in return for becoming
incredibly popular, and so morphed into a series of the most boring standard fanservice
scenes in all of anime.
And that's sorta what I view it as: an anime that's every aspect is the way that it is
because that's what would make them the most money.
The absolute lowest common denominator show, completely devoid of artistic passion or creative
drive, and whose sole purpose is to sell as many Blu Rays and figurines as possible via
the medium of boobs.
And I'll freely admit, I'm part of the problem.
Despite thinking all that, I still watched the entire show, and read all of the manga,
as it came out, because... sometimes I like shitty fap material.
Sometimes I don't wanna be challenged intellectually.
Sometimes I just wanna relax and gratify my more basic urges, and To Love Ru is the embodiment
of that mindset.
So I don't think there's anything wrong with being shitty porn, and I'm certainly
not saying that all fanservice shows need 10/10s, or even that most of them do.
It'd be nice, sure, but I can see the appeal of something as uncomplicated and as easily
digestible as To Love Ru.
But it does make me mad when I see shows that are so much worse than SnO getting preferential
treatment in the eyes of the market.
When I think about how To Love Ru will go on forever, but SnO's anime adaptation got
dropped on it's head halfway through because it wasn't profitable enough to continue.
To Love Ru is a cash cow, and SnO isn't.
It's as simple as that.
It's not a high quality cash cow, but the sad truth is that it makes so much money that...
it doesn't have to be.
Continued in part 6.
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