First Impressions / To LOVE-Ru

「宇宙のLOVEエプロン」 (Uchuu no LOVE Epuron)
“The Universe’s Apron of Love”

Episode at a Glance:
In the morning, Rito’s dream about Haruna gets interrupted and he wakes up to find a naked Lala sleeping in his bed again. Later at school, Zastin pays Rito a visit and tells him that once he marries Lala, he’ll be a king who will help lead Deviluke in either territorial expansion or territorial defense wars. Naturally, this comes as a shock to Rito, who can only see himself dying a horrible death in either case. By a stroke of luck, Rito later finds out that Lala can’t cook, so he decides to use that as an excuse to get out of the marriage and tells her that he can’t marry a girl who can’t cook delicious food for him. Hearing this puts Lala in shock (…quite a few shockers this episode), so she hops back into her spaceship and takes off without a word. The next day, Mikan lectures Rito about what he did, but he continues to think that this is for the best.

At school the next day, Rito continues to reflect on his actions, but Lala suddenly bursts into the classroom claiming that her preparations are done. She then drags Rito off to the home economics room, where she shows him a Deviluke freezer (?) that she brought. From Rito’s ramblings, Lala then finds out that he’s worried about taking part in wars, so Lala tells him he doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want to (much like her father recently did). Haruna later comes by in search of the two, but before Lala can do any cooking, her live “food” (first a giant octopus) comes out of the freezer and starts wrecking havoc on everyone. Zastin then comes crashing through the window and attempts to help, but quickly gets inked by a giant squid. In the meantime, Lala and Haruna continue to get “felt up” until the ceiling collapses from the food fighting amongst themselves.

 

Next Episode:
「くいーんの挑戦状」 (Kuiin no Chousenjou)
“Queen’s Written Challenge”

Well, you were all probably thinking this already, but I’ll come out and state the obvious. It looks like we have some tentacle ra… err, “groping” in this episode. After the last episode, I thought they would advance the relationship between Rito and Haruna a bit further, but I guess I forgot that this show is still aiming for comedy more than romance. The scene I was looking forward to only turned out to be a dream as well. (Why am I not surprised?) That’s not to say the relationship aspect of the show didn’t progress at all this episode though, since Haruna did come out and emphatically declare that she wants to cook for Rito too. This led to a long glimmer of eye contact between the two, which was nice to see given the ecchi emphasis of this episode.

As for the fan-service comedy, I actually did find it pretty humorous at times. The writers even threw in dialogue (e.g. Rito calling the octopus a pervert) to confirm the ecchi “effect” they were going for, so at least we know they weren’t trying to be discreet about it or anything. On another note, the CG used for the octopus, squid, shrimp, and eel (?) actually looked pretty good, but unfortunately it was quite out of place (in an anime). I think the main problem was the texturing here though, as the “seafood” looked very 3D, whereas the characters and background looked very flat in comparison. Production-wise, a lot of scenes in this episode make it pretty evident that the show was designed for widescreen, so while I would prefer to cover that version, its later broadcast date will keep me covering the 4:3 version instead.

Next episode seems like the introduction of a new character, who I’ve been told is Tenjouin Saki (天条院 沙姫). It seems Saki is played by none other than Kawasumi Ayako (川澄 綾子) herself too. Given Ayako’s ability to play almost any type of role (see Kanokon), Saki should be an interesting character to watch. I get the feeling we’re going to learn to hate Saki, but it should be entertaining nonetheless.

 

Cast:
– Yuuki Rito (結城 梨斗) / Watanabe Akeno (渡辺 明乃)
– Lala Satalin Deviluke (ララ・サタリン・デビルーク) / Tomatsu Haruka (戸松 遥)
– Sairenji Haruna (西連寺 春菜) / Yahagi Sayuri (矢作 紗友里)
– Zastin (ザスティン) / Koyasu Takehito (子安 武人)
– Peke (ペケ) / Arai Satomi (新井 里美)
– Yuuki Mikan (結城 美柑) / Hanazawa Kana (花澤 香菜)
– Saruyama (猿山) / Yoshino Hiroyuki (吉野 裕行)
– Momioka Risa (籾岡 里紗) / Yuzuki Ryouka (柚木 涼香)
– Sawada Mio (沢田 未央) / Chiba Chiemi (千葉 千恵巳)
– Honekawa-sensei (骨川先生) / Asou Tomohisa (麻生 智久)
– Female student (女子生徒) / Hashimoto Mai (橋本 まい)
– Female student (女子生徒) / Nishino Youko (西野 陽子)
– Male student (男子生徒) / Matsuo Daisuke (松尾 大亮)
– Male student (男子生徒) / Konno Jun (金野 潤)
– Male student (男子生徒) / Nishina Youhei (仁科 洋平)

31 Comments

  1. death to haruna. Long Live LaLa!!!!!
    Everyone jump on the LaLa warwagon!!!!
    seriously tho haruna is a very boring character, with each passing episode I just want to poke my eyes out when she gets screen time.

    realtears
    Reply

  6. I lol’d at the Halo 3 cover parody.

    I enjoyed the ep up until the giant octopus crap, which kinda killed the enjoyment for me. Felt way too out of place and overdone imo.

    JoeDX
    Reply

  12. @cyro

    “i’m surprised how much this is straying from the manga.”

    i would agree the manga is more on the relation between haruna, lala, and rito…
    the anime ver. is more on the comedy part… pffff…

    sasweeloozupe
    Reply

  17. Well I understood most of the dialogue and I’m not too happy about this episode.I expected them to do something good with all the money they saved by not animating alot of the manga’s plot so far.But they spend it on seafood…The CGI was good but it never blended well with the overall animation causing it to look more artificial and awkward.The tentacle rape scene was no where near the ones the manga portrays frequently and its just dissapointing.And it seems like they’re just planning to introduced the characters by hook or by crook.Judging by the episode titles its going to be anime original plot for at least another month.

    God~knows~
    Reply

  18. sir Omni could you help us from naruto clan and spread this article for other Naruto fans and sites out there and also the animeblogger comunity for us.It would be of great help to us!
    We from Narutoclan have a project for create beat’em up games for the shippuden series for PC and cell games too! But no one wants to sponsor us!! If you wanna help us Please click as much as you can on our Advertisement links below Ads by Google and our big Advertisement links like the firefox one…we don´t have spams or virus we are here to make YOU fans of naruto love even more the franchise!!Help us so we can make funny games for you all!!And also continues to review raw episodes and upload full chapters.
    Thank you all!

    kyubi no chakra
    Reply

  21. i’ve read the manga [ongoing] … if they stay somewhat close to the manga [i don’t remeber the cooking part in the manga….] , saki should be focusing on zastin after a few episodes or the next….

    Hagiri
    Reply

  22. the animation of the animals r awesome. btw abit disappointed though on how the fanservice of this series if u compare it to kanokon. thnx a bunch divine plz keep blogging any fanservice animes that comes every season !?

    D_D
    Reply

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