To LOVE-Ru – 18

「猿山がお土産」 (Saruyama ga Omiyage)
“Saruyama the Souvenir”

Episode at a Glance:
Upon opening a package from space, Lala quickly finds out that she’s the target of a space monster assassin. However, before the monster can finish the job, she soon suffers from labour pains, so Lala gets Rito and Saruyama to bring her to the school infirmary. Under Saruyama’s care, the monster gives birth and later apologizes to Lala for taking up a job to kill her. She then reveals that she doesn’t know who the father is due to their wild mating customs, so Lala decides to give her a present from Earth as a celebratory gift. After the monster reveals that she wants Saruyama as a gift, he’s adamantly against it claiming he’d be a shameful gift, so Risa and Mio decide to shape him up for the part. Dressed up a fish, Saruyama gets delivered against his will to the monster, who says she’ll give up on him if he has a girlfriend.

In order to get out of being a souvenir, Saruyama claims he does have one and quickly runs to Rito for help. With Rito unsure of what to do, Saruyama decides to ask Saki, Yui, Risa, Mio, Run, and even Yami, but gets abused for the most part as a response. He later stumbles upon Haruna, whose kindness is spared by Rito volunteering to go out with him instead. Hearing this, Saruyama refuses though, saying it would make Lala sad, so they decide to pretend that a small dog is his girlfriend. Bringing it to the school infirmary, they find that the monster’s already returned to space with the help of Mikado-sensei, which brings tears to Saruyama’s eyes. His sadness quickly comes to a halt though when he gets bitten and urinated on by the puppy, who turns out to be a male.

Next Episode:
「地獄温泉 女宇宙人七色ポロリ」 (Jigoku Onsen. Onna Uchuujin Nanairo Porori)
“Hot Spring from Hell. The Seven Colored Alien Porori”

Impressions:
And then on one sunny day, there was life… which was probably born from that tingling sensation of mine being sucked away as I watched this episode. While that isn’t too far from the truth, I actually didn’t find this episode hard to watch because it involved a furry space monster giving birth, but more so because she starting getting all emotional and attached to Saruyama. Let’s not promote space beastiality shall we? Also, I didn’t need to see these space monsters having a huge mating orgy in the field either, but I guess they had to explain why she didn’t know who the father was. What threw me off even more was when I looked at the credits though, and found out that she’s played by Hisakawa Aya, a veteran amongst seiyuus. Talk about a crappy role to be cast in. While I normally would’ve picked out her voice pretty easily, they added this echoing effect to it that just made it sound weird and creepy.

The one slight (very slight) redeeming part of the episode for me was near the end though, when Saruyama was trying to get out of becoming a baby shower souvenir from Earth. In his search for a girlfriend, it was mildly funny to see him realize his hopelessness and ask Rito first. He then got rejected by all the other girls, which was a pretty cookie-cutter script, but at least I got to see more of Yami and even Run. As for overall relevancy to plot of this series, I would say that the small amount of progression in the Rito x Haruna pairing is the only thing we need to take away from this week. Saruyama was just victimized otherwise, which he actually didn’t deserve this time around, but hey, at least he found a partner in the end… and a male one at that.

The preview indicates our obligatory hot spring episode for this series, except this time it’s a hot spring from hell. While it looks like Yami‘s going to take a dip, none of the other girls aside from Lala and Haruna seem to be around.

Finally, to help get our mind off this throwaway episode, some full-length shots of Lala (Picture 1, Picture 2) and the kindness of Haruna.

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)
– Space monster (宇宙カイブツ) / Hisakawa Aya (久川 綾)
– Saruyama Kenichi (猿山 ケンイチ) / Yoshino Hiroyuki (吉野 裕行)
– Sairenji Haruna (西連寺 春菜) / Yahagi Sayuri (矢作 紗友里)
– Kotegawa Yui (古手川 唯) / Nadzuka Kaori (名塚 佳織)
– Momioka Risa (籾岡 里沙) / Yuzuki Ryouka (柚木 涼香)
– Sawada Mio (沢田 未央) / Chiba Chiemi (千葉 千恵巳)
– Konjiki no Yami (金色の闇) / Fukuen Misato (福圓 美里)
– Mikado Ryouko (御門 涼子) / Jou Masako (城 雅子)
– Peke (ペケ) / Arai Satomi (新井 里美)
– Tenjouin Saki (天条院 沙姫) / Kawasumi Ayako (川澄 綾子)
– Fujisaka Aya (藤崎 綾) / Mizuhashi Kaori (水橋 かおり)
– Kujou Rin (九条 凛) / Hashimoto Mai (橋本 まい)
– Math teacher (数学教師) / Konno Jun (金野 潤)
– Home delivery man (宅配のお兄さん) / Nakanishi Naoya (中西 尚也)