First Impressions / To LOVE-Ru

「猿山の大奥物語」 (Saruyama no Oooku Monogatari)
“Saruyama’s Shogun Harem Tale”

Episode at a Glance:
Observing from afar, Saruyama concludes that all the girls around Rito are in love with him no matter how you look at it, making him think that Rito’s like some sort of Edo period king. Envious, Saruyama wishes to become an Edo period king and have a harem of his own, only to end up fantasizing about a bunch of grotesque aliens having their way with him. Unable to wake up from his dream, Saruyama’s suffering continues as he runs into all the girls from school, who appear as drastically different personalities. This includes a female version of Rito and Zastin too. After much torment, Saruyama is able to wake up from his nightmare, but Lala comes by with her “soothing goodnight-kun” invention, putting him out again and forcing him to relive the same Hell (in a slightly better fan-service version). This process repeats itself one more time, except this time Saruyama gets farther along in his “fantasy”. However, he only ends up running into an Edo rendition of Mikado-sensei in the streets, and Mikan in the wild woods of Mount Ashigara. After being abused a bit more by those two, he eventually runs into Lalashima Tarou (i.e. Urashima Tarou), who saves him from the torment and makes him her turtle. Together, they head to Ryuuguu-jou (Undersea Palace of the Dragon God), where Saruyama wonders if he’ll run into a sexy maiden. Instead, he runs into his aliens again, before being netted and dragged off back to the aliens as food by Lalaisshin Tasuke (i.e. Isshin Tasuke). With Saruyama screaming in agony in his sleep, Lala freaks out and runs off to the teacher saying that Saruyama’s broken.

 

Next Episode:
「はじらいながら」 (Hajirai Nagara)
“While Shying Away”

Impressions:
Well this episode turned out a lot better than I expected. It’s still nothing compared to last week’s manga-based episode, but it was funny watching everyone act out of character in the Edo period. The seiyuus must’ve had some fun using voices they don’t regularly use, with Fukuen Misato (Yami), switching to multiple personalities several times in succession. Also, it’s not often you have a character in a harem anime complaining outright about someone else‘s harem, so that was ironic to say the least. While watching this, I couldn’t help but think how much it must suck for Saruyama since he can’t even fantasize properly about his own harem. Instead, he ends up with aliens licking him when he tries. It was an endless hell for him too, thanks to Lala’s sleeping device, which is as funny as it is absurd. While reusing the same scenes after Saruyama was knocked out again felt kind of cheap, it did help iterate the hellish nightmare he was reliving. At least the fantasizing in his nightmare improved compared to the first time, for our sake if not his. Speaking of which, the fan-service seems to have gone to a new level this week, with Mikan wearing nothing but an apron, Saki exposing a bit too much, and Yui doing much of the same (as referenced above).

With that said, the preview for next week looks interesting because something seems to be up with Lala. For one, she’s doing Ranka Lee‘s Nyan Nyan dance for Rito. Secondly, she’s unusually shy as the episode title indicates. And finally, she’s commanding a bunch of robots. It appears that one of the robots toppled over to pin Rito down in front of Lala, but this position isn’t something I wanted to see.

 

Cast:
– Saruyama Kenichi (猿山 ケンイチ) / Yoshino Hiroyuki (吉野 裕行)
– 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)
– Konjiki no Yami (金色の闇) / Fukuen Misato (福圓 美里)
– Kotegawa Yui (古手川 唯) / Nadzuka Kaori (名塚 佳織)
– 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)
– 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)
– Mikado Ryouko (御門 涼子) / Jou Masako (城 雅子)
– Sairenji Haruna (西連寺 春菜) / Yahagi Sayuri (矢作 紗友里)
– Yuuki Mikan (結城 美柑) / Hanazawa Kana (花澤 香菜)
– Mauru (マウル) / Konno Jun (金野 潤)

23 Comments

  4. eh eh eh.. seems like only the last 2 episode maybe serious stuff, although anime only serious with some same concept from that one manga situation. However Next episode seems good to and is the first one in a while that i actually want to watch.

    also episodes and chapters like this one are ones u can get done in seconds after skipping it over or flipping the pages in less then a sec… cause they have no meaning…

    Chimasternmay
    Reply

  9. I hate how they turned Saruyama into one of the main character in the anime, he gets lots of screen time in the anime, he is nobody in the manga. the anime version storyline is fkd up, too much ecchi scenes for perverts to watch. In the manga version I don’t remember seeing Lala getting naked over and over again in the public.

    AK47 & PIZZA
    Reply

  13. @ AK47 & PIZZA

    hey i so agree with you, which why it pisses me off to just watching it, however i support it because i was already a fan of the manga… but the thing about Saruyama is so true. Ya i dont think Saki Hasemi and Kentaro Yabuki in the manga ever wanted to portray lala as someone who doesn’t mind basically anyone seeing her naked in the To love ru world.

    Chimasternmay
    Reply

  14. wheres the story? wheres my manga-adaption gone? or did they just decided to make a season 2 for next spring/summer? i mean next week we have macross parody- damn where is my “rpg” parody? rito still needs more girls – lalas sisters of course ^^ this is madness…

    THIS IS TOLOVE RUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

    roflcopter
    Reply

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