Shelf Life

The Ru-ins

The opening consists solely of pans over still drawings of sexy girls, with zooms to reveal the credits written out strategically on toast, or on clothing labels. It captures the experience of reading the “Ecchi” thread on 4chan. At least someone saved a lot of money, I guess. Sentai Filmworks stripped the credits from the opening and uses it for one of the crappiest trailers ever on their DVDs.

The opening mislead me into thinking that this was going be hentai. Instead, it's a fairly funny comedy. I even laughed out loud a few times. But with no dub, no extra, and no re-watch value, this is a rental.

The premise is totally derivative. Lala, a beautiful alien girl, materializes into Rito's bathtub. Rito grabs her breasts, a gesture which not only counts as a proposal on her planet, but also steals blatantly from Urusei Yatsura. Seasoned anime viewers can guess the paint-by-numbers plot—Lala attends Rito's school, lives at his house and causes wacky trouble. Rito actually likes the shy, quiet Haruna, but Lala accidentally stands in his way all the time, often while buck naked. Lala invents a lot of plot-convenient devices she pulls out of nowhere, akin to Doraemon.

Periodically, aliens show up attempting to marry Lala. Other genres and titles are parodied throughout the show as characters' clothes explode off for a variety of reasons, some more believable than others.

To Love-Ru worked really hard to win me over. The show chugs along through the opening premise at a nice pace. Rito is a very active protagonist compared to Keitaro from Love Hina, or Tenchi of Tenchi Muyo!. Rito tries desperately to ask Haruna out, but the universe conspires to stop him. On the way to delivering his love letter, Rito gets hit by a bus and run over by a stampede of elephants.

In one choice scene, Rito is about to confess to Haruna at the aquarium, when a puffer fish slams into the back of his head. He turns to see his fiancé naked and riding a dolphin atop a tidal wave of escaping fish, crashing towards him, destroying the aquarium in the process. Not every episode is this good, but I guess they can't all be winners.

The level of cartoon violence reminded me a little bit of Ramen Fighter Miki, although in tone, this is like a poor man's School Rumble.

There was a time long ago when I rented anime indiscriminately from the local video store to watch with my friends. In those days, I felt lucky if the show had no tentacle rape. To Love-Ru has surprising amounts of tentacle rape, but now that it's 2010, I don't mind the tentacles, which are mostly for comedy. I'm just glad there are no hyper-sexualized elementary school girls in this erotic school love comedy. Of course, this is only the first half of the series, so there's still time to introduce a preadolescent.

I do have other standards of quality. There is some really nice animation in this show. Occasionally we cut to space, where Irresponsible Captain Tyler-esque space battles are raging in surprisingly detailed animation. At one point, a shockingly high budget CG squid fights an octopus.

The earlier episodes are funnier and higher budget than some of the subsequent episodes. I'm not really looking forward to the second half, as I suspect the crew may have run out the budget already.[TOP]

Last week, I took a look at part one of this Bee Train mediocrity. The series ending disappointed me a bit. The opening and closing credits lead me to believe a more spectacular ending was in store. The opening has a floating island and the end credits clearly show a sharpshooting cat assassin. Sadly, neither of these things come to pass. Even the voice actors mention this in the commentary!

Ellis clearly has the “Noooooooo! BOOM” psychic power outlined in the most excellent book, Even A Monkey Can Draw Manga (highly recommended). Like all psychic adolescents, the scientist who created her pursues her with ill intent. In this Thelma and Louise desert chase series, Nadie the bounty hunter helps Ellis out. In this half, trouble brews as Nadie goes rogue from her employer, Miss “Blue-Eyes” Hayward, who is sadly more interesting than the rest of the characters in the show.

El Cazador continues to be good at character moments, but the plot just isn't very satisfying. This is exactly analogous to the new Star Trek reboot movie, which made great use of the characters and had great character moments, but let's face it, the plot stunk.

In one fine El Cazador character moment, fellow bounty hunter Ricardo comes across two vultures tied up outside a shack. As he approaches, one of the buzzards throws off its rope and flies away. A man runs out of the shack and accuses Ricardo of letting his prize pet vulture escape, demanding Ricardo catch a new one or pay for a replacement. Ricardo refuses, saying, “You're still running that old scheme? Who would ever be dumb enough to fall for that?” Cut to Nadie and Ellis in the desert, trying to capture a vulture. Ellis, who has a psychic sympathy towards animals, lets the vulture go free in the end.

Not every character gets a proper treatment in El Cazador. Rosenberg, the villainous scientist, suffers from a particularly lame back story. L.A. (a character cursed with the worst name ever) gets badly short-shifted in the series. This white-haired Kaworu-looking stalker freak saves Ellis and Nadie from death dozens of times from behind the scenes throughout the show. At one point, Ellis appears to vaporize L.A. using her mind (which is cool), but he shows up later with no explanation (not cool). In one scene that would make a great animated gif, L.A.'s crotch catches on fire. He eventually meets an untimely end without getting the send-off he deserves as a main character.

I know some members of fandom thrive on characters alone. As long as they have a favorite character, they're happy. I am not one of those people. Great characters and great character moments are a minimum requirement of greatness in my book. In order to be truly great, the plot must also be great. In short, I would have stopped watching this show if I weren't being paid, but only because it is “meh” and not because I thought it was intrinsically bad.[TOP]