What I can honestly say is that Love Trouble didnt let me indifferent on an onthological front. It certainly does not let you have no feelings or sensations for it; not only did I have eyecandy for days, even though it is pretty samey all aesthetics considered, but the characters' ultra functionalist inner workings, the nothingburger yet mostly lightweight and symbol-level problems to solve (as in "you can describe them on one sentence"), the absurdly clean and honest ecchi visual methods employed...
Let it rest for its immaculate female visual design, its freeroaming nothingness adventure, its undefined points of interest, its utilitarian use of undesciferable japanese city, its cosmic mishorror, the cheerful spirit of it all, the creatively gooner bullshit. To Love Ru causes stuff on the reader, any of it. Anything. Even disgust.
It's not that. I'm... left kinda between sad and indifferent as a finite experience (theleologically you may say) because of two very central parts I couldnt pinpoint exactly, til the manga actually ended. Rito. The MC is just... stupidly perfect for its premise; yeah, even more perfect than Sairenji's pretty perfect girl nonsense. Rito was the indicated guy for the job.
He's actually kind of a sweet dude that tips over girls tits and ass because he's so clumsy -except it's more like the universe hangs him to honeymoon pie- but he actually has no bad intentions of his own, it's just destiny! Seeing Lala's nipples for the hundredth time, the poor fella still blushes, but he CAN be around girls more and more because suddenly we remember he DID see a lot of T&A and talked to them... He's brave, but not exactly. He's confident, but not exactly. He's a pervert, but like just a little bit, never to do actually something about it! I hate that, because I know what he's gonna become: a harem engine, but still the can-never-do-nothing-bad guy. He's perfect.
Rito was destined to be, from the beginning, to be the do-all-gooder fella that stumbled to the cosmic sisters of the sexiest alien girl in school. Around chapter 120 (which is pretty fucking far) you can actually start seeing Momo as the catalyzer of things to come, as To Love Ru Darkness would make an... "apparent" 180-spin on Rito's intentions. Now EVERYONE will be my sla-I mean wife!
Everyone gets a piece of him! It feels... shoehorned (we are talking TLR here, the epitome of shoehorn) and mean spirited just to get every relationship-based fetish down the umbrella -yeah even incest!-, ESPECIALLY since she's the starter and the one placed under the rug on Darkness. Feels even worse considering Haruna basically disappears for... well, if you know, you know.
This is turboenhanced by how... Slice of life yurichad hasty events advance. Text is post-grunge lyrics levels of demonstrative. You can pretty much read To Love Ru like you riding 300km on a motorcycle and you'll meet the ending in no time, taking some time to gush on the artwork and drinking some of the Narrative Stakes kool-aid. Nothing takes too much time to process, nothing wants that much of your attention until the pantsus go flying.
Which I don't think it's a bad thing, lemme be clear; exploitative and problematic, and weird, and kinda cringe it may be, but that's sexual exploration/deviation for you.
It just doesn't feel very lighthearted when slowly everyone wants a piece of cake that was time and time again told "to be for one of two souls" - the deviancy starts to swing way too much in favor of what I assume they (the creators) want us to insert into while going extremely fucking fast, so everything feels extra utilitarian. Extra fabricated. Suddenly the characters are just meat, not even with the potatoes. Like, I know this is not a full-blown romance manga, but come on... Why making such an effort to create a love triangle in the first place?
But they had gold under there. I liked the fucking stupid antics relating the other girls being between ashamed. I liked the artificiality; titillation and heartbeat. I loved Lala and Haruna's sweet come to terms with loving the same person. I didn't mind the no-hesitation to forget about its own cosmic premise, just let it all loose, its fun!!! When it becomes so heavy handed AND you'll sooner than later will become the equivalent of the hippo winning the ballhoarding contest by default...
I'm not even mad about the ending; I think it's genius. If they didn't reveal Momo had other plans already.
I'll probably remember Lala and the other girls at least a bit because I took my time with TLR. I cared enough - the girls are cute, workable, expressive, beautiful, they enjoy their own exploit to a charming level... well, most of the time
That soulful caring almost went away as soon as Rito actually became the chosen one. It was no longer about love; only about the trouble.
...But I still have a soft spot for it. I blame anime tropes being so effective on a slice of life setting.