Tag: to love-ru

1947: Some Great Anime Soundtracks

Writing in the comments of yesterday’s post, Mr Heaslip reminded me that I’ve been continually impressed with the quality of soundtracks in modern anime.

I tend to listen to a lot of soundtracks when I’m doing other things — particularly when I’m doing work of some description. I prefer soundtracks in this context because lyrics can be distracting — particularly if you’re trying to write something — plus, given the right one, they can lend a certain air of drama to proceedings. And it doesn’t have to be work, either; there’s nothing that livens up a tedious motorway drive like a storming, over-the-top soundtrack.

The majority of my soundtracks come from games, unsurprisingly, but since I started really getting into anime a year or two ago, I’ve begun tracking down soundtracks for various anime series, too. So I thought I’d share a few favourites today.

This is Swordland from Sword Art Online, the “trapped in an MMO” show that was popular but somewhat divisive. I enjoyed it a great deal — at least partly because it reminded me of .hack, a series of games and anime that I love the idea of but am yet to actually work my way through — but I will acknowledge the arguments that it was cheesy as hell and moved way too fast for its own good. Those things didn’t put me off as much as some other people, but as I think we’ve established over the course of the last 1947 days, I have a much higher tolerance for bullshit than many other people.

Anyway, I’m a fan of this piece because it sounds authentically “gamey” — plus, for all the series’ faults, it knew exactly how to give a sense of drama to a big fight scene, and that included having a suitably epic soundtrack.

Contrasting completely with the above, this music is… well, I don’t know what it’s called as my Japanese reading comprehension isn’t quite up to the task, but it’s the music that plays during the “Previously on Love Live!” bit at the beginning of each Love Live! episode.

Not a lot to say about it really, other than the fact that it nicely captures the feeling of sheer joy that Love Live! encapsulates; it’s happy, cheerful, summery, uplifting and heartwarming, just like the show as a whole.

KissXSis was pretty dumb all round — it was thinly-veiled… no, completely unveiled fanservice for the most part, but it had some entertaining moments and some fun characters. The two titular sisters were an enjoyable study in contrasts, and the supporting cast made for an enjoyable ensemble to spend some time with.

The thing that stuck with me long after finishing watching the show, though, was the ending theme — and this adorable dance animation that was shown in partial form during the closing credits, and which was rendered in its full glory for, I believe, the Blu-Ray release.

Yuru Yuri was an odd show in which pretty much nothing happened for its entire run, but it was immensely endearing purely for its characters. It was one of those shows where you feel like you’re “friends” with the cast by the end of it, and for that I’ll always think of it rather fondly.

I can’t actually remember the context of this song in the series — or indeed if it actually appeared in the series at all, or if it’s just a character song from a soundtrack album — but either way, it’s a nice little song that I like a lot.

DanMachi, also known as Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? thanks to questionable transliteration, is the current hotness in anime, with many calling it this year’s Sword Art Online. It seems to be overall a bit more consistently well-received than Sword Art Online, however, thanks in part to its main heroine Hestia being a much more interesting and fun character than SAO’s Asuna.

Like Sword Art Online, DanMachi has a gorgeous incidental soundtrack accompanying the action. There are some awesome battle themes, but in the interest of a bit of variety, here’s a lovely, more pensive piece reflecting the affection between Hestia and protagonist Bell.

To Love-Ru is another show that was pretty dumb and mostly fanservice, but I still really enjoyed my time with it. I found it particularly interesting in that it changed format significantly over the course of its three distinct seasons, with the main heroine from the first season being largely relegated to occasional background roles by the third. (I wasn’t super-happy about this, as I adored Lala, but the new “main” characters made up for her relative absence somewhat.)

To Love-Ru was another of those shows that was unrelentingly cheerful throughout. It knew exactly what it was — silly, lightweight, occasionally (all right, frequently) pervy fun that had no intention of making you think too hard. This particular track, known just as “Good Morning!” reflects the show’s character pretty nicely.

Welcome to the NHK was an awesome show with a wonderful streak of honesty and bitterness at its core. Contrasting starkly with the relative darkness of the protagonist’s hikikomori lifestyle was the fictional anime show many of the characters were obsessed with, whose theme tune ran something like this.

Purupurupururin…

Oh, Lord, Clannad. So many feels. Anyone who’s seen the show probably doesn’t need any further words when they hear this piece of music. And if you haven’t seen the show, rectify that right now. Bring tissues. Not for that. For all the crying. Because there will be lots of crying.

1509: Love Trouble

Having finished Clannad a while ago, I needed my next anime fix. So the logical thing to do seemed to be to ignore all the things I’ve bookmarked and queued on Crunchyroll, and the DVDs I’ve bought but haven’t watched yet, and instead check out something that I’ve often seen mentioned (largely by J-List, which tends to be my main source of “have you heard of…?” content when it comes to anime) but didn’t know a whole lot about: To Love-Ru, alternatively known as Toraburu (which actually makes a little more sense, as it’s supposed to be a pun on the word “trouble” — hence the title of this post — and “toraburu” is how you would pronounce the English word “trouble” using Japanese syllables).

As I say, I didn’t know much about To Love-Ru before I watched it other than it involved a cute pink-haired girl with a tail and was a tad fanservicey. Frankly, I stopped being ashamed of enjoying fanservicey content a long time ago — why deny that you like something? — and so, unlike many other people when confronted with the prospect of fanservice, didn’t see the latter aspect as a negative thing at all. Beyond that, I knew nothing. It looked and sounded like enjoyably lightweight fluff, though, and after the emotional turmoil that Clannad put me through, that’s exactly what I wanted.

Shh. Don't tell anyone Pete admitted to liking fanservice.
Shh. Don’t tell anyone Pete admitted to liking fanservice.

I’ve learned one thing in the few episodes I’ve watched so far, then: the “alien girl visits Earth” trope I was introduced to with the excellent if ridiculous Haiyore! Nyaruko-san is apparently widespread enough to be a genre in its own right. To Love-Ru has a lot in common with the aforementioned Nyaruko, as it happens, primarily in terms of the dynamic between the hapless protagonist Rito and Lala, the pink-haired, tail-sporting cute girl.

Rito, much like Nyaruko’s protagonist Mahiro, is a boy in his mid-teens who is clearly at the age where he’s just starting to get interested in girls. He’s had his eye on his classmate Haruna for some time, it seems, but just as he thinks he might build up the courage to talk to her, Lala bursts into his life in explosive fashion, and subsequently begins a chain of increasingly ridiculous events.

Lala is from the planet Deviluke, and through an unfortunate series of coincidences — her running away from home to avoid an arranged marriage, her ship being shot down over Earth, her teleporting herself free of the wreckage and ending up in Rito’s bathtub — ends up engaged to Rito. (Deviluke custom dictates that grabbing a woman’s breasts is a proposal; something that Rito did completely accidentally while his bathtub appeared to be exploding around him as Lala made her entrance.) What then follows is an increasingly farcical comedy as Rito attempts to come to terms with being engaged to a perpetually energetic alien princess with a habit of getting herself and everyone around her into trouble, and whether or not he has finally had his last chance to confess to Haruna.

Somewhat like Nyaruko again, there’s a fair amount of sexual tension between Rito and Lala, though this is largely due to the fact that Lala is completely unashamed of her body and appears to be completely lacking in the ability to feel embarrassed, even when, for various reasons, all her clothes fall off. Rito, meanwhile, seems to constantly find himself in compromising positions with Lala just as Haruna is walking around the corner, leading to plenty of comic misunderstandings (and embarrassment on Rito’s part) along the way.

Like many shows of this type, incidental characters often get some of the most memorable moments, and Lala’s personal bodyguard Zastin, an imposing figure clad in spiky armour, speaking in that stereotypical “badass” anime voice, is a particular highlight. After an initial misunderstanding when he first meets Rito, he subsequently has a habit of dropping in at unexpected moments; it’s always amusing when Rito shows up home from school and Zastin is there in full armour happily drinking tea with Rito’s younger sister.

Lala. See? Cute.
Lala. See? Cute.

The main draw to keep coming back, though, is Rito’s relationships with the various women in his life. It becomes clear very quickly that despite his protestations and his constant reassurances that he is in love with Haruna, he cares for Lala very deeply, even though she is a constant pain in the backside for him whenever she’s around. Likewise, Lala treats Rito with genuine affection — though being from a literally alien culture, she sometimes doesn’t treat him with the same degree of consideration that we humans typically expect from one another. And then on top of all that, it gradually becomes obvious that Haruna has feelings for Rito, too, but that Lala is constantly getting in the way between these two apparently star-crossed lovers.

Will they ever get together, or is Rito doomed to an admittedly fun-looking life with the overly energetic Lala? I have no idea as yet, since I’m only a short way into the series as a whole, but I’m looking forward to finding out.