A wise man once said of this manga, "How is this so popular? Is it the nipples?" and he was completely right.

After going through like 6 different harem series to get a full idea of what the genre has in store I finally ended up on To Love-Ru. The plot is as simple as it it gets: alien comes from outer space and says she is going to marry the MC, but the MC already has a childhood crush and every girl they meet ends up falling in love with him. From there it's just random series of events where the MC ends up fondling or seeing every girl naked pretty much. It's super generic and is about what you'd see in every other harem manga.

So then are the characters any good? Well, everyone is super generic also. We got the classic airhead, shy girl, kuudere, tsundere, younger sister, younger twin sisters of the main girl, straight laced girl, and the list continues. Honestly, trying to fault a harem manga on it's characters just seems unfair, but the main thing To Love-Ru lacks is that it doesn't really build up nearly enough chemistry between the MC and most of the cast. We only see things building between like the two main girls but everyone else is just thrown in, so it's hard to see anyone winning in the end besides the two mains.

And that brings me to one of my biggest gripes with the manga: that there is no ending. It was so disappointing that I spent 160 chapters seeing who the MC will end up with in the end only to have him end up with no one. There is a sequel to this that I will check out, but as a standalone series it ends up cheating all its readers. Maybe this is what it's like to be one of the side characters in a harem manga...
The other thing I disliked was how much fanservice there was. Now, I'm not one to say that harem manga shouldn't have it at all, since that's one of the main appeals of it. But when it seems like every chapter had to have at least 3 pages worth of fondling or naked girls, it gets to be really tiring. There's such thing as overexposure, and this manga brings it to the max. And honestly how can you even find a way to add 5 separate slimy tentacle scenes in one manga? I wish there was a little more actual plot to hold this thing up, but it's just not there.

So overall this was one of the most disappointing harem manga I've ever read, and the harem genre doesn't have the best rep for begin good to begin with. It just doesn't do anything right for a regular story and messes up what makes a harem manga good too, besides the fanservice. So honestly the only way for me to recommend this is if you're really only here for those uncovered nipples.