List of To Love Ru characters
The Japanese manga series To Love Ru and its sequel To Love Ru Darkness feature an extensive cast of characters created by author Saki Hasemi and illustrator Kentaro Yabuki. After high school student Rito Yuuki accidentally gets engaged to Lala Satalin Deviluke, the runaway crown princess of the alien planet Deviluke, he reluctantly helps her transition to life on Earth, while gradually befriending his dream girl, Haruna Sairenji. Along the way, Rito meets and gets entangled with a colorful cast of other girls, such as the uptight, high-strung [|Yui] Kotegawa, the sex-switching alien [|Run/Ren], and the queen bee of their school, Saki Tenjouin. At the same time, Rito must fight off Lala's antagonistic alien suitors, one of whom sends the assassin Golden Darkness to kill him.
Hasemi said that the latter half of the manga features a lot more quirky and unique characters because, the newer the character, the harder he and Yabuki had to work to establish their personality. Yabuki said that by the latter half of the series, they were treating all the female characters as main heroines. Many of the characters also make a cameo appearance in the manga version of Mayoi Neko Overrun!, which Yabuki illustrated.
Main characters
Rito Yuuki
Rito Yuuki is a 15-year-old high school student at Sainan High and the main protagonist of the series. His younger sister, [|Mikan], comments he is very good at the most "pointless things", like crane and festival games such as catching fish and squirt guns. Rito is an accomplished florist, gardener, and horticulturalist. He is extremely kind, selfless, caring, and thoughtful, having a lot of respect for women, though mostly by intention, and not so much by success. It is only by accident that he encounters Lala Satalin Deviluke, and despite his enduring feelings for Haruna Sairenji, Rito develops deeper affection towards Lala throughout the story, but is unsure if what he feels is love. At the end of To Love Ru, he confesses his love to Lala but tells her he loves Haruna more. However, she misunderstands and is happy at the prospect of him being married to both of them. In contrast, polygamy is illegal in Japan. Once he is king of the galaxy, the laws of Earth no longer apply. By the end of To Love Ru Darkness, Rito earns Haruna's mutual feelings; in addition to Lala, Run, Yami, and Momo. The ending suggests that his love troubles will persist indefinitely.Due to his shyness around girls, he is very clumsy and has great difficulty maintaining his composure around any sort of stimulating situation, which leads him to accidentally molest or grope the many girls in the series. Due to the otherworldly circumstances around him, Rito is always put, along with many different girls, in any and each type of awkward, intimate, and embarrassing situations, such as when he and Haruna were once teleported naked together to the basement of Mikado's medical clinic because of one of Lala's faulty inventions, or when Lala used the same invention to send them naked to the school. In To Love Ru Darkness, his clumsiness becomes even more frequent and violating as well as strangely inventive and surreal. He has shown to be able to accomplish difficult feats, such as reaching his hands or various objects into the clothing and undergarments of girls or partially stripped off their clothing, and also grabbed several private parts of several girls all at once, all of which were purely by accident. In a later chapter of Darkness, [|Mikado] conducts some experiments to gather some data and later interviews Rito. Mikado diagnoses that Rito's frequent godly indecency and unwitting perverted acts manifest because of the way Rito extremely restrained himself with the girls since he never sought the opportunity to get intimate with them and wanted to treat them with kindness, causing his "libido" to accumulate and release in form of accidentally groping girls' bodies and all other perverted stuff happening so far, calling it the "Cataplectic Indecency Syndrome". She also believes that the more he suppresses it, the more extreme and unbelievable the accidents will be. Mikado calls this not a disease, but rather a talent that is beyond an average human. During the first manga series, continuing into Darkness, Rito also seems to suffer from Sexsomnia. This can most often be observed with Momo being on the receiving end of it.
When he is turned into a girl, Rito takes on the persona of Riko Yuusaki. She is a beautiful girl who gets much attention from men, such as Motemitsu, the principal, and even [|Saruyama], Rito's best friend. Later, Saruyama falls in love with Riko and asks Lala to invite her for a date; out of pity, she forcefully changes Rito into Riko so Saruyama can go on the date. After that, Riko only appears for a short number of times on rare occasions. Her last appearance was in Chapter 74 of Darkness manga when Nemesis changed her sex through boy-girl change-kun.
Saki Hasemi and Kentaro Yabuki initially imagined To Love Ru as mainly a comedy featuring Rito and Lala, with Rito only longing for Haruna. But as they had more meetings, this changed to Haruna also being a featured character with feelings for Rito, to emphasize the love triangle. They took care to make sure that Rito was likeable and that his actions were not unpleasant. Hasemi said that because it ran in a shōnen magazine, if boys did not like and support the protagonist, then drawing cute girls would be meaningless. Riko, Rito's female form, was thought up as something special for the 100th chapter and to celebrate two years of serialization. They never intended for her to reappear, but she did so very quickly because she was shockingly well received. Rito is one of the most popular characters in the series, coming in fifth place in the manga's first character popularity poll.
Lala Satalin Deviluke
Lala Satalin Deviluke is the first princess of Deviluke, whose family rules the Milky Way galaxy. As such, her hand in marriage is sought from across the galaxy as her husband will be successor to the throne. A rather childish girl, she is naïve regarding the culture and customs on Earth. Lala initially runs away from home, as she does not wish to marry any of her suitors, and randomly ends up naked in Rito's bathtub due to one of her inventions. Upon arriving on Earth, Lala pretends to love Rito to keep herself from getting married but really does fall in love with him after she misinterprets a statement that Rito shouts that was meant for Haruna. Although Lala appears to be somewhat airheaded, she is well known on Deviluke for her genius-level intellect and enjoys making all manners of inventions, often prompting some disastrous effect or another.Haruna Sairenji
Haruna Sairenji is Rito's classmate, and the girl of his affections. Unbeknownst to Rito, Haruna has similar feelings for him, having been attracted to his kind, gentle nature since junior high. Despite her growing love for the boy, she usually suppresses her feelings and cannot confess to him because of her friendship with Lala. However, with some encouragement and knowing that she cannot continue to hide her feelings, Haruna eventually tells Lala of her ordeal. Lala warmly accepts Haruna as her rival for Rito's heart, while still remaining friends.Mikan Yuuki
Mikan Yuuki is Rito's independent and reliable 12-year-old sister. With their parents often away on business, she takes care of the housework. In contrast to her brother, she is very mature, but does not hesitate to tease him; calling him a "playboy" for attracting so many girls all of a sudden. Mikan is very perceptive and notices Rito's obvious anxiety around Haruna and Yui's hidden feelings for him. Mikan also seems to have a certain lack of respect for Rito, rarely addressing him by his honorific as an older brother. Although she may not show it often, she cares deeply for Rito and misses his company, to the point one could suspect her of having a brother complex. She also states how she and Rito used to play together before Lala entered their lives.Golden Darkness
Golden Darkness, commonly nicknamed "Yami", is a dispassionate, withdrawn galactic assassin hired by Lacospo to kill Rito Yuuki. Although she can accomplish this easily, after seeing Rito's true nature, she stays on Earth and claims to be continuing her contract to assassinate him. But is really ignoring it because she wants to stay on Earth. Though she maintains she will kill Rito one day, it becomes increasingly doubtful that she will ever do it and actually develops feelings for him instead.Yui Kotegawa
Yui Kotegawa is an uptight, high-strung girl placed in Rito's class during their second year of high school. Her haughty opinions, quick temper, and habit of speaking her mind often result in her vocally reprimanding classmates. Yui has no tolerance for anything she considers "indecent behavior" and is well aware that Rito and Lala are the most brazen offenders; often yelling her trademark phrase, "Salacious!", in the face of their acts of perversion. Ironically, she begins to secretly develop feelings for Rito after he saves her from a group of delinquents. Though her inexperience with boys leaves her unable to understand her feelings and is continually in self-denial about them. Usually, when Rito asks what is wrong, she says the exact opposite of what she wants to say and then hurts him in some way. Although her nature prevents her from easing her behavior, she slowly warms up to his usual antics. After Celine takes on her childlike form, she becomes close to Yui, even being seen as a daughter-like figure in Yui's daydreams of her and Rito being married together. Yui also really likes cats and, in To Love Ru Darkness, she realizes that Rito was the young boy she saw rescue a cat stuck in a tree years earlier, an act that defied her belief that boys are rude and salacious. A running gag in the series is that some characters cannot remember Kotegawa's family name, calling her "Kokegawa" for example.Yui was created as a series regular to celebrate one year of serialization. She was given an abundance of common sense and a serious personality, making her a tsundere. In a series full of characters who lack common sense, Yui plays the "straight man" role. Yui was the character that was planned to have the most character growth, as she was the only one who would bring up the perverted stuff Rito does to them. Yabuki, however, said he did not expect her to turn into such a serious love interest. Yui is one of the most popular characters in the series, coming in sixth place in the manga's first character popularity poll.