It chronicles the life of high school student Rito Yuuki after he meets and accidentally gets engaged to the alien princess Lala Satalin Deviluke.

To Love Ru is noted for its fan service, with Hasemi and Yabuki admitting that they tested the boundaries of what would be allowed in a shōnen manga.

A continuation of the manga called To Love Ru Darkness (TO LOVEる ダークネス, Toraburu Dākunesu) was serialized in Shueisha's Jump Square magazine from October 2010 to March 2017, and the chapters collected into 18 tankōbon volumes.

But when Rito angrily declares that marriage is only possible with the person you love, the two dull-witted aliens misunderstand him, believing he truly understands Lala's feelings.

[2] Yabuki created the rough designs and personalities for Rito and Lala and then discussed what kind of story would work with them with Hasemi and their supervisor.

[4] Having only worked on anime and video games previously, Hasemi said he had trouble fitting his ideas into the 19-page-per-chapter structure of a weekly manga serialization at the beginning.

While this is a heavily used technique in anime to show momentary pauses in action or passages of time, in manga, the more scene changes there are, the more expository panels are required.

Hasemi said that the manga was hard to write for; while it can paradoxically be easier on the author to make a story more complicated and build the world, To Love Ru instead relied entirely on visuals and emotions to convey everything.

Towards the end of serialization, Yabuki was having a "hard time privately, and felt like breaking down and crying", but was happy that he was able to punctuate the final moments of the manga with the same "stupid perversion" it always had.

Both creators also said that it was not really the end of the series and its world, with Yabuki stating that he personally was interested in a spinoff with Momo and Nana as the main characters.

Yabuki also initiated the ending of Darkness, telling Hasemi, the editor-in-chief, and all others involved around May or June 2016, the tenth anniversary of the entire franchise.

[2] Because the other females are all young high school students, Ryouko Mikado was introduced to inject more adult appeal into To Love Ru.

In the manga's third year, the creators thought about having the main cast move up a grade, but decided against it because Saki would have to graduate and Mikan would have to grow up.

[2] When there was a question on a reader survey about wanting more eroticism in the manga, it received an overwhelming response and the duo was happy to respond since they had fun creating those scenes.

[18][19] To celebrate Yabuki's 20th anniversary as a professional artist, a special To Love Ru story was published in Weekly Shōnen Jump on April 27, 2019.

[21] To commemorate an art exhibition held as a conclusion to the manga's 15th anniversary celebrations, a To Love Ru one-shot was released on the Shōnen Jump+ website on January 13, 2023.

[24] An anime television series adaptation produced by Xebec and directed by Takao Kato aired in Japan between April 4 and September 26, 2008, and contains twenty-six episodes.

[29] Three original video animation (OVA) episodes produced by Xebec and directed by Takao Kato were shipped starting on April 3, 2009 with pre-ordered copies of the manga's 13th, 14th and 15th volumes.

A second season of the anime, titled Motto To Love Ru,[32] produced by Xebec and directed by Atsushi Ōtsuki aired 12 episodes between October 6 and December 22, 2010.

A twelve-episode anime television series adaptation was also produced by Xebec, directed by Atsushi Ōtsuki, and aired between October 6 and December 29, 2012.

[50] The second is a 2D adventure visual novel on the PlayStation Portable entitled To Love Ru: Exciting Beach School Version,[Jp.

[45] A drama CD for To Love Ru was released on February 29, 2008, with an original story, featuring the voice cast later used in the anime, along with character songs.

[66] According to Oricon and Tohan, the collected volumes of To Love Ru consistently ranked in the top 10 best-selling manga during their first weeks of release in Japan.

[68][69][70][71] Like its predecessor, the collected volumes of To Love Ru Darkness all ranked in the top 10 best-selling manga during their first weeks of release.

[79][80] In November 2014, readers of Da Vinci magazine voted To Love Ru number 20 on a list of Weekly Shōnen Jump's greatest manga series of all time.

[81] In early 2018, a Goo poll of 5,322 people saw To Love Ru voted the most erotic manga in Weekly Shōnen Jump's history.

Loveridge described the work as pure harem and praised Yabuki's comedic artwork, but felt that the personality types of the love-triangled main characters were "retreading well worn ground."

[1] When they reviewed the Motto To Love Ru anime, Høgset and Jones felt it improved significantly as it reduces manga arcs into 7 minutes each so as to include three in each episode.

"[84] In 2012, To Love Ru Darkness was reviewed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly to see if it violated their newly passed controversial Bill 156.

[85] In 2014, volume 9 of To Love Ru Darkness was officially designated a "harmful publication" in Fukushima Prefecture under its "Youth Protection and Nurturing Ordinance".