Yūki Rito

Rito Yuuki is the main male protagonist of To Love-Ru and To Love-Ru Darkness. He is a normal 16 year old student of Sainan High, who has a big crush on Haruna Sairenji and, to an extent, Lala Satalin Deviluke. He attempted numerous times to confess to her but has met with failure each time. Rito used to be on the soccer team in junior high and was quite good, but quit because he was constantly helping his father with his manga duties, thus did not want to leave his little sister Mikan Yuuki alone in the house. Mikan comments he is very good at the most "useless little things", like crane and festival games (e.g. hoops, catching fish, squirt guns). Along with the numerous useless little things Rito is good at, he is also an accomplished florist, gardener and horticulturalist.

Rito's nature is borderline clumsy, where he always ends up molesting or groping the many girls in the series (unintentionally, of course). He is generally kind, thoughtful and has a lot of respect for women, though mostly by intention, and not so much by success. Due to his shyness around girls, he is very clumsy around women and has great difficulty maintaining his composure around any sort of stimulating situation. Even without interference from Lala's inventions, Oshizu's psychic powers, or Celine jumping into his face, Rito is on his own clumsy enough to trip over absolutely nothing, and possesses an extraordinary skill in accidentally reaching his hands or face into the breasts or other private parts of any girl within reach when he is falling.

It is only by accident that he encounters Lala, a troublesome character who at first pretends to show affectionate feelings for Rito at the beginning of the story. But despite his enduring feelings for Haruna, Rito shows signs of developing deeper affection towards Lala. As the story progresses, he starts to show affections for Lala, but is unsure if what he feels is actually love. This is shown again when he couldn't help but think about Lala, even though he was naked with Haruna. It is recently revealed that he is in love with Lala, but he is also in love with Haruna. In the end of the series, he confesses to Lala, but tells her he also loves another person (Haruna), yet she is happy on both parts. He is confused as polygamy is illegal in Japan, but Lala replied that once he is the king of the universe the laws of Earth no longer applies. Then, she forces him to go tell Haruna (strapping a jet pack to his back). Right before he was about to tell her, she moves out of the way, just like when he confessed to her very early in the series, leading him to state "I love you" to all of the female cast with the exception of Momo, Mikan, Golden Darkness, and Haruna herself.

Appearance
Rito has golden brown eyes and orange-brown hair. In the original series the spikes on his hair were sharp and seemingly sticking out, but in To-Love-Ru Darkness his hair seems to be a lot more neat and softer. He is shown to be of average height, if compared to other male students in his class and is taller than most of the female cast.

Personality
Rito is humble, caring, and a gentleman (in principle), and is willing to help out almost anyone when they need it, even if they say they don't want or ask for it. He is also courageous and persistent enough to risk his life to protect his friends well being, like when he protected Lala from her strong bodyguards or the hitman Black, saved Haruna from Ghi Bree and stood up to his deceptively monstrous form, and traveled to a dangerous planet to find a cure for Celine when she was sick. For these reasons, Lala stated that he's the most dependable person in the Universe, but lacks dependency towards himself. Rito would also help out those who dislike him, such as Yami, like when she was sick from over-using her powers and he carried her to Mikado's clinic. He has also shown his sympathy for her when he learned of her past, and expressed anger towards the organization that created and raised her to become a weapon.

Being a normal boy, though, he initially can also easily and somewhat frequently lose his temper and snap at people when annoyed by their actions or words, even when he doesn't mean to. At first, he has shown to be angry and upset with Lala quite often, since he does have to put up with a lot of her hijinks, and even punched Ren in the face for thoughtlessly ruining what could have been a moment between him and Haruna.

Through being a humble person, however, Rito can often have low self esteem about himself as opposed to his common thinking kindly about others. He rarely gives himself credit for his good deeds, tends to dwell on his mistakes more than anything when sad, hardly ever speaks up for or voices himself and, in general, doesn't do anything to truly stand up for himself.

His personality as a kind and loyal friend makes him quite charismatic, trustful, and enables him to sway and befriend other people, particularly girls. He managed to change Yui's belief that all boys are shameless, and helped her open up to a chance for love. He managed to comfort and cheer up Nana when she was deeply upset, which lived up to Lala's positive expectation of him. Girls tend to feel a certain "warmth" when close to him like a hug or so. In the beginning, Rito was quite shy and nervous when it comes to talking to girls, mainly Haruna (even when picturing her in a swimsuit), but being around Lala all the time has helped him overcome this problem and now is to have actual conversation with them but can still get a little nervous around them. And he was able to change the hearts of Yami and Mea, who were both cold and trained killers, and helped them open up to friendship; a trait which Nemesis has taken notice of. He is a very charismatic person, always trying to make people feel better and understand others' points of view and changing it to a more positive outlook. Rito somehow has this undeniable charm that makes almost every girl possess some sort of romantic feeling towards him even girls who used to highly dislike him, like Yui who disliked him for his uncanny ability to end up in some sort of perverted situation.

Rito can be very persuasive, using his words to befriend and comfort others, even those who have a slight resentment towards him. Further more, by speaking his mind out about how he feels and standing up for others, he makes them feel touched and happy deep down. It is because of this ability that Nemesis initially became interested in him.

He also cares for plants and animals, as shown when he was the only one who didn't neglect to care for the school flowers, and when he rescued a cat from a tree, both of which persuaded Haruna and Yui that he is really a kind person. This proves that he cares deeply for all known life, including those that are artificially made like Yami and Mea, and would hate anybody who would abuse them.

Unfortunately, while girls appreciate and cherish his innocent nature, his innocence is arguably one of his worst traits. He rejects sex and pleasure so much that he's arguably scared, or at the very least quite nervous, of them, and he easily loses his composure around even slightly provocative situations. As a result, he has grown to become very clumsy and shy around women, often looking away (if he can) when faced with upfront, erotic situations. His own clumsiness does very little to help him escape perverted situations with other girls, and is often to blame for them. For these reasons, he is either regarded by other girls as an innocent boy and suitable love interest, or an insolent boy and pervert. There are certain girls who think that he is quite cute when he blushes nervously in front of them, and Momo especially finds a few of his facial expressions cute. However, despite being very disoriented and awkward when sexual content is put in front of him, it's arguable that this makes him a much more empathetic and genuine person. Although Rito is not a 'pervert' and would never do lewd things of his own will, he does tend to (unknowingly) do them when he is asleep next to someone (dreaming about food like marshmallows), most often with Momo and one time with his sister Mikan.

Rito can also be a very warmhearted, wise, sweet, hard-working and sensitive person on his own terms. In the anime, he is seen helping old people cross the street with their groceries, helping people who are injured, accompanying lost children to help find their parents and crying at sad parts in movies in one episode, greatly establishing his basic nature. Generally, Rito is kind, hardworking, reliable, thoughtful and caring, but also immature and innocent to the point that's basically childish, though he makes up for it with his inability to give up on others for good reasons and his continuing will to help others even at the cost of his own well-being, big or small.

History
Before Rito met Lala, it was stated that Rito had difficulty talking to girls, which led to his lack of confidence and clumsiness around them. His only friend was Saruyama. However, because of Lala's friendliness, and Rito's growing relationship with Lala, all of Lala's girl friends became Rito's as well, especially Haruna Sairenji, whom Rito had a crush on and could not even talk to prior to Lala's "descent".

As a child, Rito would often go out and play football/soccer with other kids, but because his parents weren't always around, which would leave Mikan all alone at home. Feeling bad for her as any good family member would, Rito would stay in to look after her.

Rito has always assisted his father's work as a manga artist, and then would take Mikan to a shrine nearby to play. One time, during his fifth grade, while Yui was also at the shrine, Rito climbed a tree to help a cat who was stuck. This was the first time that Yui met Rito, although it was years later during a déjà vu that Yui remembered that the boy was, in fact, Rito. The cat that Rito saved from the tree was the same cat that Yui tried but couldn't save prior to Rito and Mikan's arrival at the shrine. She tried to ask some of the boys from her class to help her,  but they rejected her because they hated Yui's strictness as their class representative, and left to play games instead. Because of that, Yui had the impression that all boys are bad. However, due to Rito's bravery, Yui's perception of boys changed, and she realized that not all of them are bad. Rito isn't aware that Yui was the same girl he met at the shrine.

During Rito's eighth grade, Rito became classmates with Haruna Sairenji. It was stated that this was the last time that Haruna and Rito became classmates (prior to the start of the series). In the anime, Rito has been in love with her when she was the only one who believed he did not vandalize the plants in the school garden. Haruna stated that she first noticed him during a school competition, when their class was lagging behind the other classes in a race, and he never gave up, and ended up winning the race for his class and won the trophy. Haruna also noticed Rito's care for the plants in the school, and noticed that Rito would always refill the water in the flower vase while no one else cared, and concluded that he must be a kind person.

Powers and Abilities
As a human boy of the most ordinary kind, Rito has no superhuman abilities of any kind, and no other physical skills that truly impress other people. Among some of his minor talents are gardening, sports, and manga illustration, the latter skill he uses to assist his mangaka father. Haruna mentioned that he is good at archery and is a very fast runner, as he was able to outrun four people ahead of him and win the sports festival race for his class (To LOVE-Ru Chapter 32). It was mentioned that he was also good at soccer. As his sister described, he's only good at basically useless things, such as sports, festival games, and video games. However, when brave enough, he is capable of improvising these minor talents and make them useful, like when he used his soccer skills to distract Lala's bodyguards and help her escape. It's unknown how his archery skills are but he has show to sightly have a good aim, as seen when playing ring tossing and he's also good with a BB gun. His most significant physical skills, however, are often seen to comedic and perverted effect.

As far as physical skills go, Rito has good resilience to physical attacks; a very useful characteristic for a boy regularly harassed by troublesome characters around him. Even though he gets punched and hit continuously, he can be seen dodging life-threatening attacks, such as Zastin's sword attacks and Yami's bladed transformations, even when she was still serious about killing him. This is referred to later on when Rito is seen narrowly dodging multiple sword slashes by Rin Kujou when she is possessed by the demonic sword Bladix; Yami notes that due to avoiding her own attacks at him over the year, Rito's ability to dodge deadly attacks has increased to the point which an Earthling shouldn't be able to avoid, he has also gained extremely great reflexes. Comically, Rito can also become a very effective weapon for Haruna when she panics in fear and blindly attacks whatever scares her, using whatever, or whoever (usually Rito) she can grab.

Ironically, despite being a generally innocent boy without perverted intentions, Rito appears to have perverted talents which he himself is not aware of. Nemesis complimented his "Technique" on pleasuring women when she ordered him to massage her. Momo believes the same thing about him when he fondles her in his sleep, which she greatly enjoys. But above all else, Rito's most remarkable and infamous "skill" is his ability to accidentally grope and molest any girl within his reach when he falls. Rito is often a victim to a near endless stream of otherworldly mischief and chaos around him, such as Lala's inventions, Oshizu's psychic powers, or Celine's pollens. But even without such interferences throwing him around, Rito is already often clumsy enough around women to trip over minor obstacles or absolutely nothing, and when he does, he never fails to accidentally reach his hands or face into the breasts or other private parts of any girl in close proximity to him. In To LOVE-Ru Darkness, his clumsiness evolves to a surrealistic level, where he is able to precisely reach his hands into the clothing of the girls, or partially strip off their clothing, and even grab their breasts and pinch their nipples, all of which purely by accident. His clumsiness is even able to "defeat" stronger opponents, such as when he fell down and violated Nemesis' genitals, apparently catching her off guard, and when he predictably tripped and "defeated" Rin's attempt to dodge him, managing to glimpse and pull her panties. While his perverted clumsiness is not exactly a true skill which he would ever be proud of, it's nonetheless become his trademark characteristic, the frequency and coincidence of which are nothing less than extraordinary. Even Yami claimed that it has reached a level to be called an ability.

Hobbies and Interests
Rito has a wide variety of hobbies. When he was younger, he would often play soccer for fun and competition, but has since moved on, making it a side interest of his. Rito's also fairly in touch with playing video games and watching TV, typically Magical Kyoko and whatever Lala, Nana, Momo, or Mikan have already put on. It's possible he may enjoy books, as suggested by going to the school library to get one on plants.

But as an average human boy, Rito is not particularly talented and does not really excel in most of his interests and hobbies besides the rather insignificant ones, such as video games and festival games. He is, however, highly accomplished and connected with horticulture, plant care and planting in general.

Famous quotes
"IT'S A MISUNDERSTANDING!!" -Rito's usual explanation to a perverted mishap.

"LALA!!" -Rito shouting at Lala in frustration.

"GWWWWWWWAAAAAAAA!!!" -Rito's usual reaction to a perverted mishap.

"Tasty marshmallow." -Rito sleep talking.

"The marshmallow bit me!" -More of Rito sleep talking.

"This is a sensation I know all to well!!" -Rito recognizing Lala's breast by feeling them.

Trivia

 * Rito, along with the other male characters of the To Love-Ru Series (with the exception of Honekawa-sensei), doesn't have a cameo appearance in the manga Mayoi Neko Overrun, which is drawn by the same artist.