Studio: AIC PLUS+
Genre(s): Comedy, Mecha, Romance, School, Sci-Fi, Shounen
OP: "Trust in you" by sweet ARMS
ED: "Day to Story" by Kaori Sadohara
Summary: Second season of the series Date A Live where several females creatures named "Spirits" that cause destruction around where they spawn. While the Anti-Spirit Team, AST, go out to kill these Spirits, Ratatosk uses a different approach. Rather than attacking these Spirits physically, they use a boy name Shidou to date these creatures and attack theme emotionally resulting in having a better control over their spirit powers when successful.
Following the pattern that Date A Live has set for itself, at least to me, the first episode in to the season isn't that entertaining and tilted more towards the annoying realm. The easiest way to describe this episode is that it was Shidou's bad fur day and pretty much everything was working against him -- even though, looking at most of the events, it was pretty insignificant.
Whether the trouble is Tohka crying over spilt milk -- in this case it is tea on Shidou's notes -- or Yoshino dropping her puppet in a tub, it felt more like he was babysitting some rowdy kids who are also ticking time bombs. Maybe this was presented this way in order to reestablish to the viewer how easily these Spirits can become unstable on whatever circumstance it may be. Even if it might be a half-decent way to remind the nature of at least two of the four Spirits, we have run into last season, it just makes me despise Tohka more than I already have. Luckily, there was some section of recap and story progression which helped me get though the one -- and hopeful only -- bad episode that introduced the season.
When I came to the actually continuation of the story, we were introduced to two character who are affiliated with the AST, know as the DEM: Westcott and Ellen. Right now we don't know much about Westcott besides that fact that he is one of the higher up; as for Ellen, she is apparently a witch. I'm not so sure what that entails later on, but considering these two are partners with AST and Westcott mentioned that Ellen hasn't fought any Spirits in a while, it won't be a positive interaction between them and the Spirits.
On the Spirits side we has a hint of twin hurricanes appearing in the Pacific then strangely disappearing, and I'm just assuming those are the twin Spirits with blond hair. And the cameo of my favorite Spirit Kurumi was one thing I was waiting for in this episode and I'm glad to see a glimpse of what she is up to. If anything, it's pretty painfully obvious that she is not giving up Shidou since he is the one with eminence power. She also finally revealed why she needs that power so desperately, and that helps in preventing Kurumi from being a boringly static antagonist to Shidou.
So overall, as I've mentioned, this episode was an annoyance to get though but I kind of expected it right before I clicked play. If anything, the episode was 75% fluff and the remaining 25 was the actually stuff I cared about. I am going to be continuing the series because if the first season is anything to go off of, the story is pretty good once it begins to pick up. I just wish it wasn't presented in a way that is so annoying that it I question myself as to why I'm even watching this series -- at least initially.
Orginally posted to the now shutdown sekijitsu.com: Archived Page