Released in spring 2013 by the studio AIC Plus+
Date a Live makes a promise of the one thing us dating sim enjoyers like to stick around for here in the anime industry: The anime girls. Date a Live proudly waves their waifus out in front with flashy Tsunako character designs. Heads up to any self-respecting anime watcher out there reading this: You’re being BAITED. The power of its vibrant colors and five season allure of a show with an odd premise is exactly how people get suckered into mediocre Hyperdimension Neptunia games. The same logic applies to the Date a Live series, and if you don’t heed this warning, you will pay the price with your precious time.
Nothing personal…………………….. Kid
Date a Live is dumb as shit, no big surprise there. The concept behind this anime is that it’s an all-in-one package of action, romance, and comedy. Our protagonist, Shidou, must save the planet by dating supernatural space-waifus, and if he’s not successful, EVERYONE on Earth will be KILLED. By SPACEQUAKES. Every time one of these super-waifus, dubbed ‘spirits’, enters the planet, a ‘spacequake’ will happen and kill millions of people indiscriminately. Because of this, people have grown to fear these spirits, leading to drastic measures for disaster prevention. Besides new advanced city-sheltering technology, an anti-spirit defense force dubbed the AST (Anti-Spirit Team), has been equipped to fight them off.
Except, like any Japanese army equipped to deal with supernatural monsters, they can’t do SHIT. If there’s any one thing the AST is good at, it’s being a pain in the ass, an inconvenience that only exists to hinder Shidou’s efforts to ‘save’ these spirits, and likewise, save humanity. The Ratatoskr is the inverse operation to the AST. These guys understand that the only REAL way to deal with these spirits is to get Shidou to date them, ultimately sealing in their powers by kissing them. It’s sort of like Kaminomi, except with attention deficit teenagers in mind for the audience.
Shidou never has to worry about being lonely!
I’m sure our resident imouto character Kotori and the three main spirit characters could carry this season by themselves, Date a Live’s scope is not that simple. Every moment of this anime must be jam packed with crap, and so, the Anti-Spirit Team is always around to kill all the fun by shooting a bunch of missiles at them. Origami is the central figure of the AST, a bone-headed spirit-hater (my family was KILLED by spirits etc) who LOVES Shidou more than anything else in the world. Shidou’s own blood-related sister is also a member of this Anti-Spirit Team for reasons, and she serves as a rival to Kotori’s established imouto role.
Each of these characters have a few things in common. For starters, nearly everyone in this show is an idiot. Nearly every character in this show is also VIOLENT. All of these characters remain in the show once they’re introduced. And most importantly, nearly every girl in Date a Live is in love with Shidou. This makes for a great combination if you want every second of this anime to be spent on inane bullshit. The snowball of trash never slows down, with each element clashing against itself for the viewer’s attention.
Shidou died from mid in the middle of his date.
The three main ‘spirit’ girls of this season are Tohka, Yoshino, and Kurumi. Their personalities are simple compared to their elaborate visual designs, but it’s enough to work in a harem comedy setting. Tohka is the first girl introduced, and she’s the ‘grug smash’ idiot who also doubles as the main tsundere of the cast. Yoshino is the government mandated moeblob who exists to look cute and be cute, and not much else. Kurumi, on the other hand, you might recognize as the ‘clock-eye’ girl who is far more popular than any other characters from this series. She’s a sadist, and she loves killing and torturing people! Shidou, on the other hand, is as much of a lukewarm inoffensive protagonist as you’d expect. He essentially has no personality, because any sense of ego would end up getting in the way of him being ping-ponged all over the nonsense plot.
If braindead action doesn’t fit your tastes, Date a Live also features braindead harem comedy tropes as well. The go-to humor style involves Shidou being involved with misunderstandings and accidentally running into lewd scenarios with the female characters, causing embarrassment. The only time the anime shows any hint of cleverness is when the Ratatoskr team gets involved with Shirou’s dates. This team addresses each situation as if they’re playing an actual dating sim. During various scenarios, the team of love aficionados will be given three choices to pick from. They will debate over which option is best for Shidou to say in order to raise his affection with each spirit, which often leads to misfires that put our main character in hot water. If there’s anything getting a chuckle from me during these episodes, it’s likely coming from one of these segments.
Otherwise, the complete trashdump of overstimulation makes this an agonizing watch from start to finish, only tolerable if you’re not paying full attention to it. This is a certified ‘second monitor’ background anime. It’s not completely disposable, and, believe it or not, it has its moments. But they’re few and far between. This show eventually switches up their writer team and gets some noticeable improvements from the fourth season onwards, but you’re not getting me to sit through two more seasons of mindless schlock just to experience something passable.
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