Date A Live II
10 Episodes and 1 OVA
Logged 20/08/2015 12:15p.m.
Phew! Managed to finish watching this anime, just in time to write a simple review of it! :)
Date A Live II. As expected from viewing the first season (and most harem anime, in general), this anime revolves around Itsuka Shido and his adventures of further expanding his harem of magical Spirit girls.
I enjoyed this season more than the first season. The producers have done a great job expanding the character development as well as the story-line.
Story-line. Compared to the first season, the story-line of the second season is very very well-established. There is ample follow-up from one event to the other. Furthermore, every scene makes more sense and is more organized, as opposed to the first season where certain scenes are random and some are just ridiculous. Thus, the story-line of the second season is vastly improved.
Character development. Adding to that, there is more character development for the existing characters in the second season. I love how the producers expanded the background of characters, like Tohka, Origami, Kotori, etc. The audience get to enjoy a deeper relationship between Tohka and Shido; a deeper yet unlikely acquintance between Origami and Mana; and so forth.
However, character development was not done for all characters. Some characters were just placed into less important roles. For instance, Kotori seems to have taken a less significant position of being (just) a 'commander' character in this season. Also, there is not much character development for Kurumi. But hey, there is less than 20 minutes per episode. Some things just had to be sacrificed, unfortunately speaking.
New characters. To make up for the lack of development, the second season introduced new characters into the mix to expand on Shido's harem. These new characters, like the Yamai twins and Miku, were very well-designed and are generally very interesting yet enjoyable characters.
Setting. Compared to the first season, this season no longer put too much emphasis on the 'dating sim' feel. In the first season, much time was spent on Shido's dating with the Spirit girls. On the contrary, this season focused more on aspects like character development, development of relationships between characters, battle scenes, and a bit more on conversations to build the story-line. For the newer additions to the Spirit girl harems, like the twins and Miku, there is not really a proper 'date' planned out for them, they somehow just fall in love with Shido, based the current events and interactions. Basically, it went from being a 'dating-sim'-ish anime to a true blue anime (things you would expect from an anime). I personally preferred this new feel, than the 'dating-sim' one. But, other viewers may have mixed preferences.
Battle scenes. And oh, did I mentioned the battle scenes? The battle scenes were beautiful to watch. As executed in the previous season, the battle animations, designs and simulations were superb. I personally liked the battle during the Ten-Oh festival and the one at Arubi Island where there were multiple confrontations. I've already covered the reasons why these battle scenes were great in the first simple review and battle review of Date A Live, so I won't repeat myself here.
Fun. And finally, this season was generally more fun and enjoyable (and sexier) to watch. Faithful viewers will get excited watching as each scene builds up for the next, and generally enjoy watching the main male protagonist build up his harem of girls by doing whatever a main male protagonist does.
Haha. Hope you all have a great week! Be sure to check out Date A Live II. Thanks for reading. :)
