Date A Live II

Updated: 13, July 2016


Once again, the momentum of an ambitious premiere is carried straight into a brick wall. Although I reserved my expectations heading into this sequel, I certainly anticipated more than ten episodes of a disgrace. Date A Live II strayed away from the merits which put its prequel on the map, such as the charms of the vivacious heroines or remarkable humor tied to a spectrum of dating simulation choices. It was only yesterday that an udon shop launched an eventful assault on the core group (en route to a local hot spring). It was only yesterday that Shidou matched wits and fists ... against true adversity, juggling a batch of pressing demands with everything on the line. It was only yesterday that players were ripe with presence and not confined to restrictions of a dismal cause.

While Date A Live's strengths permeated well through a lively bunch headlining season one, there was no vibrancy to replicate that success in this second act. The Berserk twins were pure lighter fluid to one of the most staggering time sinks I have witnessed in this genre. Was it really too much to ask for with yin-yang personalities serving no purpose other than to get Shidou hot? And as for the Diva, I hated to see her unique sexual preference and tastes overshadowed by her foully variable and one-dimensional personality.

The premise for this sequel was collectively lacking in soul and impact. Most of, if not all the battles, were saturated with cheap chatter among combatants stirred together with a high concentration of pretentious drama. The most obvious misunderstandings were blown well out of proportion while new rivals and antagonist powerhouses seemingly made their appearances out of thin air. The more easygoing school events and concerts did little to support the effort or lighten the atmosphere.

It would be great if the upcoming movies, OVAs, and/or TV sequels can rebound and inject Live-liness back into this series. Nonetheless, the signature trademark of the glasses schoolgirl accurately sums up this installment. It really was that lame!

Note: This review assumes you have seen the first season and might include spoilers for that season.
Date A Live II continues the exploits of Shidou to seal off the spirits with a kiss. This time around the stakes are even higher and the conquests more difficult.


There is a huge problem with Date A Live II and that is they changed the formula of the show. It used to be a decent comedy with really good action sequences and now it's more of a show with decent action sequences with overused comedy. On top of that the "Date" part of the show is gone. Do ... you remember when Shidou took the girls in S1 out on dates? Doesn't happen in S2.

To be fair one of the reasons there are not really dates it the difficulty in the conquests themselves this time around are more akin to the difficulty the entire cast had against Kurumi back in S1. The first conquest are twins, Kaguya and Yuzuru. The former being a tsundere and the other one of those quiet types. The other girl is Miku, whose gimmick is that she really hates men.

As for the rest of the cast nothing really changes. They make returns, but you might be surprised which ones actually get some of the spotlight. That said none of them make any types of growth. For the most part most things stay the same. This includes Kotori where the ending of S1 kinda made you feel like there would be some big revelation in this season. There isn't. You'll also notice I didn't even talk about the new characters in any detail. That's because what I told you is essentially their entire character. They are just kind of boring. In S1 the characters were one-dimensional but entertaining. Here they are one-dimensional and boring.

Now let's get to the main villain, or for that matter all the villains. Like last season they don't show up until near the end of the anime but they are handled even more poorly. They don't really explain their motives or why they have to do what they are doing in the first place. That or they are simply extremely shallow.


Now for some good things. The animation is really good and flashy.Action sequences are pretty crisp, despite not being interesting. The anime also makes great use of sound effects. From a production stand point it has a lot of the flash.

I know I might have seemed some what hard on the show but in all honesty it's not a terrible anime, but it is a pretty significant step down from a show that was only pretty good to begin with.

Expecting Date A Live II to improve was probably too much. It’s obvious from the pictures that something here is going to go wrong. We already have enough goofy characters. We don’t need more. We want to see more of Tohka, Yoshino, Tokisaki and Reinne – all entertaining personalities that tend to light up any scene they’re in. Tokisaki wasn’t really defeated in the previous season, so there’s clearly more to do with her. Why add more?

The additions are not that bad, but they’re bad in a very predictable way. It starts with the twins. The problem they introduce is different enough, but just look ... at them. The character design is sexy, but it’s more sexy than pretty. The previous Spirits’ design tried to tell us more about their character than to make them sexually appealing. Tokisaki is the only one with an actual sexy design, but in this case it’s part of her character.

It’s not like they’re completely empty shells. They are pretty entertaining in the scenes they’re in, and the conflict they’re in could lead to a very interesting relationship. You quickly forget that they’re dressed for an S&M club because their antics come from the same creative mind that gave us Yoshino’s wide-eyed fear and Tokisaki’s creepiness. Their fights are just as fun as anything in the previous season.

Sadly, there is not enough of that. We spend two episodes with the twins and some embarrassing fanservice. The previous season never had that amount. What happens in these episodes feels like it came from those shows that just want to push the envelope. It’s not funny and it’s out of place. The show still rolls along mostly without ecchi – you’d expect the camera to linger on Reinne when she appears in a bikini, but you barely have time to register there’s a teddy bear between her breasts. What was the point of those awkward scenes in the bedrooms?

Miku is a little better. There is something slightly off-putting in her design. Maybe it’s because she looks like Coco from Mermaid Melody with a new paint job. Still, her character is interesting and she provides a good conflict. Once you get over the over-sexualizing, the new Spirits offer problems that are different enough than the previous to show the creators haven’t run of new ideas.

In fact, they have too many ideas. We have a new antagonist who is interesting until the climax. Jessica appears, which could help add some depth to the whole wing of the AST. Ellen, the Bad Guy’s sidekick occasionally looks like there is an interesting personality underneath that cool hair. There is even a school festival that slides smoothly to the plot instead of feeling tokenistic.

It doesn’t build to anything. The climax is the real weak point of the series.. The previous climax was also messy, but Tokisaki lead it. It felt unhinged, out of control and unique to the series. Somewhere around the eight episode, the series becomes one extended action scene Shido mows down a lot of mooks, but the real causalties are the personalities.

Some characters are already halfway to gone before the finale. Kotori and Yoshino are barely there, which makes no sense. The few times Yoshino appears, struggling with understanding a soap opera are what made the original so fun. The climax finally kills them all. Kotori and Yoshino go AWOL. The twins are pushed to the back, almost as if they were never there. Jessica is thrown into the action scene with a conclusion that deserved a much better build-up. Origami is still an unnecessary part of the harem. Miku becomes a tsundere. Bad Guy reveals he’s bad because he’s bad and Mana is still just as useless.

Tohka is the only one who’s given some room to do things. Her clinginess to Shido is pretty annoying, but there’s enough of the fish-out-of-water antics that make her fun. She eventually becomes the center. If so, why introduce the new Spirits, if they’re just pushed to the back in the end?

Why is this so generic? What happened to the bravery? The series used to flinch at violence, to question whether it’s a legitimate method to solve problems. It was its whole charm. It forced the hero to interact with the ‘bad guys’. Violence is frowned upon. Now Shido mows down faceless soldiers like he’s Sylvester Stallone in a generic building. There aren’t even cool visuals to accompany it. He just swings his sword and people fall down.

Speaking of Shido, he hasn’t changed. He’s still boring and has no charisma. He’s still given a lot of situations that can be great for character development, and he does nothing with it. How can you even write such a dull character? Asimov isn’t exactly the master of creating human beings, but he gives the game pieces (In Asimov, there are no characters, just game pieces) some traits that make them recognizable. Shido is nothing but a plot-mover. The story is clearly about him. He’s the star of the climax this time, so make him worthwhile. Alas, everything he does is just for convenience.

It’s not a problem of length. 10 episodes is a little too short, but there was enough time that was better spent on other things. We didn’t need all these fanservice and the finale could have been a bit more exciting than just killing faceless people. There is still some fuel in this franchise. Most of the new ideas that were introduced are pretty good. The new Spirits are a worthwhile addition. This season does even less with everything, and the result is just a shopping list of cool ideas. The series doesn’t deserve this as a swan song, but I worry that feature developments will stay, will, undeveloped.

2 dates out of 5

Never has a change in the animation studio been this apparent to me. That was essentially my first thought as I tried up to sum up my feelings about Date A Live. The main reason why I started watching this anime was because someone I know has it in her favorites list and I thought to myself 'eh. Why not.'... So I watched the first season and was pleasantly surprised. Harem anime have been some of my least favorite in the past, so I expected this one to be fairly similar... but honestly, the first season of this anime was really, really good. Mainly because ... it managed to escape quite a chunk of the normal things that harem anime go through, while still putting a spin on the things that it did do like almost every other harem out there. One scene that's still stuck with me is the Onsen episode in the first season, which was genuinly funny and was something I hadn't even remotely witnessed before. So after that first season, my expectations for the second season were quite high... and as you might've guessed from the very first sentence and my rating, I was thoroughly disappointed.

So why's that?? Well, mainly because the second season was missing both the cleverness and the heart of the first one... though it started out promising. The first episode felt just like something from the first season... but from the second episode onward, everything went straight down. Just like the first season, there was an Onsen episode here... but unlike back then, this one was just a plain, generic and unfun one, which would go on to set the tone for the remainder of the anime. The somewhat unique setting of the MC going on dates with characters and being 'supported' by a team of 'professionals', choosing his answers Visual Novel style was replaced by dull drama and fights that just weren't interesting whatsoever; the interesting characters of the first season (especially Yoshino) were put on the bench in favor of new characters that turned out to be as lively and engaging as a round of chess on a graveyard and the humor that gave the first season its charm was replaced by one-dimensional characters pretending to hav serious conversations during silly Mecha-suit fights... so in short, everything that made the first season stand out was switched out for generic things that are about as unique as water in Atlantis.

That said, it wasn't ALL bad (otherwise my score would've been even lower)... As mentioned above, the first episode was still really, really good and also there was a brief part during the beginning of the second arc where the humor of the first season flashed up again, when he had to dress up as and pretend to be a girl in order to get close to a spefic girl. Also on the rare occasions that the other characters from the first season DID show up, their personalities were kept intact, which was something I had feard would not be the case ('Dark Tohka' notwithstanding). Another thing that the second season did was make me realize just how good the first one had truly been, causing me to retroactively change my rating for that season from 7 to 8 points (which is something I almost never do. Once I've finished a season of an anime, I normally don't touch the score anymore).

So in the end, what I'm trying to get at here is that the second season was just completely lacking the heart, genius and charm of the first one and just felt like something that was thrown together with minimal effort just to rake in as much money as possible. Maybe it's just coincidential that there was this huge of a difference in quality once it was produced by a different studio, but I personally don't believe that. Especially since Production IMS is a studio that likes to put out low-effort harem anime (see also 'Hundred' and next season's 'Masou Gakuen HxH')

So... that was it for my first review here. To be honest, I've always wanted my first review to be either my favorite anime (Chuunibyou demo koi ga shitai) of all time or my least favorite one (Ookami Shoujo to Kuro Ouji), but the jarring difference in quality between these two seasons just made me want to open my stupid mouth in order to complain a bit. To anyone that's still reading this, thank you for doing so... and sorry for making you read this shit ^^'. Anyhow, have a wonderful day (or night, who knows) and make sure not to fall for scammers. Goodbye! :D

Okay, Date A Live 2... The first season was good, so this should be better. Well....... I was wrong. So hyped for the 2nd season but when it came out, it was just a huge disappointment. I know that he just makes girls like him and all, but on the first season it was actually good. S2 just made it boring and not very enjoyable to watch. Huge letdown coming from an ex-Date A Live fan.

I had to force myself to watch it, and it made the anime more horrible for me. If they could've made it a bit better and more enjoyable to ... watch, maybe people wouldn't hate it. So sad to see a good anime with potential made hated because of S2.

why am i watchin. i hated it in the firs season so why i keep watching it... ig im dumb

characters lack brain and everyone is so crazy abt that mc. hes not even that good you know. there are realy nice female characters but they are wasted.

ik, its a harem kind of anime but he should be lil more moral i think. but to be fair, he keeps his promise of trying to save everyone.

u may like it if not experienced in anime enough to tell how bad and wothless it is, or its just your type and not mine. i really dislike that anime ... but lets not forget abt personal preferences.

i hope it wont be a waste of time for you and youll enjoy it, but id never watch it. gimme back my time ;-;

The second season has enlightened me of the appeal to Shiori Itsuka.

Basically the same as the previous season, a harem story pasted onto a crappy dating-simulator setting which is accounted as "original".
The difference is that we get new girls this time, twins! Although none of them matter, as the only one that does is Tohka.
Art is the same as usual, enough to satisfy someone's desires. But it is also used to express Tohka's purity and wholesome nature.
Sound is, once again, mediocre. Nothing I can say about it.
The whole entire show is about developing characters through a dating-simulator setting, but it somehow manages to simply ... fit all the girls into the standard archetypes that only know how to be a harem. They really only learn how to love the main character, Shidou, and slowly degenerate in level of interest and common sense. I personally did not enjoy the characters acting as such.
Tohka gets some drama though, and it builds onto her and shidou, and is highly appreciated.
Maximum Enjoyment derived from Tohka

Story: 3 (Same as before but the antagonist isn't as good as Kurumi, simply poses a threat; also less interesting as the concept only seemed fresh in the first season, and that was the main things it had going for it)
Art: 7
Sound: 7
Character: 3 (The amount of characters I can't really bare increased by 3)
Enjoyment: 10 (I'm human scum and I feed off of this)
Overall: 4 (Excludes Enjoyment)