Story:
In a rather predictable set of events, two new spirits, codenamed “Sister” and “Zodiac”, join the fray as potential targets that our protagonist Shido must save. As our full collection of sephirot on the tree finally reveals itself, darker secrets about the origin of the Spirits and what the opposing forces seek to do with them urge our protagonist to do what he does best: Date the girl, kiss them, save the world.
Date a Live to me always felt like a story that had a lot of potential. The Jewish mysticism themes and representation created a surprisingly well interconnected lore tree that both made sense and never strayed away from its intended path. Which, combined with relevant Archangel and mythological references combined with some clever wordplay in the naming scheme, created a series that felt like it had a lot more thought in its inception compared to many other harem series at the time. With its fourth season starting to dip its toes into the series’s endgame, the appreciation and admiration that I once had for the series starts to wane with what we end up getting here.
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think DAL’s story is anything to write home about. If anything, the general plotline in this season is more or less the same thing as we’ve seen in the previous three seasons. Find a spirit, date the girl, fail the date, girl really screws things up, and then Shido comes in as the savior to, in essence, ‘save them from themselves’. Sprinkle in a little bit of decently well made backstory, move one step forward to finishing the entire puzzle, and boom, an entire arc of Date a Live is made. So, if it’s the same thing just repeated again with a different coat of paint, what’s really all that bad about this season?
My biggest gripe with Season 3 was the show’s wonky pacing on account of the fact that J.C. staff shaved down Natsumi’s time in the limelight to barely over a third of the season’s runtime. As well as the fact that they tried to adapt an entire volume of the LN in only one fucking episode. Season 4 does something extremely similar, and it makes me mad. Covering the entirety of volumes 13-16, DAL 4 is a season that feels rushed in its execution, and unsatisfying to watch as an experience. Each volume is given only about three episodes to cover its entire run. Which at first doesn’t seem that bad since we’ve practically been doing this from the start. But when you consider the fact that these later parts of the story have a lot more lore to them that ties into some earlier parts of the series, rushing through those story beats starts to become a major point of contention. Since now we can’t just sit on a particular moment in the narrative to let things sink in because we HAVE to reach a certain point in the story so DAL 5 can start on a fresh volume.
As a result, the story just makes it seem like things just happen without much rhyme or reason. Yes, the loredumps are helpful and help flesh out the series beyond a battle harem that’s slowly collected more girls over time. But I can’t really enjoy that part of the story when you treat very important information as just kind of another thing you have to put in the narrative, now can I? The repetitive storytelling also doesn’t do the show many favors too. Since by this point, we’ve known that none of the dating sim choices that the show tries to do actually work. So why does the Fraxinus crew even bother trying it out when in at least eight different instances, it’s helped create a generally unfavorable outcome? Am I still a fan of the story as a whole? A hesitant yes, as sometimes the writing in the show is genuinely amusing to me since Shido has some pretty good comedic timing. But if we’re looking elsewhere, that becomes kind of a harder sell given how fast everything feels. Made especially worse by a number of other aspects of the show that make the show seem a lot more dramatic than it actually feels.
Characters:
By this point I’m kind of tired of trying to compare what Shido is supposed to be rather than what he is. Throughout the series, this season included, we’ve seen Shido as a harem protagonist with a heart of gold and a willingness to save the poor spirits in distress. Cookie cutter at worst, but what made him interesting to me were some of his dry mannerisms, as well as the fact that against whatever threat was happening at the time, he could at least somewhat hold his ground in a fight. Something that’s more evident by the fact that he’s been able to use the abilities of all the girls he’s sealed in tandem with one another. And while this Shido does exist, I’m constantly reminded that he is, at the end of the day, just kind of a boring harem protagonist that finds himself in way more sexy situations than he really should. Which really is a shame because Chad Shido pushing three girls that crawled under his bed out of his room unfazed because he wanted a good night’s sleep is by far one of the funniest subversions I’ve seen of the trope. And shows us that given the attention, he could unironically become a very good character in his own right.
If we’re talking girls though, we have Nia and Mukuro for that, codenamed “Sister” and “Zodiac” respectively. As a hardcore otaku with affections only the the two dimensional and a somewhat infantilized yandere, these two are certainly…choices, for the last two spots on the Sephirot tree. ‘Underdeveloped’, again, is the word that pops into my mind when discussing these two with Mukuro suffering the most out of the two of them.
Nia to me is one of the more interesting spirits introduced in the series, as her presence is largely plot related with an unfortunately small amount of time actually devoted to her character. She’s certainly an expressive character, probably the one with the most personality next to Miku, and has a few charming moments to express herself no matter how awkward they may be. But how she got to this point is kind of unknown/underdeveloped. And I think this is largely due to the fact that she generally doesn’t have a lot of time devoted to her in the light novel itself, so translating it created an equally underwhelming representation in the anime. Which is a shame too considering there was time spent on making a rather fun and contrasting character compared to a number of the other girls, but her most significant contribution to the series was to be used as a plot device to progress the series’ events. Instead of making her also a character who really should have a lot more to say considering the reasons surrounding her situation.
Mukuro unfortunately gets even worse treatment, seeing as how her two volumes get only got about four episodes to tell the whole story. Which translates to a very rushed character arc that feels only somewhat satisfying, if not wholly confusing because her backstory feels very incomplete and very unsatisfactory to witness. As with Nia, Mukuro is, in the best terms, a rather bizarre character, being the magical girl with a key capable of locking away her own heart in order to not feel pain. It’s a pretty good story hook that’s unfortunately bogged down by execution on account of the fact that many of the things she does don’t feel like they come from a place that makes sense in context to what we’ve seen. Just having a little bit more time would’ve made her arc that much more impactful as a story beat. But as she is, she feels like she’s just a part of her story instead of being the reason why her story, motivations, and character exist in the first place. Which again, is a shame. Since it seemed like the original intent was to make a fleshed out backstory that ends up just not having that much weight to it.
The rest of the Spirits I feel get the worst treatment of all of this (sans Kurumi). Tohka, Yoshino, the Yamai sisters, Natsumi, Miku, Origami, and Kotori all feel like they’re part of a collective entity instead of individual characters. At best their shallow, individual characteristics show up to remind the audience the kind of people they are, At worst, they’re the convenient cavalry used to help resolve the dire situation with little actual autonomy regarding what’s happening at the moment. In a way, they don’t even feel like characters anymore. Just mantlepieces that contribute to the overall story, but don’t do a whole lot unless they’re needed. It feels extremely wasteful, especially now considering we’ve now found all ten spirits. Kurumi is the only one that’s been able to escape this cycle to an extent due to her place in the story as an enigmatic, autonomous entity. A fact that’s also helped by the fact that the next section of the story after Mukuro heavily features her with again, mixed results as the story rushes itself to try and complete a checkpoint instead of telling a story. Kurumi somehow just also feels out of character too, especially towards the last episode of the season. Which somehow is the most damning part of this whole thing due to the payoff for all of the buildup we’ve had so far of this big titty goth gf resulting in something I’d regard as ‘less than stellar’. Since now everything’s kind of out in the open, and maybe some of the things that we saw in S1 compared to S4 don’t quite match up snugly as it should in terms of character progression and growth.
The rest of the characters admittedly don’t really have much immediate significance as I’d like. Issac and Elliot, while vitally important to the show’s story, don’t feel like that at all. Partially due to their expository nature as the old guys that know everything, but also because they don’t really show up that often. And Issac’s motivations aren’t really that well known as of yet in order to keep mystery. Much of the other important characters like the various wizards and side characters working for either DEM or Ratatoskr really only exist to join in the battle for a moment before fucking off. Which are hardly reasons to consider them as characters since you could easily replace a lot of them as sexy fighting robots. Which admittedly, is a lot more true than I’d like to admit.
Aesthetics:
As is tradition, Date A Live is handled by yet another production company in a style that’s a lot more different than its previous seasons. Now in the hands of GeekToys, the quality of the art (compared to season 3 at least) is better, but is still missing the mark in a lot of areas.
While Tsunako’s artstyle is understandably difficult to replicate, the shortcuts and design decisions for DAL IV are admittedly worse than I liked to admit. At least compared to JC staff, what Geektoys has made in terms of character quality and consistency is far better than what’s been previously seen in the season before it. Which would a boon towards this season if not for the fact that the series still doesn’t look great. Color-wise, the characters look incredibly flat and lack a lot of the polish that the early two seasons had. Not to mention character proportions look a lot more off than they really should be. It’s a weird point to bring up, but a substantial number of the girls’ chests are a lot flatter/smaller than they should be when compared to their LN cover art. Or showings in previous seasons. Which really shouldn’t be a thing that matters in all honesty. But, when you consider that this show is an ecchi series with still a surprising amount of sexy content, trying to accomplish those scenes with characters that look significantly nerfed compared to their previous outings is really strange.
My biggest gripe though is the usage of 3D models and how unappealing the fight scenes are to watch. Previous seasons had a lot of effort put into the fight scenes, with a lot of effects and particles to make these otherworldly girls and machines have the impact that it should. What do we get here instead? 3D models of various characters fighting awkwardly clashing into each other with none of the oomph or power behind it. It’s not just a downgrade to the action, it actively hurts the flow of the scene. Since it makes what should be the penultimate part of the arc one of the most awkward and underwhelming sections to view on account of how little movement happens when swords, lasers, and magic powers should be clashing with each other and coat the sky in a rainbow of colors.
Miyu Tomita’s “OveR” is not particularly an opening that I’m that much of a fan of. It definitely has parts to it that’re similar to the ops of previous seasons, but compared to the song that Sweet Arms have produced for the series, it pales in comparison. Which is a shame because in its on right, it’s decent. But it really doesn’t stand out. (Certainly not against ‘I Swear’.) And of course, since their entire career is basically built on the back of this show, Sweet Arms is still involved with this project, though now being relegated as the ones responsible for the ED, “S.O.S.”. It’s admittedly also not that great, but it at least still has the usual harmonics that I’m used to from this group. With a mysterious melody throughout the whole song to echo the more mystery solving elements of the show’s story now that a lot more parts of the show’s story are starting to be revealed.
Final Thoughts:
It’s been nearly ten years since I first watched the first season of Date a Live and became a fan of this series. While my tastes have changed as I’ve grown older and I understand this series isn’t that amazing, DAL still holds a special place in my heart as a sort of comfort show that I look forward to because a large part of the show’s lore and storytelling I feel are genuinely interesting and have a lot of potential.
But as the series’ has continued onwards, a lot of my initial enjoyment of the series has waned for a great number of reasons. And this season really hammers in the fact that every season will be handled by a different company, with everything from the quality of the story to the accuracy of the character designs being decided by a dice roll. Which really doesn’t give me a positive vote of confidence for DAL’s future. We only have about five volumes left for the rest of the main story. And I have a sneaking suspicion that they’re going to try and squeeze all five of those volumes, some of the densest and most action-packed portions of the story into a single season of twelve episodes. Which if you’re actually going to do that? Please don’t. If Season four should have taught the people responsible for DAL anything, it’s that rushing important story content really doesn’t help the pacing at all, and for me that’s why I’m not that thrilled about the result.
All in all, I’m mostly just disappointed about the result, lamenting the fact that we’ll never get the kind of care DAL II got ever again. Which, despite that season being the shortest with ten episodes, was the most well-paced season with good art direction and effects that made what was happening feel impactful. In a way, it feels like the people responsible just kind of want to get this project over and done with as soon as possible, not really giving two shits about the quality of what they’re making since they’re just trying to race to the finish line. If that’s the case, then just quit while you’re only slightly behind. Better to make an unfinished product that’s good (or at least decent), than ram your head against the wall to finish a project that’s only going to suffer diminishing quality as time marches on.
