Let’s go!

 

Spirits. Different life forms that exist in a critical space and cause peculiar disasters.

Strategy 1: Annihilate them by military force.
Strategy 2: Date them and make them fall in love.

Let’s get down to the main review.

Art

The art style continues to be well done in my opinion. I always feel the need to comment on how I love the colors in Date A Live and I don’t really the insults hurled at J.C. Staff for it. I always think that Date A Live is a fairly pretty anime. But then again this might be just a personal opinion.

Story

The first part of the Natsumi arc draws to a close, showing off some surprising deductions from Shido. I have to say that I enjoyed this part most of all. As someone who writes often, I know that there is a format and structure to formulating a mystery and Koshi Tachibana(the writer for Date A Live) followed it perfectly. All of the clues were there and able to pieced together before the reveal was made. This is mainly done so the reveal doesn’t feel like it came out of thin air.

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The ending of episode 3 in my book was hilarious and a little unexpected if you didn’t read the light novels and know that Natsumi was a little girl. She’s a little bitter about being found out that she’s not a incredibly beautiful 20 something woman and instead she’s about somewhere around Yoshino’s age.

But moving to Episode 4, we have hi-jinks with Shido having to deal with all of the Spirits being little girls ranging from child-like arguments to Origami making it look like Shido had a daughter with Origami.

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Once we get to the major points of Episode 4, it’s revealed how Natsumi views herself and others. It’s actually quite sad compared to how she acted when she was first introduced. The air of the mature onee-san type has fallen away to reveal the scared little girl that only wants to be beautiful. Which is something a lot of people can definitely agree with.

After dealing with the AST and being injured, Natsumi pampered and beautified by all of the Spirits not only to make her look better but to also boost her confidence.

Characters
Shido Itsuka

Shido always seems to rank in the top 5 of my favorite harem protagonists. This clever little show of his intelligence was definitely reminded me how much I like him. Now your average harem protagonist wins by being just so nice but Shido even when he has the Fraxinus crew whispering in his ear actually most of his best moves come from his heart in the moment. This is merely one of those moments.

Natsumi

Natsumi…poor girl. No character other than perhaps Miku makes me feel more. The main reason being that you can see Natsumis and Mikus all over the world. You walking by a Natsumi everyday. A little girl or a young woman that’s seen the ads, the movies, the models, and all of the stuff and she’s looked at herself and saw she wasn’t like them. That she didn’t fit the ‘Mold of Beauty’ as they say. Not being like that kills their confidence.

And after that where do they go? Probably to the makeup, the beauty and skincare companies, and the fashion industry that will tell them they’ll make them beautiful, they’ll make them noticeable. Natsumi’s transformation is just another allegory to that. Perhaps I’m reading too much into it but Natsumi’s situation is so sad that I could cry. She really is a pretty girl but all of the stuff around her eroded her confidence down.

So until the next review,
Later Days
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