Date a Live

I like anime series about flirting and picking up girls with an interesting background story to add a layer of depth to all that dating. For example, all the seasons of The World God Only Knows so far have gotten 5 stars from me, and the show belongs to the best of this subgenre. The first season of Date a Live got me hooked too. The show revolves around likable girls and even the male protagonist, Shido, is quite nice. I found the whole concept of dating to save the world original and fun. The animation and music are also great. I really enjoyed the first season and I’m giving it a 7.5/10. The second season brings more of the same, which gets a bit boring at times. Fortunately, Kurumi more than makes up for this. I’m sure that anyone watching Date a Live instantly has a favorite character and waifu. Even those who have only heard of Date a Live know Kurumi!  It’s also clear to the writers that this girl has a lot of potential, which is why she has her own spin-offs. The second season gets a 7/10 from me. But there's a little problem. If I've already seen and identified the best girl of the series, what chance do the other girls have of attracting my attention and making me interested in their story? By the third season, I started noticing that it was basically the same thing over and over again, and the overall background story was unraveled with the speed of a tired slug. Plus, the third season probably has the least interesting new girls yet. It centers around Origami who I wasn’t all that crazy about in the first place. While there are hints and revelations concerning the main storyline, there’s hardly any suspense. Third season only gets a 5.5/10. By the fourth season, I was downright annoyed with the concept of the endless harem with a constant supply of new girls. Once Shido picks up his latest victim, he basically reduces her to an inconsequential character with only a couple of lines at most in the later episodes. The ensemble of girls trailing behind the protagonist seems unnatural, and they each get only a line or two in each episode to show that they’re still there. Even my favorite girls from the first two seasons have become mere shadows of what they used to be, just background characters, while the story moves on, adding more girls to the collection, who are subsequently also reduced to background characters. What I like about The World God Only Knows is that it knows how to work with this and brings each storyline to a satisfying conclusion in order to focus on the next one, with all the individual storylines adding to the larger point of the whole story. The first two-thirds of the fourth season were just plain boring (new facts about the powerful organizations don’t help it much, either), but Kurumi saves the day again. As if she knew what I'd been missing (the previous two new girls in this series are hardly as interesting as the ones from the first two seasons who have become inconsequential by now...). She's all "Ara, ara..." and sexier than all the other girls combined, who are just following the main character around. She finally lets us peek into her tragic past, shows us what she's been up to all along, and convinces everyone that she's simply the best waifu for the main character. The storyline about the First Spirit gets a “mighty big” surprise at the end, which was obvious to me right from the start because Aya Endō was hardly even trying to change her voice. Anyway, the last third improves my impression of the fourth season, and my overall rating of it is 5.5/10. The fifth season could be the last one. It's probably clear where things are going and who needs to be picked up now, and honestly, I’d be happy if it ended there. (29.06.2022) (minder) (meer)