Date A Live - 03

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Date A Live continues as a harem/magical girl mix that fits both genres nearly to a T.

Tohka turns out to be a deredere (wearing her emotions on her sleeve) and also the anime’s foodie, eating everything in sight and assuming everything she eats is a “date” because it’s so amazing.  She overreacts to many commonplace occurrences, like pretty much every magical girl in any anime.  The contrast between her deredere personality and Origami’s kuudere personality (acting cool and unemotional, but being soft and sweet on the inside) makes their love-triangle with Shido even more tense.

Unfortunately, the majority of the interaction between Shido and Tohka in this episode is less of the serious, down-to-earth conversation and more of the typical “magical-girl-doesn’t-understand-the-normal-world-so-guy-has-to-show-her-everything” type of interaction.  After the halfway point of the episode, though, they start to get to serious conversations again, which in my opinion is much better (and much less predictable) than the first half.

There was nothing particularly interesting or new about the majority of this episode that isn’t in other harem and/or magical girl anime.  The only really (potentially) surprising occurrence was Shido’s near-death/resurrection.  At this point, we learn that he virtually can’t die—I mean, if a laser blast that takes out almost his entire side can’t kill him, it’s obviously going to take a lot.  I’m generally not a fan of invincible characters in slice-of-life type anime, so I’m not sure how I feel about this turn of events yet.

I was also somewhat surprised by the fact that Shido and Tohka’s kiss (apparently) made her not a Spirit anymore—at least that’s the impression I get from her weapon and even clothes disappearing as they kiss.  Again, I’m not quite sure how I feel about this occurrence, as I was expecting the anime to center around Shido trying to woo Tohka (rather than just being a series of magical girls he tries to date).  I suppose this leads to a question of whether or not Shido will continue to care for Tohka as he has.  The other option is that he’ll turn his full attention to each new Spirit he must date.  I’ve seen harem anime go both ways in the past (having the central guy be a nice guy who focuses his attention on one and only one girl, or having him jump from love interest to love interest throughout the show), so at this point Date A Live could go either way.  Personally, I’m hoping for the former.