Date A Live - 08

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I came into this episode hoping to figure out what the heck Kurumi (a.k.a. Nightmare) is all about.  Well…at least we get a little more character development for her.

Well, if we know one thing about Kurumi from this episode, she’s very lewd.  For one, molesting Origami not only with her disembodied Nightmare hands, but with her own fingers as well.  This is a huge step up from the creepiness of the end of the previous episode.  Talk about playing with your food.  Not to mention wanting to go to a lingerie shop with Shido and thinking that’s a perfect date spot.

It’s nice to see the trio of random schoolgirls playing a slightly more important role than they used to.  Instead of just sitting on the sidelines gossiping, they actually try to find out what’s bothering Tohka.  I sort of hope they get slightly more character development, although I don’t find it very likely at this point.  I’d be happier, at any rate, if they got more character development than teaching Tohka to basically act like a stripper to “seduce” Shido.  Their later scene in this episode was amusing, though, when they chased Shido out of the lingerie shop.

This episode, though, highlights one of the facets of harem anime that tries so hard to be interesting but gets really old really fast.  The whole “I have to be in three different places at once” scenario is so played out it just doesn’t hold that much appeal anymore; and this doesn’t just go for anime, but for pretty much any movie or television show regardless of country of origin.  It’s especially bad in cases like this, though, when a guy is out on a date with three different girls at the same time in slightly different locations.  I mean, honestly, no one should want to date a guy who would be such a player.

Perhaps what redeems this episode, though, is the fact that we know Shido isn’t really a player and is mostly doing this because of a) Kotori’s insistence, b) Origami’s assumption that his original proposal for a date was genuine, c) the fact that he really does care about Tohka, and d) the fact that he’s a nice guy and can’t just leave any of these three girls hanging.

The end of this episode, like the end of the last one, suddenly dives into horror again.  I have to admire Kurumi’s desire to help a cat being tortured by a group of guys…but, of course, her solution is freaking crazy.  How are Shido, Kotori, and the Fraxinus crew going to deal with Kurumi now that she know what she’s capable of?  As usual, Date A Live keeps drawing me back in as I start to pull away from it.  At least the next episode looks like it’s going to be full of action!