Impression:

When a new love interest appears in a harem anime, I tend to get pretty excited. I love the romance. I try not to get attached to a specific pairing before all of the characters are introduced because you never know what pairing could appeal to you the most. There are really only two character types that can ruin my buzz. Getting a relative or loli as a love interest really gets to me. I don’t like that shit. My issues with incest should be obvious and hopefully shared with most people, but the loli thing is a little more complex. Obviously, a younger girl who looks and acts like a little girl is bad because pedophilia is bad. A younger girl that is drawn to look older than she is also bad. However, this only becomes bad when they mention the age gap. If I can’t tell how old the characters are, then it is tough for me to be thrown off by age. The situation that jumps into a gray area is the character that is the same age as their love interest, but looks and acts like they are a little kid. Suzu from Seitokai Yakuindomo is a good example of that character type. I am not completely against it, but it will take me a bit to adjust to them as a love interest. Why am I bringing this up? Yoshino is obviously the little girl character. The puppet’s name is Yoshinon so that should clear up any name issues for those of you that are only watching the anime. Yoshino is the kind of character that you want to pat on the head and save from all of the bad things. I say that not only because it is true, but also because that is what Shidou did for her. He tracked down Yoshinon at Origami’s place and he does that classic protagonist thing where he braves danger to help out the girl. This time he uses his crazy regenerative abilities to walk through an ice storm and reunite Yoshino with Yoshinon. They kissed and everyone lived happily ever after. Well, kinda. An apartment building was erected to house the spirits that Shidou tames. I guess that means that we are just going to keep trucking along with the character introduction episodes.I do think that Touka will remain the main love interest, but you never know what will happen.

This represents Yoshino a little too well.

Current Opinion of the Show:

I have some mixed feelings regarding Date A Live. I am all for spending time with all of the characters, but I am seeing pacing that is oddly similar to what we got out of Infinite Stratos. Why does this bother me? I think that Infinite Stratos suffered from spending way too much time introducing characters when it could have furthered the story. Luckily, it is getting a second season, but you never know how much time you will get. Daniel is still waiting on the third season of Haruhi. I feel like a series that spends its entire first season on character introductions is basically treating it as a really long trailer for the series as a whole. Get some more story out there. I wasn’t completely disappointed with Infinite Stratos, and Date A Live obviously has time left to recover, but I need more from this series. I don’t want this to be on the list of random harems to watch if you are bored and like the genre. I am being critical right now, but that is because I actually like what they have going on and I want this to be a really good series. The characters are pretty damn cool. Touka and Yoshino may have pretty common character types, but Origami is a different story. Never underestimate how entertaining a yandere character can be. Although, I only call Origami yandere because of her crazy stalker tendencies. She is no Yuno. I guess the last thing that is on my mind will bring us back to the loli thing that I talked about earlier. How old are the spirits? I really need to know because Yoshino is a nice character, but there is no way that I can ship her with Shidou if she is really young and acts like that. Oh well, I am looking forward to seeing what is going to happen now that Touka has her own place.