Impression:

I guess you could say that we got some actual plot progression in this series. We found out that Shidou is not actually related to Kotori. Apparently, something happened that messed up the memories of both Shidou and his real little sister Mana a few years ago and they both ended up in different areas. Oh yeah, Shidou has a blood related little sister named Mana. She looks a lot like her brother and is a high-ranking member of the AST. Apparently, Mana has killed a spirit in the past and is able to take on ten AST members at once with ease. That is a pretty crazy thing to think about, but this is an anime. Honestly, the only thing that I can take away from the little sister thing is the fact that they better not make Kotori a serious candidate in the harem. I don’t care about blood relations. They were raised as siblings and being anything more than that is creepy as hell. Don’t say that I am reading too much into this because you would get the same feeling after watching the sister confrontation scene. Aside from that, we did get to meet a new spirit. Kurumi makes Origami look like a docile schoolgirl. She says that she loves Shidou, but this monster has purposefully killed thousands of people. The other spirits only caused destruction on accident. This one is homicidal. On the list of things that I did not expect to see in this series, someone eating people is definitely pretty high up there. Well, that happened. Not only did Kurumi eat some random people, but she also wants to eat Shidou. This romantic comedy just got a little dark.

I am glad that they didn’t actually show the people being eaten.

Current Opinion of the Show:

I am really excited about what we got this week. The whole romantic comedy thing can get pretty stale at times. Unless you have excellent writing or a very unique story, harems kind of blend together into this mess that people will pick from when they feel like watching something that has their favorite voice actor in it. I kind of felt that this series could end up in that mess. They were spending too much time either introducing characters or having hot spring episodes that didn’t work like regular hot spring episodes. However, this evil spirit development may be changing all of that. I may not be the biggest fan of gore, but Date A Live finally has a truly unique element in its story. I will say that the gore did get kind of crazy. The spirit devoured three guys, then she got decapitated for her crimes. Neither scene was shown in detail, but it was very obvious what happened. The decapitation thing is what really bothered me, but it was short-lived because Kurumi survived. It seems that she can assimilate great power by consuming others. Shidou’s regenerative powers are probably very important to her. Aside from the incest stuff which I don’t want to harp about, there is one other thing that bothered me. Mana is way too strong. Unless they say that she is a spirit or that she has some other crazy powers, I can’t understand why she is so strong. Her technology can’t be that much better than what Origami has and if it is, then they need to give it to more of the AST members. Oh well, there will be a crazy big date in the next episode, but I no longer know what to expect from this series. That mystery is what really excites me and I look forward to more crazy stuff.