DO WANT!

And so the Fall Season is under way! It has a lot to live up, having to follow up on things like the epicness of Gurren Lagann and the GREATEST END of School Days, but I’d say we’re off to a pretty good start with Da Capo II.

Sakurai Yoshiyuki slowly wakes up after dreaming about being confessed to by a girl underneath a sakura tree. Suddenly he realizes he’s late and bolts out of the room, on his way out he almost tramples over his little sister, Asakura Yume, who was just about to wake him up. Yume wants him to make her something for breakfast because she’s starving and their older sister, Asakura Otome, had to leave early to prepare for the cultural festival their school is having that day. Yoshiyuki uses his magic to make her something and the two rush off to school after she finishes.

At school, we’re introduced to Yoshiyuki’s friends, most notably, Tsukishima Koko, who quite obviously has romantic feelings for Yoshiyuki. She tries to ask him to spend the day at the festival with her, but before she gets a chance, the class iincho comes along and tries to force Yoshiyuki to do some work, he suddenly remembers he has to deliver some papers to the school principal and uses that as an excuse to run off and ditch work.

The school’s principal, Sakura from the original Da Capo, isn’t there when Yoshiyuki goes to her office, he cleans up a little to pass the time and ends up finding a long staircase in her closet. However, Sakura returns and he doesn’t have a chance to check it out. After handing over the papers, Sakura asks who he’ll be spending the day with, urging him to try his best and have a school life filled with love. Yoshiyuki laughs it off and says he’ll probably just hang around Suginami and Wataru for the day.

Yoshiyuki spends the rest of the day is spent running around the school festival with his friends as well as Koko and her friends Anzu and Akane. It soon becomes clear that the goal of the day is to give things between Yoshiyuki and Koko a push in the right direction. The group goes to some events like a love compatibility test (where they get a rather indecisive rating) and go to a tea house that supposedly has the power to grant wishes with its tea, all the while hinting to Koko that she should hurry up and confess already.

As the day winds to a close, everyone makes up an excuse to run off leaving Koko and Yoshiyuki together alone. And there, under the falling petals of a sakura tree, Koko confesses her love for Yoshiyuki. He suddenly remembers his dream from that morning and realizes it must have been Koko’s dream. He reminisces about all the time they’ve spent together from childhood until now and how important she is to him, but is not sure if those feelings are that of love. But when he sees Koko about to cry, he caves in and agrees to go out with her, the two hug and Koko is brought to tears, happy that her wish came true.

First Impressions

A pretty good start to Da Capo II, a series I’ve been wanting ever since I finished watching the original Da Capo, and that I’ve been praying would save my faith in the series after the disaster that was Da Capo: SS.

I’m pretty shocked that there has been a confession already, it’s rare to see this type of harem focus on one girl from the start. But that being said, Koko is doomed. There is no way that we’re going through 13 episodes of harem drama and ending up with the couple we started off with. I predict Koko heartbreak in no more than two episodes, if she’s really lucky. Chalk up another loss for the osananajimi camp.

Since it’s Feel who’s at the helm of Da Capo II, I’d expect another siscon battle, Yume vs Otome, for Yoshiyuki’s heart. My fellow siscons seem to agree. Not that I have anything against the other girls, but as Nemu’s descendants, these two have my support.

Typical of Feel to relegate Shirakawa to almost background scenery. Aside from this brief shot in the OP and her getting hit on by a gang of guys at the festival, she got virtually no screentime. Though I wouldn’t count her out completely, Kotori was the main contender against Nemu, even though she didn’t put up much of a fight, so Nanaka going head to head against the Asakura sisters isn’t a stretch. Truthfully, I can see myself coming to like Nanaka, I’ve heard that she has the most interesting and engaging story of the cast, and her character design is probably the best of the cast thus far. I’m not jumping ships, but I wouldn’t be enraged by a Nanaka victory, as unlikely as it seems to be at this point.

On the topic of characters, the voice cast for Da Capo II is really weird. Yume is being voiced by Hocchan, who by all rights SHOULD be voicing Nanaka, as she did the voice of Shirakawa Kotori back in the original DC, what were they thinking with that one. And who do they end up picking for Nanaka’s seiyuu? Minori Chihara?! It feels like a real mismatch to me, but I guess I’ll have to wait and see how it turns out.

As far as animation and music for Da Capo II are concerned, they fall under the categorization of “average”, as most harems do. Feel hasn’t stepped up their animation in comparison to DCSS, but that’s not really a bad thing, the current level of animation and character design is more than sufficient for a harem. The music is much of the same as well, a lot of slow piano pieces at key emotional points, and some relatively upbeat ambient music during the rest of the scenes, nothing special, but fitting for the genre. The OP and ED were pretty generic as well, I’ll probably never watch neither again, but I must admit that the style of the ED was pretty awesome, high contrast, mostly black and white stills with heavily emphasized colors on key features.

I’ll definitely be watching the rest of Da Capo II, as it seems to be doing a good job redeeming the fail that was DCSS. I hope they can recreate the drama they did in the original, but in a different way. The original centered a lot around Juunichi and Nemu struggling to realize and accept their love for each other, despite being “siblings”. The bond between Yoshiyuki and the Asakuras doesn’t come off as close as Juunichi and Nemu, so far at least. So it’ll probably be up to good old love triangles, squares, etc. to create some tension. And speaking of characters from the originals…

Sakura, the eternal loli

It was great to see Sakura again, I missed her, and seeing her again reminded me how badly I felt for her at the end of DC, having to step aside and accept the JuunichiXNemu couple and her coming back to fight for their sake in DCSS. I’m hoping we don’t see Nemu though, as much as the thought excites me, the reality is that ~50 years have passed, and if Gurren Lagann’s aging scale is anything to go by, I’d rather avoid the whole thing and keep Nemu’s young form preserved in my mind.

Which reminds me, God I almost melted when I heard it again, “Nii-san!”

~ Shirukii ~

*waits around for lolikit to show up and criticize my love for generic harem*