You can’t be serious…*facepalms*

Oh wow, that was one weird and mostly useless episode. It’s great that we’re getting to see the descendants of ALL the characters, even robo Miharu. However, to spend an entire episode on her when DCII only has a mere 13 episodes to work with could prove to be a big mistake down the road. But I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it and just enjoy our innuendo for now o_o

Episode Rating: 7/10

Yume goes to wake up her Nii-san as usual, but is surprised to find the house locked up. Otome suggests that Yoshiyuki might have woken up early and left before them for a change, Yume finds that hard to believe. But sure enough, Yoshiyuki is up and on his way to meet Koko, trying his best to wake up early and walk to school together with his childhood friend turned girlfriend. The two are obviously not used to the idea that they’re a couple yet, so Anzu and Akane help force them to get a little lovey dovey.

Just then, the Asakura sisters show up and Yume finally understands how Yoshiyuki woke up so early. He gets a little flustered and tries to explain, but Yume tells him there’s no need to explain as there’s no misunderstanding, she can see clearly what’s going on, and it’s not as if he’s cheating on her or something. With that, she continues to school, Otome following quickly behind, giving some words of encouragement to Koko as she runs off.

That day at lunch, Wataru catches Yoshiyuki reading a book for dating spots and teases him for finally jumping into the dating game. But his support quickly turns into despair when he realizes that Yoshiyuki has flown past him and is already dating Koko. She asks Yoshiyuki to come eat lunch with her, equipped with a love filled bento for him. But her efforts are blocked by Suginami, who interrupts and starts rambling about the mysteries of the school, and when Yoshiyuki passingly mentions the staircase Sakura’s office, he’s dragged away by Suginami to investigate.

The two venture down the stairs together, and what they end up finding is a girl sealed in an airtight capsule. Being the moron he is, Yoshiyuki decides to press the big red button beside the capsule, which sets off an alarm, disengages the capsule and awakens the girl. Smart.

The girl, Minatsu, wakes up and is furious that her peaceful rest has been disrupted. When she demands to know what Yoshiyuki’s motive is for waking her up, he tells her that it was just a coincidence that they found her and an accident that they ended up waking her. This angers her even more, she tells them that there are two things in this world that she hates, one is bananas and the other is humans, and with that she gives Yoshiyuki a punch in the face.

Alerted by the alarm, a team of scientists led by Mizukoshi-sensei enters the room and calms down the situation. Minatsu understands the situation and agrees to go quietly with the teachers. Mizukoshi-sensei stays back to explain, she tells the boys that Minatsu is actually a robot. She asks the two to forget what they’ve seen here and hurries them back to afternoon classes.

Confused and hungry because he didn’t have the chance to eat lunch with Koko, Yoshiyuki heads back to class. He spends the rest of the day wondering how robots can express such emotion like Minatsu did, but ultimately figures that he’ll never see her again so it’s pointless thinking about it.

Unfortunately, he’s not that lucky. The next morning he finds out that Minatsu will be attending school with him. Mizukoshi-sensei sees that Minatsu doesn’t really like Yoshiyuki, but feels that they may end up becoming friends, so she gives him an operating manual for her and asks he keep her true identity a secret.

While reading the manual, Koko and her friends sneak up on him and they yell at him for missing lunch with Koko, when they see him reading a book intently, they wonder if it’s something perverted. In the end, Anzu suggests Yoshiyuki treat Koko to crepes as a punishment for missing lunch with her.

The two head to the crepe stand in the park together, but the whole thing ends up being a poor excuse for a date. As Yoshiyuki goes to hand the crepe to Koko, their hands touch and they start blushing like crazy. They finish their crepes with an awkward silence in the air, one which continues until they decide to go home.

On the way back, Yoshiyuki spots Yume hanging out with Minatsu. From the way they talk to each other, Minatsu figures out that they’re brother and sister, but is curious as to why they have different family names. Even worse, Yume and Minatsu wonder how Yoshiyuki and Minatsu already know each other, since she just transferred in that day. He ends up dodging the question when Minatsu’s watch starts beeping and she starts panicking when she can’t find any bananas in her bag, suddenly her eyes go red and smoke starts to pour out of her ears. Yoshiyuki panics, grabs Minatsu and makes a run for it, leaving Yume and Koko behind in confusion.

Turns out that bananas are one of Minatsu’s power sources, an odd twist of irony seeing how much she hates them. Yoshiyuki continues to panic, wondering where in the world he’ll get bananas at this hour, but is saved when he sees Anzu and Akane walking in the park, eating choco-bananas. He runs up and grabs the bananas from them and gives gives them to Minatsu. Eating them leaves her running much better and an important discovery is made, even though she hates eating bananas, having them covered in chocolate makes them slightly more tolerable. She thanks Yoshiyuki for helping her and apologizes for causing him so much trouble.

But his troubles don’t stop there, as Anzu, Akane, Yume and Koko catch up to the two, who happen to be in a very compromising position, hiding together in the bushes. Although they demand to know what’s going on, Yoshiyuki can’t exactly tell them the truth and ends up standing there and taking the interrogation silently.

Thoughts

A wasted episode, in my opinion. While it’s nice to see a third generation robo-Miharu, even if she is multiple times more annoying, but to spend an entire episode on her is useless. There’s no way in hell that we’re getting a Minatsu ending, so why spend so much time on her when she’ll most likely be part of the background starting next episode. Instead they should have been focusing on developing the KokoXYoshiyuki relationship and setting it up for its inevitable downfall.

Instead, there was almost no progress on that front. It’s obvious that they’re not suited to be a couple, they’ve been childhood friends too long to see each other as anything else, a fate that most osananajimis fall to. The two of them can’t even touch hands without blushing like little kids, this is going nowhere. But in a sense, having them not make any progress is an effective way to foreshadow their break up, incredibly annoying, but admittedly effective.

Speaking of unnecessary…Oh wow, could those scenes have been any more sexually suggestive. DCSS used bananas as phallic imagery as well, but this was ridiculously over the top, spit trails and everything. I lol’d, but again, time unwisely spent.

On a more random note, I’ve always wondered about this, but why is it that characters in anime become unable to survive without collapse if they miss a meal. In this episode when Yoshiyuki misses lunch and last episode when Yume complains that she’ll pass out if she misses breakfast, as well as in countless other animes and dramas, this seems to be a recurring theme. Is this an adaptation from real life? Do Japanese people really have that hard of a time if they skip a meal? Personally, I skip lunches every once in a while and I don’t even eat breakfast (I’d rather sleep more =D) and I haven’t collapsed yet.

Meh, I guess I’ll file this under “lol, anime” along with other inexplicable things like characters getting sick if they come in from the rain/snow and don’t take a bath within minutes.

Anyways, I digress.

Looking to the future, I know it’s a little premature to make final choices, but I’m almost 100% positive that DCII will have a Yume ending. The series has Feel behind production, the company responsible for the first two Da Capo seasons as well as Futakoi Alternative. They have a thing for psuedo siscon. And you can already see the warning signs, Yume dotes on her nii-san a lot, going as far as to wake him up every morning. And when she saw him together with Koko and realized there was something between them, she showed some not so subtle signs of jealousy. Finally, when Yoshiyuki ends up in a compromising situation with another girl, it’s typically Yume who shows the most anger. Yume path, here we come!

I’ll most likely keep blogging Da Capo II unless something amazing shows up among the remaining series to premiere. Hopefully my siscon fanboying doesn’t scare too many readers away ;_;

~ Shirukii ~