Na-na-ka.

Uh oh, we’re three episodes in and Yoshiyuki still hasn’t broken up with Koko, we can’t seriously be heading towards a Koko end, can we? This is Da Capo! Where’s my siscon animu ;_; The fact that Yume was sort of relegated to a sort of comedic voice of reason in this episode doesn’t exactly help calm my fears much. A Nanaka, Yume or Otome end would be fine by me, just anyone but Koko, not that I hate her, but she’s the most generic female lead AND an osananajimi, it just defies all harem logic for her to win.

Episode Rating: 8/10

Breakfast at Yoshiyuki’s place quickly derails to a conversation about Yoshiyuki’s relationship to Amakase Minatsu. Not about to tell his sisters that she’s a robot, Yoshiyuki says that Mizukoshi-sensei asked him to keep an eye on her and help her with anything she needs, being new to the school. When the two ask him why Mizukoshi-sensei picked Yoshiyuki of all people for the job he makes up some story about being picked based on his English skills. Yume calls his bluff and asks Yoshiyuki, in English, to pass the soy sauce, leaving Yoshiyuki speechless and the Asakura sisters even more suspicious.

A little while later, Koko is on her way to school, worried about what happened the other day and Yoshiyuki’s relationship with Minatsu. On cue, Yoshiyuki shows up to walk the rest of the way with Koko and immediately starts to try and explain what happened with Minatsu. This proves to be hard, as he’s torn between keeping Minatsu’s secret and lying to his girlfriend. Seeing how troubled Yoshiyuki is over it, Koko decides to trust him and not ask any questions. Yoshiyuki is relieved and happy that Koko trusts him so much, he grabs her hand and runs the rest of the way to school with her.

When they get to school, just barely on time, they see Shirakawa Nanaka, the school idol, rejecting another guy asking her out. Suginami warps on to the scene and tells them that this is apparently a very common occurrence.

When lunch time rolls around, Yoshiyuki ninjas his way out of the class early in hopes of getting to the bread stall before everyone else, since apparently bread stalls at lunch are not unlike war zones. But on the way there he hears the familiar beeping of a certain overheating robot. Surely enough, upstairs he finds Minatsu, almost burned out because she couldn’t get to her banana on time. Or so he thought, after he helps her recharge, he learns that it’s not that she didn’t make it on time, she purposefully put off eating the banana until she ended up overheating. Minatsu defends her choice and reinforces her hate for bananas by stamping on the peel, which she ends up slipping on and falling flat on her butt. Seems like bananas don’t have much love for her either.

Naturally, Yoshiyuki’s detour causes him to get to the bread stall too late. But a surprising person comes to his rescue, Shirakawa Nanaka approaches Yoshiyuki and offers to help him out. Using her natural feminine charm, she parts the crowd of boys like the proverbial Moses parting the seas and secures some lunch for Yoshiyuki. She tells him it’s no problem and says she’ll see him around, calling him by his first name. Odd enough that she’s already calling him by his given name, Yoshiyuki is confused because he hasn’t even introduced himself to her yet. *insert random crowd of jealous boys*

After school, Yoshiyuki heads to class looking for Koko, only to find Anzu and Akane, lecturing him on being a failure of a boyfriend for not even knowing Koko has club activities now. He heads over to the music room where Koko is supposed to be, in band practice, instead finding Shirakawa practicing her singing. He listens in until Koko and Wataru show up, apparently Koko and Shirakawa are good friends, Koko being the bassist for the band and Shirakawa the vocalist. Yoshiyuki is impressed, noting that any band with Shirakawa is instawin. Shirakawa then approaches him and asks that he call her by her given name, Nanaka, insisting until he does it.

Yoshiyuki listens in on the band for a while, saying that they sound great, but they’re missing a guitarist, a fact that all of them are well aware of, but haven’t been able to solve. Noticing the guitar, Yoshiyuki picks it up, quickly tunes it and starts jamming, apparently having a bit of experience playing before.

Naturally, (rather, by Nanaka’s assumption) it doesn’t take long for Yoshiyuki to be assimilated into the band as their guitarist. The four of them spend the days practicing, to the detriment of Wataru and Yoshiyuki’s already poor study habits.

One day while walking home and talking about the band, Yoshiyuki ends up inviting Koko over to his place so they can practice. They end up alone in Yoshiyuki’s room and, as you would expect, this turns out to be a really awkward experience. And it gets worse when Yoshiyuki goes to stand up, he ends up falling over…right onto Koko. Luckily they snap out of it before Otome comes into the room, inviting Koko to stay for dinner and ordering Yoshiyuki to buy some curry mix.

Meanwhile, Minatsu is out learning more about human culture when she’s spotted by Yume, who invites her over for dinner. This turns out to be a weird dinner, with both Koko and Minatsu over. Yoshiyuki rudely asks what Minatsu is doing there, Yume defends her by saying that it was her that invited Minatsu. As for the dinner itself, it turns out to be delicious, Minatsu in particular quickly wolfs down a bowl and asks for seconds. But when Otome reveals that the secret to making the curry taste so good is adding bananas, Minatsu stops dead in her tracks.

After dinner, Koko and Minatsu get ready to leave when Yume suggests that two girls walking alone at night might not be safe, not so subtly hinting that Yoshiyuki go with them. Minatsu isn’t exactly ecstatic about that idea and ends up running home on her own, leaving Yoshiyuki and Koko together alone once again. Yoshiyuki fumbles over his words, basically trying to apologize for being a lame boyfriend, not even knowing her hobbies like playing bass, even for the school band. But Koko is just happy that Yoshiyuki is involved and even joined the band. Aww :3

Thoughts

BAAAAAAW. What happened to my siscon animu! Feel, what’s going on here, three episodes out of thirteen gone and no indication that the KokoXYoshiyuki relationship is going to hit a dead end? That’s not like you guys. At the worst I expected a Nanaka victory to appease all the Kotori fans that got shafted with the two original DC & DCSS. Did Koko do well in character polls or something? I see no other reason to pick her over the other three.

But that being said, Koko won some major points in my ranks this week. If there’s anything that compares to my love for katana wielding girls, it’s girls that play guitar, being an amateur guitarist myself (a crappy one, but still…) I have much love for female bassists/guitarists. But I still think that Koko’s character is otherwise shallow, as is her relationship with Yoshiyuki, they can’t even be alone for more than 5 seconds at a time without turning a deep shade of red. I’ll be extremely disappointed if we’re really on Koko’s path.

But on the plus side, Nanaka finally got some screen time, making up for the like…10 seconds she’s gotten prior to this episode. While I’m a devout Nemu fan, I must say, Nanaka = loev. From the moment she waltzed up and cut the bread line to her insistence on Yoshiyuki calling her by her given name, I loved every second she was on screen. She clearly has a thing for Yoshiyuki, I just hope that she acts on it in time, unlike Kotori, who stepped down and conceded to Nemu without a fight. Though lol at Nanaka being so stalker-ish, already knowing Yoshiyuki and calling him by his first name before they were even formally introduced. But that probably just came from Koko constantly talking to her about him.

Desipte being good overall, one small complaint that I have with Da Capo II is the laziness in animation. I know they’re probably saving animation budget for that all important episode where they absolutely HAVE too animate each individual falling sakura petal, but the slide show montages they’re using every are getting annoying. I didn’t expect them to bust out KyoAni’s Haruhi 12 level animation for the band practice, but come on, at least make an effort to animate them instead of using a sequence of stills. Bah, those cherry blossoms better have the most realistic physics in the history of anime (title currently held by Makoto Shinkai’s Byousoku 5cm).

But all in all, Da Capo II is turning out to be pretty good. I’m still worried that Koko remains the main focus, but still stand by my prediction of an eventual Yume win. Call me delusional, but I simply CAN’T see Koko winning, not unless they accelerate the development of the relationship quite a bit. And if my Yume prediction fails me…

A Nanaka is fine too.

Note* If there are any mistakes I made in the summary, please let me know, I was watching this while studying for a midterm, so my comprehension level was that much lower, haha.

~ Shirukii ~