Date A Live [Anime Review]

The first thing I thought of when I looked up this anime was this:
"what the heck does that title even mean?"

Subtle... real subtle.

I know what the words 'date' and 'live' mean.
I do not know what the heck they mean when used this way.

3 out of 5 stars

Okay. Fine.
This anime is strange. 

I'm not sure who controls who...

I find myself typing that phrase a lot. So, I'm just going to steam ahead full speed.

I have to do a synopsis this time. There is no escaping that. To understand the story's continual running plot device, you have to know the plot.

Thirty years before the series begins, the earth was hit by things called 'spacequakes' (why not the old Star Trek standby 'spatial quakes'). They killed 150 million people in central Eurasia.

You honestly did not need to know that. I'm not really sure how much that even plays into the series. 

Oh yeah. They have these in the show too...

You see the spacequakes are actually caused by Spirits. Yea, that is a crazy left turn. We learn this when our erstwhile hero discovers a girl wearing armor (not the kind depicted to the left, more medieval style), and wielding a crazy techno sword at a spacequakes epicenter.

Hellooooo Sci-Fi Trope!

This spirit thinks that our Hero, Shido Itsuka, is there to kill her. He's not, but a whole group of girls in powered flight combat suits are. Not a great first meeting.  

Ok. So here's the crux.

One group in the show wants to kill the Spirits. Another group, the one Shido gets pulled into, wants to save them, but render them unable to harm humanity. To do this, he must date the spirits, get them to fall in love with him, and then kiss them.

That is a pretty flimsy excuse for a plot, and honestly if that was all that the show consisted of it would suck, badly. But thankfully it is not. There is humor, as expected. But there is also a good amount of pathos built into the series. There are characters that have really suffered tragedy, and it warps their worlds and makes things much more interesting. Now, I love me some good character driven drama, but damn it, I also want solid plots.

Sadly, I've seen far worse series. I've also seen some series that pull off the Harem Comedy much better. Almost any Tenchi Muyo (War on Geminar in particular... man that is an old review, my style has changed), does it better.

I also know, that even though this is not the best anime, I have a compulsive need to see the second season. So I will see it. It is inevitable. 

Crazy Eyes. She's got Crazy Eyes.

I do have to laugh though. A friend and I have been watching the many multitudes of Macross that exist, and we've just gotten to Macross Zero (yep, that will be a future review). In it there is a picture of the System Sephiroticum (The Sephirot) from Kaballistic Mysticism. Easy for me to recognize because I was and still am a huge Neon Genesis Evangelion fan. And as I sat down to write this review, I remembered that Tohka's weapon was called Sandalphon, one of the Angels from Eva. Another character wields Khamael (not in Eva, but still easy to see the iel / ael angelic ending), and another wields Zadkiel (Sachiel). Man does anime ever love to use their western mysticism.Of course, thanks to anime and manga and video games I've learned a lot about those things too... something I never would have learned without them.