D.C.S.S. ~Da Capo Second Season~ Review - 60/100
Series Information
ANN Encyclopedia | AniDB | AnimeNfo
Episode Total: 26
Producers: CIRCUS, Ganges, ZEXCS, Lantis, feel.
Genres: Comedy, Drama, Romance, Supernatural
D.C.S.S. ~Da Capo Second Season~
[Review: 60/100]
After finishing the moderately decent first season of Da Capo, I wasn’t expecting much from the second season. Maybe a fresh new coat of animation and a few ongoing storylines that overlap each other will help this one be different than the stereotypical first season. It got the same music and art you know and love from the show, but one main addition, the character Aisia, ruined for this season for many. Ironically, it wasn’t exactly a disaster for me.
Two years after the ending of the first season, Jun’ichi Asakura has been living by himself after Nemu left him for an unexplained reason. During that time, besides changing his hair from brown to black, the other girls in his class, especially the lovely Kotori (voice by one my favorite seiyuu, Yui Horie), decided to take care of him since he is such a useless slacker. Although it seems that now Nemu is out of the picture and everyone can win Jun’ichi’s heart, everything changes when the mysterious Aisia walks in one day. The mysterious green bow wearing girl came to Hatsune-Jima to learn magic and was looking for Sakura’s grandmother in order to accomplish that. Because Jun’ichi knew her, Aisia decides to be his disciple and stay along with him, and hilarity ensues.
While the love triangle between Sakura, Nemu and Jun’ichi was the heart of the first season, Aisia is the heart of the second. Her awfully cute personality and her ongoing belief in magic is the topic of many episodes to come. It is weird how in the beginning of the series she was so quiet and mysterious while a few episodes later she is perky and energetic, which makes her more of an annoyance than what Sakura was in the last season.
Aisia’s presence make the show more of a comedy than a drama, as the earlier episodes are filled with intrusive jokes, mainly breasts jokes (not that I have something against it), and while some moments can warrant laughs, some leaves you spiraling in confusion while witnessing Aisia’s poor magic attempts. When the series become more dramatic towards the end of the season, I have to admit, I enjoyed it a lot more than the first season, thanks to Aisia. Say what you want about her, but she is the only character that matures throughout the series and because of her decisions, we get a satisfying conclusion to an overall mediocre show.
Besides Aisia, D.C.S.S tries to add too many new characters for people to personify with. Some, like the mankaga Nanako, seem to be a last-minute addition that strengthens the fact how clichéd Da Capo is in the cluttered Harem genre. Moreover, the other characters have gotten much smaller roles to nonexistent like Mako, who was fun to watch in the first season, but now doesn’t serve more than an acquaintance. What the series needed is more male characters, but besides the hilarious wisecracker Suginami (one of the bright spots of Da Capo), all we get is Kudou. He is a nice fellow, but his origin is never explained, which is unfortunate, because if you play the game, you learn a lot more about him. It is sad because the creators had another 26 episodes to use, but they were only used to emphasize how “loveable” Aisia is.
Da Capo Season Season is one of those shows no matter how many characters there are, you have no one to like or root for; all of the girls are in love with one boy and that boy is as interesting as a blank board. While Aisia is annoying, she does notice that Harem cliché and tries to mess around with it later in the show, but it’s not enough to distinguish itself from the rest. If you loved the first season of Da Capo, you’d probably be upset with the second one mainly because of Aisia (which I said her name 11 times in this review), but those who didn’t, will probably feel the same. In my case, because of the smoother pace, D.C.S.S is a better edited and enjoyable show than the first Da Capo, but that doesn’t make it all that great.
3 Comments so far
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Well a few of those new characters were from like an add on thing to the original game so it’s not like they’re pulling them out of no where. Aisia is original to this show however.
I’m actually back to watching this. I originally tried to watch it during it’s first run, but I dropped it. I picked it up again about 5 months ago, but stopped at episode 9. I really hate Nemu and that is probably the cause to my sudden stop. Currently I think I have up to episode 11 done now…
Personally, I like Aisia because she is a pretty cute character, but I can understand where the distaste comes from.
Was the pace really smoother in D.C.S.S? It’s been a few months since I watched, and I thought it dragged out the ‘light beginning’ for a while, with all the character episodes and Aisia focus. But then again, I’m part of the masses that hate Aisia, so maybe that’s why.
Aisia does get to be a good character by the end, I would agree, but I just wish they hadn’t started her off so low on the character charts, making her gratingly dense and naive.
Would concur that there are probably too many characters in this show for its own good, but I think is probably because D.C. had strong characters on its own (aforementioned Mako, I would add Kotori and Yoriko). It’s nice that all the characters differentiate D.C.S.S from the harem crowd (since there’s so many), but yeah, too little time for all of them.
Have you played the games? It sounds like you have - I never did, so maybe that’s the reason for the difference in opinion. Your review offers a lot of different viewpoints I didn’t consider. ^^
One of my favorite episodes from the first season was when Mako and Jun’ichi were dating and you can tell that at least she is not all lovey-dovey with him, so I liked her character. Kotori and Sakura are great as well.
Let’s put it this way, when the episodes don’t center around Aisia, it’s okay.