Anime: D.C.S.S: Da Capo Second Season t3z5j

D.C.S.S. is a fairly interesting sequel which introduces many new characters and features a roller coaster of a plot sequence. It tells a story of what happens two years after D.C when a young magician named Aisia goes to the island in search of Jun'ichi's grandmother. The series won't make sense unless you watched D.C. but unfortunately it also isn't as good.

Animation:
The animation is done slightly better than the original with Jun'ichi getting a complete makeover, which bothered me at first but I eventually got used to it.

Sound:
The OP/first ED were fairly average and I didn't really like the second ED. Expect the same BGM quality from the first series but with a lot of insert songs. Kotori gets a longer role so expect more Yoi Horie. Voice actors carry over from the first series and there are a lot of new voices with the addition of a lot of new cast.

Story:
While in D.C. you have a plot which continuously gets more intricate until you hit a climax, D.C.S.S. showcases two peaks, one very early on when Nemu returns and the second one right before the end.

Basically, Nemu left after the end of D.C. to study to become a nurse, leaving Jun'ichi all alone. Thus, the other girls of D.C. work together to form a " unit" to make sure he is well without Nemu, with Kotori taking the lead. Nemu's absence was very glaring and when she returned I was all happy. But then, plot twist! You'll find yourself with many of these in the show.

Many episodes are dedicated to introducing the new characters, especially Aisia, and her desire to "make everyone happy". There is a lot of foreshadow as to what is going to happen near the end and the path to the end is pretty linear. As for the conclusion, it was nice but the climax and falling action seemed needlessly crunched into only a few short episodes, which I found quite disappointing. I also found a few plot holes which confounded me, such as the fact that Yoshiko's master, who was confined to her room for the first series, suddenly appears outdoors and gives Aisia advice.

Character:
One of the faults IMO in this series is the fact that there are several new side characters in addition to Aisia who all seem to happen to like Jun'ichi and don't really contribute to the plot sequence. The only real point was to show how unrealistically popular Jun'ichi is.

Aisia is also as idealistic as they come, unnaturally so considering her age. She constantly seems to believe that magic exists as a way to make things easier in sharp contrast with Sakura's belief that magic is a shortcut that should be avoided if possible do to unforeseen side effects. She seems overly blithe in her day to day life and use of magic and in the end decides to make choices for others when it is not her place. She is a character to hate and I still harbor a strong dislike of her.

The main characters from the first series return and play important roles. They have all come to recognize and accept Jun'ichi's relationship with his sister. However, Nemu and Juni'chi's relationship always seemed to be lackluster compared to the first series. Also, Sakura gets a much more positive role in this series. While she was the cause of Nemu's suffering and all in the first series, she now serves as the guide, trying to direct Aisia in the proper direction.

Value:
This is an interesting addition to D.C. but unlike the first series, it doesn't stand on it's own. If you didn't like the first series, don't watch this. However, if you liked the first series, watch this with lower expectation. It was still a decent watch nonetheless.

First i want to point out the reason i watched the second season. I judge romance animes base only their characters. Are they Loveable? Are they Annoying? Are they Cool and kind? Even though i didn't enjoy the first season because of a character i hated the most. I watched the second season and didn't see the annoying characted i hated and thought with her out this anime will get quite interesting. THEN KABOOM! interest lose. System shutting down. I stopped watching it because of something. Read my story/character review why i lost the will to watch.

Animation:The animation were okay. They weren't the best compare to Full metal panic or elfen lied. But i enjoyed it still and love it. I loved the animation and i think it deserves a 8/10 rating

Sound:The voice actor for Aaskura wasn't really great. Compare him to Kanon 2006, another romance type anime, main character Yuuichi to Asakura. Yuuichi voice sounds way much manly. The rest of the girls voices were great. I did enjoy listening to the opening theme. The female voices and the opening theme were great but if Asakura voice was much manly i would had gave it a 9 but instead a 7.

Story and Character:I decided to talk about the Story and character together because i believe a romance anime is all about character and story. When watching the first few episode of the second season i thought there would be more romantic parts seeing now would be a chance for most of the girls to express their feelings to Asakura.
Kotori, who is my favorite character was spending much more time with the main character Asakura. I really thought something was gonna happened between these two. BOOM! BAM! wish/hope ruined. YES the HATED CHARACTER HAS APPEAR AND TAKEN ASAKURA AWAY from Kotori. (In order to not spoil it i won't tell you who is the character i hate) That ruined it for me and it makes me wonder. WHY THE HELL was there a second season if nothing was gonna happen with girls from season 1. I totally agreed with the guy review above me. A second season was not needed and was a big waste of time and money. I hated the story, romance, and some of the characters. Because of those i rate story and character as 4/10.

Value:THIS to me WAS A BIG disapointment. I Will not watch this over, matter of fact after watching to episode 8 and couldn't stand it i just skip to the ending. After seeing the ending, my heart just shatter in disapointment. Well he chose her and i can't do anything about it even if i hated her. After that i even wish i had not done that and forget i ever watched this. i rate a 3 out of 10.

Enjoyment:Okay i have to it, i enjoy it the first 3 episode but after awhile it just got boring. One character ruin everything for me. It was all about HER and Asakura. Like they didn't have all those episode back in the first season to complete their story. WHAT Happen to the others? I actually enjoyed all the episode that had the characters. A 3 out of 10

This were all my thoughts. I don't recommand any watch the second season unless they really love the first season. I mean by loving the first season you must like the MAIN characters and the story. If anyone of you don't like the character or storyline don't bother watching, just a waste of time. Also i compared this anime to those like Ichigo 100%, Kanon 2006 and Hantsuki. Well actualy not the ichigo anime but the manga. Anyways I am Sorry if i spoil anything. I tried not using name but i guess i can't right a review without spoiling it for you. This is just my thoughts, if you disagree, don't let me stop you from watching. Go ahead and knock yourself out. By the Way, many of you reading this must had figure out who the girl is xD

I think the dog ate the character sheets for the new characters.

Really, after having seen Da Capo and thoroughly enjoyed it, I really wondered what they would make of this second season. Season 1 had some things left hanging after all, so although the story has been finished pretty much, there was still space for a sequel. How disappointed I got when I saw that Nemu wasn't participating after seeing the first few episodes. No Nemu, no Sakura and a pretty much pathetic Asakura Jun'ichi were quite sad to see, but there is more to come. The bad part is not that they weren't in those first episodes, the bad part was the introduction of new characters.

Characters[/u]: Someone actually lost the character sheets?

Introduction of new characters
With Nemu and Sakura out of the way, the path of burying Asakura Jun'ichi with female friends who love him is free again. So the first logical thing to do is … add new characters without character sheets.

All the newly introduced characters are given a poorly single episode to shine, although that might be a word too big for them. They all get their dedicated episode (except for Kudo who doesn't even gets that much) where there is a slight effort of giving them some characteristics, but the one moment the episode ends, they get dragged back down to the background where they have to suffer the rest of the episode as background filler. I at least hope the voiceactors didn't care about their character, otherwise there might've been a riot because they didn't get to play a part at all in the series. The biggest problem is that they don't even give the slightest impression to have anything to do with the series. They introduced them without having a clue about what they wanted to do with them.

Kudo Kanae
He is one of the biggest examples of failure this series has. He gets introduced as the new best friend of Suginami and Jun'ichi, but other than that we still don't know anything about him at the end of the show. He gets used as screenfiller and doesn't even get to be used as a comedy aspect, as if they really didn't know what to do with him after his introduction. A blank charactersheet might even be too much honor for him; I think somewhere along the way they forgot that he even existed.

Aishia
The only newly introduced character who also gets a lot of screentime is also the biggest problem of this series: Aishia is pretty much annoying and as the series progresses, her being annoying gets even emphasized. Her inability to understand things might be a trait of her, but I believe that everyone who sees this show will have the same feeling of giving her the boot to kick her off the series.
Of course, she is young. Of course, she cannot grasp everything because she is so focused on the magic so important to her, but boy - have I ever seen someone so dense as her?
Most of what she does adds to the comedy aspect, but after having seen 2-3 efforts of her, the thing gets boring. Unfortunately, it continues for at least 15 more episodes before the series even dares to look at a more serious plot in which Aishia -of course- plays an important role.

Old Cast
Don't misunderstand me, the old cast is great to see again, but even those characters seem to have stalled since the end of Season 1. Not only have they hardly gained any new character traits, they also hardly develop in the filler-based series called Second Season. People like Kotori deserves at least something more than the few scenes/episodes where she gets to decide on something.
Asakura Jun'ichi seems to have gotten dumber in the few years seperating Season 1 and Season 2 and none of the old cast characters make an impression of being ‘more’ than what they were in the beginning.

Sound[/u]: Nice music, but new characters have annoying voices.

Of course, there already were characters with pretty much annoying voices, like our red-haired banana-lover, but with the introduction of the new characters, there have been even more annoying people. Especially the voice of Aishia was annoying like hell and the same goes for Kudo.
Other than that, the rest of the cast was pretty much the same and performed pretty much the same as in its prequel, so there is not much to tell if you have seen that one. And you really ought to see that one first.

Story[/u]: Fillers, fillers, fillers. Only near the end the story kicks in, but by then it's already far too late to capture anyone's interest again.

Where Season 1 was outstanding because of the dramatic events, Season 2 stands out because of the numerous fillers and fillers where Aishia again and again tries to fuck up once more. At least Season 1 had the intelligence to put all the fillers in the first half of the series, where Season 2 divides them across the entire series, with only a meager 3 (seperated even!) non-fillers in the first 20 episodes.

And while there indeed are a few good developments and a few good plot twists, they still only get half of what its predecessor managed to drag out. The bad part of it is that the plot doesn't really start running until at least episode 20 and even then it never gets as dark as the prequel did; it's a poor effort in beating it, which results in a fairly decent try. Nothing big, nothing really good, just an average ending phase. As if they forgot the script which explained what they were supposed to aim for.

Animation[/u]: Average animation, with even more washed-out colors.

Da Capo Season One already gained the questionable honor of being associated with ‘washed-out colors’. The coloring was awesome, but the details in the backgrounds were often so scarce that it looked as if the backgrounds were washed out after trying to color them in. And while that can be okay, this series had a little problem with it. In season 1, the characters and plot distracted enough to not get annoyed by the backgrounds, but in this series the plot and characters don't do that enough, so you get confronted much more with it.

Also the characters ended up looking ‘odd’ every now and then, as if there was another animator working on it who didn't have the experience yet to draw the character properly. Other characters also seemed to get less time than necessary, leaving them a bit bland every now and then.

Value[/u]: Nice to see the ‘old’ characters again, but other than that, no value.

DCSS has little value, mostly because the plot setup has been much less solid than its prequel and the characters have much less substance than its predecessors. Not only are the new characters really weak in characteristics and are used mostly as screenfiller, but even the characters from the first season aren't even getting any developed at all, which was the good thing about the first season, since at least all characters got some conclusion.

Enjoyment[/u]: Poor effort in getting more out of the same thing.

I enjoyed seeing the ‘old’ cast and especially with Kotori there was lots of potential, but after the first few episodes the show didn't seem to go anywhere. Fillers all over the place and especially Aishia was a real pain in the ass. As annoying as she was, so annoying was the entire stall of the plot. Only near the end there was some plotdevelopment, but by that time the damage was done already: I decided I did not like this series.
It's a cheap effort to reuse the old characters without doing anything with them. Introducing new characters and also not doing anything with them is also a bad way of making a show. So yeah, two thumbs down for the series.

Alas, this anime could have been much more than it actually was. Being a fan of Da Capo, the second season was definitely one of my more anticipated animes last year and I looked forward to the end of the series so I could watch it all at once. With high hopes, I started watching this anime and I actually enjoyed it for a while... that is, until I realized how poor of a sequel this anime truly is.

Before I do anything, I'll give a short description of this anime and try not to ruin much for both the first Da Capo as well as the Second Season. As you probably (assuming you've watched the first Da Capo), the setting of Da Capo takes place on an island with cherry blossoms that are always in full bloom and mysterious things happen around the island due to this phenomenon (I won't go too deep into it.) By the end of the first season, the cherry blossoms wither (more I'm not talking about) and become normal cherry trees that blossom once a year. The Second Season starts approximately two years after the end of the first one and Asakura Junichi is living at home alone and is being taken care of by his friends (all female, of course). He goes on with his daily routines until one day, a girl named Aisia appears at his doorstep... Of course, there is more to the story, but you should watch (and probably waste your time) the anime to find out!

(I use two systems to try to get my points across, the first one emphasizes italicizing the main points and the second involves using CTRL+F to find ***, please use whichever you want)

Animation- Definitely the best part of the anime, the animation is clean and crisp... at times. There are definitely points where it looks like the people who put the animation together copped out and only made the mouths move for a whole two minutes, that is, if they chose to make them move their mouths at all. I didn't particularly like the designs for the characters that aren't part of the original Da Capo, but I must it that they were still drawn decently.

***Animation- 7/10- Nothing great, nothing terrible. Sometimes the characters only have their mouths moving making the scene extremely unrealistic. Awkward new cast, or at least, not to my tastes.

Sound- I honestly didn't care for both the opening and closing, which is a rare situation. Though I usually prefers fast paced openings or closings, I can tolerate most types of music as long as I find it catchy, interesting, moving, etc. I've watched quite a few romance animes (though I probably won't ever say that again) and even if they weren't to my fast-paced taste, I usually appreciated the slowness of the music or how soothing it was. However, I have never, ever, been so apathetic to the sounds of an anime. The music isn't great and I really can't play any of the sounds of the anime, including the opening and closing, in my head, which is quite rare. I think that the saving grace are the voice actors, who did a good job. I'm not one who is super qualified to judge voices, but from my perspective, none of the voices were out of place and if the voices sounded annoying at times, it was intentional. Other than the voices, everything else is mediocre at best.

***Sound- 6/10 -Mediocre at best, none of the sounds from the anime are memorable and only the voice actors did a good job.

Story and Character- I normally don't group these two together, but I feel that these two are very related in this anime. Before writing this review, I've never graded this low on any of the fields given, but I can honestly say that this time, I will GLADLY make the exception. The ending of Da Capo was a bit open ended but everyone (or at least, an intellgent fanbase) knew who the main character ended up with. Regardless of how much the audience hated or loved the decision he made, it was official and it was basically closed. The first thought I had when they aimed for a second season was that something happened so that he either wasn't with the person he ended up with or it was strengthening their relationship (which was pretty damn strong already). Da Capo Second Season pulls through with absolutely nothing at all. AT ALL. Now, I probably expected much, but there is only one episode dedicated to each of the new girls and that is all the character development the audience gets. Even worse, the anime doesn't even focus on the girls in the first season, making you question exactly WHY this anime was made. There weren't any especially touching moments. Correction: there were no moments where I felt any emotion except sorrow for wasting my time. Now, I thought that the reintroduction of a certain two people would definitely help heal the mistakes of the first few episodes. However, this is not the case. It's more appropriate to say that these two were brought back for the sake of bringing them back. Also, the fanservice was much more than I expected. Now, I probably would have appreciated the fanservice if I hadn't already become so sick of this anime. Of course, there are shows that are designed to be episodic (Full Metal Panic Fumoffu? or Azumanga Daioh). However, even those shows had some development. For a show like Da Capo Second Season, which is supposed to have a fairly linear storyline, this episodic style is simply unacceptable, especially since they don't even add to the show.

***Story and Character- Both 5/10- Story? Character development? Wasn't this anime supposed to have those? These are the questions you will probably have in your mind. Don't watch this anime for the story or character development because there is absolutely none.

Value and Enjoyment- Another t section. Right now, I question exactly why I anticipated so much when the first season was fine the way it left off. I've watched each episode once and I don't think I'll watch it ever again. The only reason I gave a value of 3 is because there are two instances where I checked the romantic scenes to try to memorize those corny lines to use on my friends as jokes. I think most people would only rewatch this to see how horrible it was. Then again, maybe not everyone in the world is a masochist. As for enjoyment, I only found the first episode enjoyable since it was definitely capable of drawing me in again to the world of Da Capo. Little did I know that it would be the only good episode of the whole series. The ending was practical, but honestly, I didn't need to watch 25 1/2 episodes to know what the last 15 minutes were about. In fact, if the last 15 minutes were used as the only 15 minutes of this show, I think I would have given this show a much higher grade.

***Value and Enjoyment- Both 3/10- Not enjoyable at all. Unless, of course, you want to hurt yourself without using a razor. Dull, virtually no rewatch value, go outside and throw a frisbee instead of staying at home to watch this anime.

Please leave thoughtful comments, including grammatical mistakes (since editing is a difficult ordeal and I'm prone to skipping mistakes) or telling me where I can elaborate.

Last thought- I don't believe in the average system and I give my scores at face value. If I were to give a grade, I think 5 would be the number. The lesson learned is never to watch sequels when the first season did a fine job of finishing already. This is my first time grading an anime that is targeted for both girls and boys (you can't really get boys out of the picture, especially with the blatant fanservice) but I can enjoy a good romance or shoujo once in a while. The only thing I can't tolerate is this show, especially when the first season was done fairly well. If you want to watch shoujo animes that are pretty good, I suggest Fushigi Yuugi (not the OVAs) and Peach Girl (which gave me a few laughs, though I didn't find it spectacular). I hope I veered you away from watching Da Capo Second Season with this review and I hope you leave many helpful comments!