This episode primarily covers light novel volume 1 chapter 3 with a bit of chapter 4 as well.
And so Shidou completes his galge training, finally unlocking all the CG in his game. It’s a shame though how the show quickly jumped from the beginning of his training to the completion of the first stage. I mean, the show skipped a good chunk of material from the light novel which depicted the peculiarity of his training regimen. I thought those scenes were rather funny. I would question why they would skip these parts in favor of some useless additions they had. More on that later. But it’s probably the producers of this show wanting to jam four volumes on one season. I honestly prefer slower pace while depicting the scenes from the light novel and covering only three volumes. The cliffhanger ending would still work.
Anyway, Shidou gets prepped up for the second stage of training, and the one who prepares him by setting up an earpiece and mic is Reine.
And oddly enough, they added a scene that was a bit out of character with Shidou. He’s supposed to be a guy who would get flustered, not openly expect some action…
The next stage of the training is to actually interact with real girls, and the first chosen practice target is none other than Shidou’s teacher.
But rest assured, Shidou has help. Remember that earpiece and mic? Actually, Kotori and Reine are listening in and offering instructions on how Shidou is supposed to act. But here’s the problem with this: In the light novel, the overlapping between Shidou’s face to face conversation and his secret conversation with Kotori is not evident. It’s just something that a written media can get away with. Once animated, though, and the problem of timing arises. Sadly, though, the anime adaptation completely ignores this and makes no attempt at making it realistic. Shidou simply switches back and forth between conversations, audibly replying to Kotori even. What makes this all the more awkward is how his face to face conversation acts as though there’s nothing odd about it.
Going back (I tend to digress a lot), after doing a slight trial with the teacher, Shidou manages to bump into a female classmate, and cause her to randomly give the viewers some fanservice. Ok, maybe not.
Yes, it’s Tobiichi Origami, the AST girl.
At Kotori’s instruction, Shidou practices with her, spouting rather creepy pick up lines actually. But Tobiichi doesn’t mind; In fact she agrees to go out with him, even giving him a signed picture of her in school uniform. That scene totally made no sense.
But before anything gets resolved, the alarms go off. It’s space quake time. It’s spirit time.
And true enough, the spirit girl from before does show up. Coincidentally, she shows up in Shidou’s school.
Shidou eventually gets sent out to make contact with her. Thankfully, she’s inside the school, and since the AST equipment is not fit for CQB, the spirit girl is largely left untouched, and the AST are merely waiting for her to come out.
So Shidou approaches the classroom, but this time around he has the whole Fraxinus crew helping him. Yes, all the peculiar members it has. And here’s another problem I have with omissions from the light novel: They took away Shidou’s reactions to each of the description of the crew members. Those were actually important! Ok, maybe not, but I liked those retorts. Anyway moving along.
Just to explain why this guy said “Mahal Kita,” the original description in the light novel was actually, “Boasting great popularity with the Filipina in the stores at night, <President> Mikimoto!”
Seriously, back on track, Shidou makes contact with the spirit girl, who immediately goes hostile.
Shidou manages to survive, and make contact with her, and here we are introduced to one of the most important mechanics of this show, the fact that Kotori and her crew can actually measure the affection level of the spirit to Shidou. More than that, they can actually come up with choices on what Shidou should say! How? Totally unexplained.
One way or another, Shidou manages to convince the spirit girl that he means no harm, and that he wishes to be on good terms with her. The key point here is how Shidou announces to the spirit girl that he will never reject and deny her existence.
To be honest, I didn’t quite like the scene. It did follow the light novel, but I felt the mood was quite off. It felt like Shidou was angry and shouting, and it sounded a bit preachy to me. Or like he was making a declamatory speech. I was expecting it to be more solemn and more heartfelt. Although the spirit girl’s change in voice projection was lovely in that scene~
Anyway, Shidou ends up giving the spirit girl her name, Tohka, based on how he met her on the 10th day of the month. They sound the same basically. It’s odd though how the anime decided to add in a totally random, anime original, and totally pointless scene of Shidou’s classmates… I’ve heard of people actually hating on some of these cameo(?) appearances.
Shidou and Tohka’s time together gets cut short a bit, thanks largely to the AST deciding to fire away to pulverize the walls.
I actually thought the walls being destroyed was way too early at the point, because this would mean that the AST should have been able to notice Shidou’s presence, which wasn’t the case. I understand that they’re making it look like Shidou was hidden behind a blind spot, but I still find that illogical. Shidou should be close enough to Tohka for them to see him. What should have happened here is that the bullets were piercing the walls, but the walls were still largely intact. And while the bullets gradually make more and more holes into the wall, Shidou and Tohka continue to talk. Currently, we just have them exposed but shielded by Tohka’s force field while talking.
Finally, though, Tobiichi sees Shidou, and thus she goes in to “save” him by using melee weapons.
Tohka follows suit, summoning her weapon, Sandalphon.
To give some background, Sandalphon is an angel in Jewish tradition. And here’s where I introduce to you the lore from which Date A Live borrows. The spirits, I’m not sure if all, but at least those Shidou will intract with, are all based on the Jewish Kabala. It’s kind of an esoteric philosophy of theirs. It has ten major points, and it would appear that each correspond to a specific spirit girl. Tohka, whose name has the character for 10, corresponds to the 10th point, which is kingship. And thus her weapon manifesting in the form of a throne and a sword.
As for the names of their powers, they should be all based on angels in Jewish folklore.
Going back, the two begin to fight. Well, it’s just Tohka dominating, really, and soon Shidou gets beamed out of there by the Fraxinus.
Come the next day, the school is in tatters, but Shidou surprisingly finds Tohka there, appearing on Earth unaccompanied by spacequakes this time. She demands to have the thing called a “date” which Shidou told her, even without knowing about it. And so they do go on a date, but not until Tohka changer her armor raiment into something that looks modern: a school unform inspired by Tobiichi’s picture.
Fine, the picture makes sense now. But I still prefer the light novel version of this scene.
Overall, the show has not butchered the original story yet; It’s actually still pretty accurate. But the minor details they took liberty on kind of saddens me. They don’t really enhance the experience of the show. Call me a purist if you want, but I still liked the overall mood and details of the original.
