Da Capo Second Season: Short Review

Quite a few series I’ve been following ended recently (well… not so recently, maybe about a few weeks back), so I thought I’d post a few thoughts I had about them. I’ll start with Da Capo Second Season because I’ve only found uhmm… 3 or 4 reviews of it so far.

Anyway, Da Capo Second Season somewhat continues where the first season left off, where Nemu has disappeared to nursing school - leaving Junichi open to advances from the rest of the girls in the series. Here, most fans (at least if you read the comments flying around on various anime blogs, e.g. Random Curiosity) actually expected the other Season 1 characters to come into the limelight, especially Kotori, when Nemu left the scene, but a completely new character was focused on instead: Aisia.

As a witch-in-training, Aisia is the only reason there’s a plot in Da Capo SS (not that the first season had much though), as she ends up not only resurrecting the mystical cherry blossom tree, but also dominating almost every part of DCSS. Of course, Nemu was eventually reintoduced to the competition for Junichi’s heart. Not that the competition was very stiff of course, with Nemu very clearly regaining top spot after some misunderstandings with her adopted brother in the middle of this sequel. But besides Junichi and Nemu, no other character was developed as much as Aisia, if at all. A source of irritance for long standing fans of Da Capo definitely, but I found Aisia’s presence to be a nice divergence from the oh-so-obvious Junichi & Nemu ending.

Unlike many DC fans though, I was actually perfectly fine with the Junichi-Nemu ending, probably because I’ve alwas preferred Nemu over the rest of the girls. When Aisia’s reawakening of the tree caused the rift between Junichi and Nemu, I had really, really evil thoughts aimed at cute little Aisia (not unlike another anime blogger).

So, overall, I’d say Da Capo Second Season successfully brings a conclusion to the basic Da Capo plot, with Junichi eventually marrying Nemu in the last episode. But given DCSS’ simplicity or perhaps, lack of plot (IMHO, more plot than the first season though), I can only recommend it to those who have watched the first season of Da Capo, have spare time to “waste”, and are willing to tolerate the Aisia-focus of the series. There are definitely some good episodes within this 26-episode series, but if you’ve watched DCSS, I’m sure you’d agree that 13-episodes would have sufficed.