30 years ago, the Eurasian landmass was hit by a massive "spatial quake" - a hugely detructive rift in space-time that levelled the entire area and killed over 150 million people. Back to the present, and Shido Itsuka is an ordinary high school student living with his ultra-kawaii little sister Kotori in Tengu City, a city that's often hit by spatial quakes - albeit on a smaller scale. During one such quake at the start of the school year, Shido finds himself caught close to the epicenter - where he finds a warrior girl who's very much on the defensive... There's a certain amount of "what the hell did I just watch!?" to this one. From a start with genki, ultra-adorable Kotori waking her brother up, we race through highschool life, alien attack, and Kotori becoming the supreme commander of the organisation that's fighting the aliens. Oh, and she's got a split personality that would give Yuniko (Accel World) a run for her money. The 'spacequakes', you see, are really the side effect of the emergence into this world of Spirits. Kotori's plan so far has been to destroy them with overwhelming firepower - hence the all-cute-female AST squad, of which Shido's classmate Origami is a member - but having seen how Shido approaches the first Spirit he meets (they are attractive females), she hits on Plan B: get one to fall in love with Shido, in the hope that'll make them less keen to destroy the Earth. And this mission is delivered to Shido in what could be the best mission briefing ever. THE GOOD: Completely insane and non-sensical, but so far at least that's in a good way. You have to admire what it's trying to pull off. Looks good, too, although that could be a first-episode budget blowout - we'll see. THE BAD: Holding this level of insanity / silliness for a while is easy. Building a series on it is hard. I think this is in that category that I really shouldn't like (fanservice / pandering / blahblahblah), but that I ending up enjoying anyway. This episode certainly keep me amused, and I'm curious to see how long they can keep up the silliness... Date A Live is streamed by FUNimation (North America Only).
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