D.C.S.S. (Da Capo Second Season)

Information of Anime

Two years have passed since the magical Sakura tree withered it's mysterious powers away.  Jun'ichi Asakura is now a senior at Kazami Academy & has many close friends, old & new, supporting him.  One day, a mysterious girl named Aisia appears in front of Jun'ichi.  She is looking for Sakura's grandmother to study magic.  However she has passed away a long time ago, which disappoints Aisia.  However, in order to cheer her up, Jun'ichi performs his Japanese candy magic trick & causes confusion to Aisia, who now wants Jun'ichi to teach her magic.  She plans to use magic to make people happy.  Jun'ichi now needs to deal with her as she stays in Japan to learn about magic.

D.C.S.S. (aka Da Capo Second Season) is based on the manga, not the original game.  However, it's a direct sequel to the anime, D.C., & is the second season to it.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

The show has a lot of arc, but each roughly has Aisia finding ways to make people happy.  A lot of times her magic cause more trouble than need.  Because of Juni'ichi's warning, Aisia's identity of being a wizard is kept in sercet.  A lot of the arcs are fairly short, mainly one episode, about the new female characters in the show.  When Nemu Asakura comes back from medical school to do her training at Kazami Academy near the beginning of the show, it picks up quite a bit.  Nemu gets angry at Jun'ichi for letting Aisia staying at their house & misunderstands the situation by thinking she is Jun'ichi's girlfriend.  At the same time, Jun'ichi misunderstands Nemu in thinking she & the school doctor have something going on.  This arc ends when both of them realize their mistakes & start to trust each other again.  After this, a variety of small arcs appear again.

When we enter Aisia's arc during the summer vacation, Jun'ichi learns that she has no family.  Because Nemu told him to think of a way to avoid Aisia from coming on the upcoming beach trip by telling Aisia to go back home, Jun'ichi starts to feel bad.  He also learns why she is so obsessed with magic.  It was because of her grandmother who had past away.  She was a wizard that did magic to make people happy.  Whenever someone needed a favour or help, she would use her magic to bring happiness.  Seeing this, Aisia was determined to study magic & be like her grandmother.  From here, we enter Kotori's arc.

The show picks up again when we enter Kotori Shirakawa's arc.  She has strong feelings for Jun'ichi, but doesn't let him know.  The reason is because Nemu came back.  Because she holds them in so strongly, Aisia begins to worry about her.  Kotori tells Aisia that it's okay for her to hold her feelings as long as Jun'ichi is happy & everything is as is no.  Aisia tries to find ways to get Kotori to tell Jun'ichi her true feelings since she doesn't accept this as true happiness, but causes a lot of troubles for Kotori.  Afterwards, Aisia begins to understand why Kotori decides not to tell her feelings for Juni'chi & a new arc occurs when Aisia studies the relationship between Jun'ichi & Nemu, mainly Nemu & see what makes them happy.  This arc is not too important.

A big turning point in the show is the return of Sakura Yoshino.  When news of her coming back reached Jun'ichi & the others, everyone was excited.  Although Sakura & Nemu had some personal issues from two years ago, both of them forgive each other about Nemu life threatening issue; especially Nemu who was excited to see her too.  When Aisia sees where Sakura lives, she thinks that Sakura is related to Grandma Yoshino.  From here, the show starts to get darker.

Aisia starts studying Sakura's behaviour & decides to move into her house at her own free will, which causes some house damages.  During the repairs of Sakura's home, Sakura asks Aisia to help her repair the roof while the others repair & clean other parts of the house.  During their break, Sakura asks why Aisia wants to learn magic & receives a reply that she wants to make people happy.  When performing magic in front of her with some failures here & there, Sakura boldly tells Aisia that she won't teach her magic.  That night, Juni'chi goes to see Sakura & wonders why she won't tell Aisia magic.  Because of Aisia's answer, Sakura tells Juni'chi the reason behind her decision was the incident two years ago.  The next day, Aisia doesn't give up & plans to continue to have Sakura teach her magic.  Sakura decides to take Aisia to the magical cherry tree & explain her reason why she withered it with her magic when the tree was to grant people's wishes for happiness.  She tells Aisia that magic is dangerous, but Aisia refuses to believe it by saying her grandmother's magic brought happiness to people.  Sakura tells her if she continues to believe that remark, she will never teach her magic.

Aisia is in a state of confusion about what Sakura says & tries to research on what happened two years ago.  She figures out that there was something wrong with the wither sakura tree & is determined to prove that Sakura is wrong about magic.  Later, she starts to think that the others are like Sakura when they try to get Nemu & Juni'chi together.  Now, the withered sakura tree is showing some life as it starts to bloom a little.

Thanks to the sakura tree being bloomed again, the girls start to think that Nemu & Juni'chi are normal siblings again.  This confuses the couple & starts to question about their relationship.  Realizing this, Sakura tries to stop the sakura trees growth but fails.  The reason why is because Aisia made a wish about having everyone being happy, which is actually a wish for herself to confess her feelings to Juni'chi.  The sakura tree actually was made with Nemu's feeling in it, so any girl that made a wish on it would have the same feelings as Nemu for Juni'chi.  When Sakura tells Juni'chi what's happening to him & his lost true feelings for Nemu, he fights the tree's powers in preventing him from losing his love for Nemu & Nemu does the same.

Summer passes as the sakura tree has been fully bloomed.  Aisia is happy to see all the girls expressing their feelings to Juni'chi.  However, she later discovers something wrong with the tree's magic as Aisia sees Nemu crying in pain.  All this time, Juni'chi & Nemu have been forgetting their love for each other & saw themselves as normal siblings.  It was only with the help of past objects & memories that triggered the siblings' pain.  This pain brings concerns to their friends as well.  Seeing this, Aisia admits to her faults.

With Sakura's advice, Aisia withers the sakura tree away to save Juni'chi & Nemu.  Aisia finally understands why her grandma & her travelled from town to town as she understands the feelings of others.  With the tree gone & time passing, Juni'chi & Nemu get married & Aishi makes a surprise visit to their ceremony.  The show ends with the credits rolling as it shows what every character are now doing after the wedding.

My Personal Review

D.C.S.S. feels like a totally different anime from D.C.  Although it's does have that D.C. touch, it's just doesn't feel like the same as the first season.  The cast of characters is a little bit larger compare to the previous & more happier.  If you haven't seen D.C. before, I strongly recommend watching that first.  If you don't, you will most likely get lost in some of the character's background & situations, especially about the relationship between Nemu & Jun'ichi.

Animation

The character designs are same as the first season's.  However the colour seems to be more brighter, but still retains that dull appearance.  This is the same for the backgrounds.  Also, it looks like their faces & facial features, including eyes, are stretched.  Other than that, I felt there wasn't any changes in the character designs, backgrounds, & colour toning.  That pink bear that is CIRCUS' mascot doesn't appear very often like the first season.  She appears from time to time.  However, around the episode 24 mark, the quality goes down a lot as body proportions & shapes go unbalanced.  The faces are sometimes longer than the big eyes & the legs & arms seem longer & thinner than usual.

The animation movements are quite fluid & natural.  There are the occasional strange & out of this world actions, but that's usually when Aisia performs magic or one of the girls goes in love love mode.  Nevertheless, it's quite smooth.

Sound

The sound effect are ok & the volume is just right.  The sounds were more on the cute side than realistic.  The falling, the popping, & the hitting on a human body.  Those strange sounds that Utamaru makes when he "hops" is there as well.

The seiyuus from the first season are all here.  So, you don't need to worry about getting use to a new voice on an old character.  All the voices fit their personalities well & gives life to their characters.

The music was ok & consist of mainly ballads.  However, most of them quite soft & wasn't too easy to notice.  Sometimes I forget that there is music in the background.  Maybe I was too attached on what's going on in the show that I didn't notice some of the music.  They are times that background music is quite loud for some reason.  The volume level of the background music really varies based on the song played for some reason.

Story

The story is quite confusing at the start.  I knew it had to do something about Aisia in regards about magic & happiness.  Once Nemu came into the problem & the love problem arose again, I started to think that it was about her relationship with Jun'ichi again.  However, it shifted to a lot of arcs as that problem was solved quickly.  It got to the point that I didn't know what the show was about.  Although the first season did something like this, D.C.S.S.'s story jumps around a lot with it's larger cast of characters.  Initially, I thought the show was more joyful & light hearted than D.C. but I was wrong.  When Sakura comes back & Aisia tries to get her to teach her magic, it starts to get darker.  However, it's not as dark as the original.

The story seems to be a bit weird also,  Nemu is younger than Jun'ichi, but for some reason she finishes medical college school & he's still in high school.  That threw me off guard & confused me.  I honestly don't remember how D.C. ended, but I knew Nemu left home.  I felt the show's plot was very weak in getting it's main point across.  Also, it's not very exciting.  I felt like leaving the episodes I got for a week before watching them.

When the show finally gets to the meat of the story, I felt it wasn't good.  It's written well in terms of elements, but it's long pace from the beginning was what made me lose my interest.  Although the last arc is written at a good length, the time getting to that arc was poor as I felt it was mainly fillers or had a tough time getting to that point.  Plus, the dark elements that made the first season wonderful isn't good here.  Luckily the ending is a "closed" ending.  In other words, it doesn't seem to have any continuation for the series.  Personally, I feel this show really brings down the D.C. image.

The ecchi content is much higher than the 1st season.  I think the first two episodes of D.C.S.S. has more than enough ecchi stuff than D.C.  It's more extreme.  Also, the episodes are a bit longer now since there are no omakes like D.C.

Overall Conclusion

D.C.S.S. is based on the manga that is influenced by the ero-game developed by CIRCUS.  Personally, this season is more light hearted than the first.  You have to see D.C. first to understand the relationship between some of  the characters & their backgrounds.  However, the show is poorly written & doesn't have the charm that makes D.C. great.

D.C.S.S. gets a grade of six out of ten.  It does have that D.C. feel & style to it, but I felt this show is completely different almost.  The story tends to jump around a lot & the main plot reveals it's dark head when the show is about to end.  However, that darkness isn't strong & the show seems more lighthearted than it should.  As the show was about to end, I almost had no idea where the show was going until Sakura shows up.

Last updated on December 26, 2007