English Dub Review: Date A Live “The Power Given”

Power taketh away.

Overview (Spoilers Below!)

Although Goetia is adept at dodging, Kyouhei is able to land a direct hit. Origami returns to see Shido again, laughing her head off at his predicament—but she brought Yoshino with her? Suddenly, Origami transforms into Natsumi. Shido is saved! The two girls were wandering around the city when Yoshino decided to follow Shido, leading them both here. Sharing an embarrassing story about herself, Natsumi reveals that her power is always strongest after experiencing negative emotions.

In the battle against Origami, things are looking bleak for our four Spirit friends. Origami holds up the limp body of Yuzuru; despite valiant efforts, Kaguya isn’t strong enough to save her sister. Tohka is too weak to move, but when she sees the dire condition of her friends, she manages to call to Shido for more power. Tohka transforms and rescues Yuzuru, once again taking to the skies to combat Origami. Mid-battle, Origami’s power falters; Tohka slams her with the blunt side of her blade, and Origami crashes to the ground. As life slips from Origami’s body, a bright light appears to her and asks if she wants to become powerful. When Origami agrees that she does at any cost, a Sephira Crystal appears and turns her into a Spirit.

Tohka makes sure that the Yamai is okay. Miku is still unconscious, and the Yamai suggest that Tohka wake her with a kiss. When they splutter and insist they didn’t say that, it becomes clear that Miku is awake and throwing her voice.

But their happy reunion is interrupted by the arrival of the Spirit Origami, still hell-bent on killing all Spirits and then herself. After a lengthy battle against Origami’s new powers, Tohka sees no other choice and prepares to kill her—until Shido runs between them and screams at them to stop. Origami flies away, still in awe at her new form and abilities.

Back at the school infirmary, the girls attempt to recover from their wounds. Miku sings the Spirits a healing song. Shido realizes that he needs to seal Tohka again; he goes to kiss her, but the other Spirits are all spying on them. Okamine-sensei rushes to call an ambulance for Tohka’s grievous injuries. Nightmare frolics gleefully through dark streets—until Origami finds her.

Our Take

This episode is pretty dang intense. When I first started watching Date A Live, I thought I was going to get a silly harem show, but Hideki Shirane’s ultra-epic score tells a different story. While the actual battle between Tohka and Origami isn’t choreographed in a particularly interesting way, it’s hard to imagine higher stakes than these for our lovable heroines. The progression of Origami into a Spirit feels natural and inevitable, and (aside from some unrealistically drawn boobs) her new design is pretty visually cool.

Yet despite the epic battles, we get to enjoy some genuinely funny moments, too. I darkly chuckled at Yoshino deciding to essentially stalk Shido, and at Natsumi’s woeful tale about a girl at school who walked in on her in the bathroom (and Shido’s subsequent protests that he “can’t deal with this story”). I smiled at the Yamai’s insistence that Tohka should kiss Miku, a delightfully ridiculous scene (although Miku groping the Yamai’s chests right afterward certainly isn’t necessary or pleasant to behold). It’s still difficult, though, to reconcile these ultra-serious sci-fi battles and the gratuitous fanservice in one cohesive show.

And several moments of this episode just left me confused. How did the crystal find Origami? How did it know that she needed more power at this moment? Why would it choose to turn her into a Spirit? What agenda could this thing possibly have? Also, what are Tohka’s injuries? Her teacher goes pale at the sight of them, but Tohka looks perfectly all right to me. It took me a while, too, to remember why Tohka would need to be sealed again after using her true powers during a battle—the lore of this show is pretty complicated.

I’m still hoping for more Natsumi character development in future episodes, and hopefully a better explanation of how her powers work—that thing she said about negative emotions affecting her power stores is interesting, but considering it’s mentioned once and then abruptly dropped, I’m not sure where the show is going with it. The Origami development here is also intriguing, but it’s deeply tragic at the same time. Origami literally acknowledged that she’s wasted her life on pointless revenge, but now she’s been turned into the very thing she hated most, an even greater reminder of the mission that consumes her. All I want is for Origami to, like, be able to chill for a second. Maybe make some friends and get a hobby that isn’t murder. But it seems like it’ll be a while before she turns her eyes away from her mission—if she even survives her encounter with Nightmare, that is.

“The Power Given” raises a few more head-scratchers than I would like, but it’s a solid battle-driven episode that, in the end, I did enjoy watching.