The gears start to wind as the oldest anime being watched this summer lurches into motion coming to the two-thirds mark.

If there’s one complaint about this series it’s that it’s horribly, horribly slow. It was said by a commenter on my last D.C. post that the series essentially starts at episode 16; even the anime backs this up at episode 15, saying that “ahead there is no more moe, only tears”.

Somehow I wish things had started maybe a bit earlier as for the first half of an entire 26-episode series to be pretty much write-off-able is kind of unforgivable. The ending is shaping up to be vaguely interesting if something ends up happening with all the loose ends that have yet to be resolved.

To be honest, it’s a lot of loose ends, as there didn’t seem to be much of, well, direction with the characters up until when the plot officially started.

Spoilery whining after the jump.
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The power-run of the world’s oldest anime (2003 is ancient when you’re a blogger, unless you’re talking about Cardcaptor Sakura) continues as Da Capo reaches its halfway mark – hopefully, of the halfway mark; I’m not sure if D.C.S.S. will turn out to be another useful segment or just another Shuffle! Memories.

In any case, there are 13 episodes to go in the series simply titled Da Capo, and the series continues to defy expectations as it did in the wonderfully unpredictable first episode.

At the first look after one episode, Da Capo looked to be an wild ride which set up cliche scenes only to smash them, and it seemed to be the rare even fight between haremettes for the win.

A third of the way in after eight, D.C. fell back into the trap of being predictable, of being the harem show everyone’s seen before, not to mention strongly listing towards one character.

Now, it’s both. If there’s one thing to say about D.C., it’s predictably unpredictable.
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Ignore the fact I’m the last one on earth to watch this series, and avoid spoilers please. Thank you.

At the third mark here, and D.C. seems to be backing off the torrid pace of it’s first episode a bit.

The first eight episodes seem to be the usual character introductions, with everyone getting a bit in the spotlight. Oddly enough most of the episodes only seem to be about 15 minutes long; and even the “24-minute” 8th episode seems broken up into two segments; one part “side episode”, another part clip show.

Yeah, clip show, at the 8th episode. It summarizes pretty much all you knew about the characters already, with maybe a few plot hints dropped for the two Important Harem Characters (Sakura and Nemu). All in all the fact that we’re getting a recap already sort of summarizes my current view of D.C.; for the love of God Haruhi haven’t used this gag in a while whatever, this show has potential in reams…it’s just not using it. More on that and a look at the standing of the series bets after the jump.

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