Da Capo / First Impressions

Summary:

Having started eating lunch with Yoshiyuki’s friends, Minatsu is quickly becoming well acquainted to everyone. Yoshiyuki is fine with this, but he wonders what she’ll do when his class goes on their class trip. Minatsu doesn’t know what that is, so they explain to her how fun it is. Suginami then interrupts to remind them that they’re the only ones who haven’t come up with a group activities schedule for their free time, so they decide to get together this Sunday to figure it out and buy stuff they need. Minatsu wants to come along, but when the time comes, it’s not just her that shows up: Yume and Nanaka are there too with the rest of the group. They spend most of the day shopping for thing such as bags and hygiene products, and Yume and Minatsu eventually split with the group to go buy some stuff on their own.

Unbeknownst to Yume and Minatsu, one of the billboards in town is structurally weak and has begun to come loose from its base. It topples over right as the two girls are passing under it, but fortunately Minatsu manages to push Yume out of the way in time. Having heard the commotion, Yoshiyuki and friends rush onto the scene and learn that Minatsu is under the billboard. They work with the other onlookers to get the heavy metal billboard off of her, and it initially looks like she’s fine. However, smoke then starts coming out of Minatsu’s ears, and she falls to the ground. To make things worse, an ambulance arrives to take her away before Yoshiyuki and Suginami can carry her to the laboratory. The entire group follows the ambulance to the hospital and finds Minatsu in an examination room, but she now appears to be okay again.

Mizukoshi arrives on the scene soon after, but she realizes that she’s too late to stop everyone from suspecting that something is up. After spending some time examining Minatsu while everyone waits outside, Mizukoshi and her people take Minatsu away. Mizukoshi leaves it up to Yoshiyuki to explain all this to his friends, and he decides to be honest with them. Taking everyone home, Yoshiyuki finally reveals Minatsu is a robot. Right as he is struggling with trying to say exactly why he didn’t tell them about this, Minatsu arrives at the house with Sakura to relieve him of the burden. Minatsu personally explains how robots like her who had feelings became an object of public concern a long time ago and how she was put to sleep. Yoshiyuki and Suginami had caused her to wake up and, on Mizukoshi’s request, they were trying to keep the secret from getting out on who she was. Still, Minatsu understands that everyone was nevertheless deceived and apologizes for it.

Yoshiyuki is worried about the consequences of Minatsu’s identity being found out by the rest of the world, so he wants to continue to keep this a secret. He also hopes that they all can treat Minatsu like they have been until now – as a friend. Wataru gets angry with him for that because they would have done it even without him saying so, and everyone agrees that they feel the same about Minatsu. Yoshiyuki is the happiest of all to hear this, and everything quickly returns to normal. When Minatsu shows up for lunch as usual the next day, her friendship with Yoshiyuki’s group is clear, however the class representative Maya now eyes her suspiciously.

 
 
 
Whoever said there’d be another Minatsu episode was right, and it looks like this won’t be the final one either since they keep hinting at some potential conflict between Minatsu and the class representative Maya. With all of the screen time and character development Minatsu is getting, she better play a big part in the ending. Anyway, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed with seeing this after last week’s episode, but that’s probably going to remain the best episode of this series for me until something bigger happens related to the sakura tree. Speaking of which, I noticed there were sakura petals blowing right before the billboard fell down. Maybe that’s a sign of things to come. They also spent a few seconds focused on Koko looking less than happy during the final minutes of the episode, so there might be some issues there too. I think we’re about due for another Koko episode – if not next week, then soon.

19 Comments

  17. Minatsu kawaiiii
    No doubt that she become main character in 3 from 8 episode.
    She can also change koko from Main Character to Side Character immediately
    Now, Era of robot has come.

    Planeswalker
    Reply

  18. @Tolitz: I think I heard that there will be 14 episodes. So maybe we have, in worst case, four episodes to, in ‘best’ case, six episodes more to go.

    I just finished watching Da capo first series and thought it to be needlessly long. So the decision to make it 12~14 episodes looks like a good decision for me. Since the story itself doesn’t seem to be the deepest story you’ll see anyways.

    Besides, I’m starting to have little patience to those male protagonists for this type of anime, after being so accustomed to those ‘sarcastic’ male protagonists from Key games. They are far more enjoyable and likeable than this one.

    solgae
    Reply

  19. @solgae: 14 episodes is marginally better than 13, but still too short considering the potential character stories they could’ve taken with the series.

    I like the first Da Capo a lot, and I believe 26 episodes was just the right length for it, mainly coz they really took the time to flesh out each of the characters, thus delivering very poignant “end” scenes for each of the girls. If I remember correctly, it took the latter half of that series to fully realize the impact of the main love triangle.

    And the protagonist in the first Da Capo series was heads and shoulders above the rest in the Da Capo franchise. He was funny, sarcastic, and had a backbone… somewhat. He was showering the sarcasm in the first episode way before Kyon did in SHnY.

    If there was ever a series that was overly long for its story, it would be Da Capo Second Season (DCSS), wherein they focused too much attention on one character for 3/4 of the series, and only concentrated on the main “conflict” in the last 3-4 episodes… very similar to what I’m currently seeing in Da Capo II…

    – T

    Tolitz
    Reply

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