A simple love story, or is there more than meets the eye? See those dark stairs!!!

Before I start I want to say I have not seen the first season of Da Capo so I don’t know if I’m missing anything that is important to the second season or anything along those lines I just don’t have the time in real life to sit down and watch the first season.

OP: “Sakura Kimi ni Emu” by yozuca*

ED: “Yasashisa wa Ame no Youni (優しさは雨のように)” by CooRie

[Summary]

The show starts off with a sunset and cherry blossoms falling and a shadowed girl confessing her love to an unknown person. Suddenly a boy to be high school age is jolted awake to confusion about the dream he had he looks at the clock and finds himself running late.

Before running out the door to get to school, his little sister (who is high school aged) needs breakfast so he gives he a sweet bun and something to drink she is satisfied they both goto school. At school the yearly festival has arrived and everyone is getting ready. Finally we figure out who the hell this kid is, his name is YoshiYuki he has two sisters Otome is the chairman of the student council. The one who wanted breakfast was Yume, both are good looking and seem caring.

Anyway Yoshiyuki rolls into class where several of his classmates are waiting for him, they give him a hard time about being late. Two of his friends razz him about being tardy while three girls are huddled in a circle talking among themselves. We quickly see that Koko a red headed very cute girl with blue eyes has a thing for Yoshiyuki but is too shy to do anything about it.

The class rep walks in the door and asks Yoshiyuki about being late, he quickly remembers he had a paper to drop off for the student council rep. He exits the room and goes towards the principal’s office to drop the paper off, he lets himself in to find that the office is messy with a blanket and pillow on the ground, he opens a closet to tidy up and notices a hidden stairway, he is on the fence about going down them but suddenly a blond hair girl walks in and stops him. He quickly hands her the papers and leaves.

The guys are sitting by themselves off to the side and the three girls from earlier give them a hard time about being alone finally the six of them decide to go out and have a good time together and make the most of the festival. This was a rouse to get Koko and Yoshiyuki together, we find out they’ve been long time childhood friends (any surprise) they do all kinds of things together and in the end the girls lure away the two other friends and leave Koko and Yoshiyuki alone.

So now that they are alone Koko asks Yoshiyuki to come to a speical place, the “place” is a tree that they used to play at cherry blossoms are flying everywhere and the sunset is in the background.

Finally Koko confesses her love Yoshiyuki, he mulls it over in his mind saying stuff like they have been friends since elementary school and that indeed she is a special girl to him but is it enough to say that he loves her? after some thought he says ok to the idea of going out with her she begins to cry and he comforts her with a hug.

[Impressions]

First off I’ve got to say the artwork and the color fluidity are very, very well done, especially in the final scene with the falling Cherry Blossoms and the sunset. The characters are very well drawn.

Now to the story.. It’s quite obvious the story is using several characteristics to the romance genre. Girl likes Boy, Boy is oblivious girls friends push them together and girl confesses love to boy, boy accepts. It’s been done before this first episode was nothing more than an over used plot devices. The only interesting thing was he found stairs inthe office!

This first episode offered nothing more then character introductions and a starting point to the story if any thus far. Its was very innocent start to the second season of this show. The one thing I did applaud the fact was the characters don’t seem to be mindless idiots who actually have depth to them and seem to think like you and I would.

The first episode felt very recycled and if you’ve seen several romance genre shows this episode provides nothing new or anything really interesting, I guess we’ll have to wait and see what episode 2 provide.