A lot of pressure was on Geek Toys this season to make up for the mistake J.C Staff made that was Date a Live Season 3. And for the most part: they did a mostly passable job. There wont be direct spoilers in this just enough details to explain what they did good and bad here. So if youre on the fence about giving this season the time after season 3 left a bad taste in your mouth you can read this without worry for ruining your watch experience and make a decision whether you want to dedicate time watching this from there. Story: We pick up right after the speedrun that covered the 12th light novel in the final epsiode of season 3 no retcon episode for that sorry for the fans who were hoping for that to be fixed. But it probably was for the best just to keep moving onward instead of wasting time backtracking. Shido goes back on his quest to help more spirits and it pretty much follows suit on how they series has always gone. The twist in the plot starts to emerge as the first arc ends and we finally learn the intentions of the main villain Westcott and what he wants with the spirits after 2 seasons of knowing barely anything about his sinister plot. In the 2nd arc we get to see 2 unexpected characters return for a brief spell some more information is slipped through and then it ends in similar DAL fashion. The 3rd arc... is where DAL goes into overdrive: the Kurumi arc. We finally learn the story of Nightmare and how she ended up as a spirit. We learn of the final boss of series and a twist on par with Kotoris reveal as a spirit in season 1. I wont spoil anything but all Ill say is: DAL has approached its Endgame and with Season 5 now confirmed we now sit on the edge of our seats to see the final act. While there were a fair number of distractable slice of life episodes in between all the action this isnt far off the course that the series has been doing throughout its runtime. Its just become more noticable now that theres a darker more interesting theme approaching and its being interrupted by all the s.o.l shenanigans. While I understand it can be bothersome it didnt derail it enough to be harsher about it. Also if you still didnt get enough Love is War in your life even with its latest season going on then youll love this last arc in particular youll understand why. The biggest issue by far was the that the 2nd arc is... quite frustrating given how they adapted it. They effectively sped up and did 2 novels in 5 episodes. And despite being sped up they felt so sloooow which is the worst thing they couldve done. 1 episode was essentially 1/2 of an info dump on the newest spirit and the other half sitting around learning Ratatoskr as an organization. Which couldnt be skipped because they had already cut so much of what couldve/shouldve been introduced/integrated in already during previous season and so they needed to do it now or the future plot/events would make no sense. So they gave it the Slime Isekai tabletalk treatment except without even the benefit of being in depth and called it a day. And then another was basically a filler episode where Shido and the gang get sucked into fairy tale land for... reasons. Meanwhile the Mukuro arc is going on and this episode genuinely accomplishes effectively nothing going there. I can live with filler episodes if theyre placed correctly this wasnt. It was frustrating to watch this season weekly and on rewatch it honestly felt worse. It was the first and only personally time I get bored watching this series. The final arc is good enough to not only salvage but CARRY this season with how incredible it is but it does require you to go through an extremely testing middle arc that may frustrate and bore you. It is worth it and this arc isnt all terrible but it is unquestionable my least favorite in the DAL anime. Consensus: solid story thats continuing the escalation setup by last season. While it has a bit of a frustrating middle it generally kept me interested despite its interruptions and has set the stage for its next season which will be the climax of the series. Art/Animation: The new art style divided the community to some extent. Of personal opinion I liked the character remodels and vibrant colors that gave so much more detail and life to the cast and background art. Though I understand why other folks dont it took a lot of familiarity away from the series and no longer matches the illustrations of the source material. And I admittedly do miss that a bit. But it was universally a step up from last seasons trainwreck deviantart level style so the general impression Ive seen is that its gotten at least a pass from most the fanbase. Tho there was also the unfortunate factor of some additional censorship sewed into this season. I dont care that some of the echii was diluted down in some scenes that was mostly expected but the darker parts of the story were significantly changed to be less gruesome to the point where it almost changed entire scenes and brought down the weight of the final arc Nibelcole and Shidos room scene for example. LN readers have been very vocably upset about this particularly and I agree with them. But even without the artstyle debate a far bigger problem quickly emerged. Moving to the case of contention within this season: The CGI fights. Ima keep it real with you chief: at its best it wasnt pretty and at its worst... it was just awful. The rough transitioning between 3D puppets to still frame 2D action shots as they collided didnt look good. The Origami vs Inverse Tohka fight was supposed to be one of the most action packed moments of the season: it punctuated the OP of this season and from that it looked like it was gonna be great. But after waiting 8 episodes for this promised hyped up fight we instead got... essentially 2 plastic action figures bashing into each other with only the hands of the kids holding them edited out. The space fights with Mukuro were also very ugly at times when it dipped into the CG for portions of it. The only thing thing that looked fairly good with the CGI was the airship fight between Fraxinus and Goetia. Its no exaggeration to say the animation is worse than season 3s but Id even go as far and say that the CGI was so horrible it could be on par with the likes of Arifureta season 1 thats how bad it was. And if youve seen or even vaguely know of Arifuretas reputation regarding its animation: that should upset you immensely. To clarify Im not CGIphobic but when you utilize CGI it needs to feel as seemless and naturally a part of the production and scenes its used in as opposed to feeling so out of place it sticks out and takes you out of the experience. And the CGI this season definitely felt the latter. Going from 2D animations to rough looking Playstationesq block models for fights looked terrible. It is by far and away the biggest complaint about this season. Overall for the 2nd season running animation was by far the weakest element. Like season 3 it wasnt unpassably bad to kill the anime but by God it was awful. The eyecapturing action that makes DAL so unique and special from other harems was butchered badly this season. The only thing saving this grade was that the 2D elements looked better than before and they put a lot of effort into making the background and fine details look much better. But why wasnt the most important elements and action scenes given as much care? Geek Toys needs improvement here: Badly. Sound: While it was dissapointing to have the tradition broken and not have Sweet A.R.M.S do the OP Miyu Tomita did a pretty good job and still gave another equally banging one for this season. As far as background tracks goes they mostly kept up with properly matching the tone of anime and its scenes. Now we didnt get many new tracks this season but tbf they had already been doing Date a Bullet and we heard quite a few of those throughout the Kurumi arc so Ill give them a pass. My only dissapointment comes from not having an orchestrated version of the OP in the final episode as weve had in the 3 seasons past but its basically nitpicking of a hardcore fan at this point. Voice acting remains solid on the original japanese end. Im not gonna factor this into the grade at all because it would be unfair and is irrelevant to anyone who doesnt watch alternative versions/dubs. But the English dub this season... is a mess. It seems that they couldnt secure back all the original VAs when they needed to this season so theres a pretty messy rotation of different VAs filling in for multiple characters and its extremely noticable. Shido was voiced by 3 different VAs throughout the first 6 episodes before they manage to secure his original VA back for the 2nd half of the season and they not that similar sounding in voice. You have whinny sounding Shido the original Shido who did 1 episode in the first 6 and really gruff Shido. Its absolutely bizzare. Reine has a different VA for the first 3 as well as many of the other minor characters but they dont matter as much tbh. They didnt rerecord anything with the original VAs for the bluray either so were eternally stuck with this version. Upon rewatch it really got to me and irkd me so much that it takes you out of the experience. While I typically am a preferably dub watcher this has hard converted me to the original sub going forward. But back to point: disregarding the dubs problems overall sound/music was great still the series best and most defining aspect. Characters: Im not gonna pretend that DAL doesnt have the problem that most harems have as they keep growing in size of sidelining less relevant characters in favor of the ones that are the focal point of the plot because we all know its absolutely guilty of it. Yoshino the Yamais Miku and Natsumi were benched for the majority of the season bar a few specific scenes where they got some crumbs for attention. And Kotori remains in the same logistics point of directing the plot she always is in which isnt bad tho I like Kotoris role she just doesnt grow or change here. Some points are gonna be docked from this category inherently. That being said this isnt a new problem for the series or the genre in general so you just learn to go with it and focus on the main returning characters to develop or take part in the plot in a notable way. Which were: Shido Tohka Origami Kurumi Reine and the villains Westcott and Ellen. For the new characters of note from this season: We have our 2 new spirits Nia and Mukuro the new DEM adaptess Artemisia Ashcroft Nibelcole and the final boss of the series... the Origin Spirit. Of the 2 new spirits I liked Nia the most. She broke the mold a little bit being that she wasnt some oblivous innocent girl that Shido easily charmed into liking him like most of the cast. Shes an older women in her 20s whos confidence lack of a filter and awareness of exactly what Shido is trying to do put him into uncomfortable less cliche and more interesting situations which was very refreshing. It got a few genunine chuckles out of me and I was interested in seeing where her story goes. She does get mostly sidelined sadly after her arc ends but that is the series for ya. Next up is Mukuro who falls back into the tropey nature that most of the DAL girls fall into: innocent girl that nearly immediately falls for the MC but with another gimmick. Personally I found her very uninteresting though I can see why some fans would like her she is pretty much a cupcake in both looks and in personality. My distate in her could be attributed to her arc feeling... rather boring. It felt like it dragged on and on but in reality it was being speedran so much that most of the best parts from the light novel had been cut out. Of the 5 episodes from the Mukuro arc 1 was near completely dedicated towards info dumping on the Fraxinus organizations backstory because that had been neglected in the prior seasons up till this point for some reason and another was spent on the Fairy Tale episodes that was pretty much a filler episode. 2 Light novels essentially essentially condensed into 3 episodes wasnt a great idea as it made me feel more annoyed with Mukuro as a character than making me like her. We got all her most boring parts and lost most of the good stuff. Artemisia takes the place of Mana and Origami as the head AST that follows DEMs commands. Theres apparently a lot more to her but from what Ive been told from light novel readers a good portion of related backstory and scenes involving her have been cut. So for the time being she left extremely underdeveloped and she kinda drops off from the story after the halfway point. Guess if you want more information on her youll have to read the light novel... but given that its expected to be an estimated 2+ years as of writing this before it will get officially brought over in english its gonna be awhile unless you go to an unofficial translator. :/ I guess theres also Maria the newly named Fraxinus A.I that helps the crew out. And while this isnt anime spoilers it is a direct reference to the DAL visual novel Arusu Install. If youve played the game you know who Maria is. But if you havent dont worry it bares no weight on the anime. Its just a neat reference. Not gonna explain who Nibelcole is as well as the Origin Spirit doing that without spoilers would be too much giveaway. All Ill say is that Nibelcole was notably watered down in brutality in the anime as Ive seen some of translations from the light novel about some of the things she was supposed to do in a few scenes... look up at your own discretion. Old characters: Tohka and Origami get their time in the spotlight in the Mukuro arc but in an unconventional way. Again dont want to spoil this review is intended for folks sitting on the fence after going through season 3. Westcott and Ellens plot starts to unfold and they get a lot more screentime. Mana is back after being gone for the entirety of season 3 and thats nice but she doesnt do much in the grand scheme of things here other than show up in a couple of scenes. Reine gets more involved in the plot and we see more of her this season. And were gonna see much more of her next season. And Kurumi... is once again the biggest attraction. Her arc is the reason DAL has skyrocketed to the top of almost every poll in the final weeks of the season and for good reason. It came at the cost of Mukuros arc being forcibly speedran so that they could have as much time as they could get to cover Kurumi Refrain the 16th volume of the light novel. The production team clearly went allin on Kurumis popularity to carry the season. And while it mightve made Light Novel readers upset it clearly paid off in most anime watchers opinions. And Shido starts becoming more aware of his purpose starting to ponder the nature of what hes doing and why. Which doesnt really matter much in this season but will become a big part of the next. Section conclusion: While many of the harem girls were pretty much sidelined to where they barely exist and Mukuros arc mightve been a bit too speedran to the point where it felt both rushed yet felt slow and boring the ones that got focused on ranged from fair at its worst to very well written at its peak. Nias arc Westcotts intentions finally being revealed Shidos internal dilemma beginning to be recognized and especially Kurumis backstory + development carried this season. Overall: I can feel comfortable saying that Date A Live IV was definitively a step up from 3 in terms of its production. While it definitely still has its issues the end result was still roughly enjoyable as the ones before it. Subjectively DAL is one of the best harem series ever made and is still manages to be my favorite guilty pleasure anime of all time. It wouldve taken a truly awful season to change that and thankfully this wasnt it. I still have my issues with it but as a whole I still enjoyed it. Well see if Geek Toys breaks the curse of every studio only doing 1 season of DAL before passing it along to the next. But if they do and you happen to read this Geek Toys: I want to first say I appreciate your work towards adapting this series and picking it up from where J.C Staff abruptly dropped it. But please Step up your CGI. Every fight made in 3D this season bar the airship battle was horrendous and by far the biggest thing that really held this season back. This is a very fixable problem that I hope they recognize and put effort into fixing for next season to make a finale worth the years of build up and waiting. Overall Firm 7 out of 10 anime/season. While my opinion on the season is positive as a whole the biggest issue with me that holds it back is how irritated the Mukuro arcs adaptation made me it felt so slow despite being sped up so much. But even with that aside it also wouldve needed to address some of its issues listed above in the animation and character sections particularly for it to reach an 8 or higher. A definitively better showing over the previous season from a production standpoint but not everyone will agree on how it was executed and it certainly had the potential to be so much better.