Date A Live III
デート・ア・ライブⅢ
- Action
- Fantasy
- Romance
- Sci-Fi
- Harem
- School
- Urban Fantasy
- Episodes
- 12
- Duration
- 24 min per ep
- Aired
- Jan 11, 2019 to Mar 29, 2019
- Status
- Finished Airing
Synopsis
Shidou Itsuka continues working with Ratatoskr to locate Spirits and seal their overwhelming powers, aiming to prevent the catastrophes they can trigger. As he balances school life with the bonds he’s already formed with the Spirits he’s sealed, the stakes keep rising.
With new Spirits emerging, Shidou faces increasingly difficult challenges that test both his resolve and his relationships. Along the way, the search for peace draws him closer to the truth behind the Spirits’ origins.
Otaku Consensus
Date A Live III is a franchise-faithful but visibly divisive third season: Keitarou Motonaga and Hideki Shirane keep the quick rhythm of school comedy, slapstick, harem tension, and super-powered urban fantasy intact, while J.C.Staff delivers a watchable 2019 continuation for viewers already invested in the cast. The strongest material is the season’s movement toward deeper Spirit lore, but the dominant criticism is adaptation thinness: reviewers repeatedly point to predictable character behavior, uneven depth, and pacing that can feel functional rather than dramatic.
Why You Should Watch
Watch Date A Live III if you want harem romance with actual genre machinery around it: super powers, urban-fantasy rules, school-life pressure, and a male lead whose appeal is built on negotiation rather than brute force. It scratches a similar itch to The World God Only Knows in its courtship-as-strategy structure, but with more battle-anime spectacle and a denser ensemble of archetypes: tsundere energy, idol flavor, witch imagery, twins, and slapstick reversals. This is not the season to convert viewers who need subtle characterization or prestige animation; it is for fans who enjoy seeing a long-running light-novel cast rearranged into new emotional and tactical pairings without abandoning the franchise’s playful dating-sim DNA.
Key Characters
- SShidou Itsuka(VA: Nobunaga Shimazaki)
Shidou remains one of harem anime’s more unusual leads because his central skill is emotional triage: he wins scenes by reading insecurity, fear, and pride rather than by overpowering opponents.
- TTohka Yatogami(VA: Marina Inoue)
Tohka’s appeal comes from the franchise’s signature contrast between overwhelming combat presence and disarmingly sincere emotional reactions.
- OOrigami Tobiichi(VA: Misuzu Togashi)
Origami is the cast’s sharpest deadpan presence, often turning the show’s harem comedy into something colder, stranger, and more obsessive.
- NNatsumi(VA: Ayumi Mano)
Natsumi gives the season its most explicit witch-coded energy, pushing the series’ romance-comedy formula into identity-play and transformation humor.
What Makes It Stand Out
- 1
This season was produced by J.C.Staff and aired as a compact 12-episode winter 2019 cour from January 11 to March 29, a format that helps explain why even sympathetic viewers often discuss its pacing as brisk rather than expansive.
- 2
The production retains the franchise’s core creative lineage on paper: Koushi Tachibana is credited as original creator, Tsunako as original character designer, Keitarou Motonaga as director, and Hideki Shirane as series composer.
- 3
AniList’s tag profile is unusually specific for a harem action show: Super Power at 95%, Female Harem at 93%, Primarily Female Cast at 86%, Slapstick and Urban Fantasy both at 79%, plus Witch, Idol, and Twins as notable secondary flavors.
- 4
Kouji Watanabe handled the anime character designs, translating Tsunako’s light-novel aesthetic into a television pipeline under art director Kouichirou Bizen, color designer Asuka Hino, and photography director Yoshio Ookouchi.
- 5
The reception profile is broad but not elite: MAL lists a 7.19 score from 234,842 votes with popularity at #615, while AniList sits close at 70/100 with 2,006 favourites.
Fun Facts & Trivia
- Fun fact 1
- Date A Live III’s MAL popularity ranking is far stronger than its score ranking: #615 in popularity versus #3766 in rank, a useful snapshot of a sequel that many viewers tried even if critical enthusiasm was mixed.
- Fun fact 2
- The season’s AniList and MAL averages are nearly aligned, with AniList at 70/100 and MAL at 7.19/10, suggesting the lukewarm-positive consensus is not limited to one database culture.
- Fun fact 3
- Yasunori Ebina served as sound director, while Yoshiaki Kimura handled editing; those roles matter in a series that constantly pivots between slapstick timing, romantic pauses, and action escalation.
- Fun fact 4
- The credited creative chain highlights the franchise’s light-novel identity: Koushi Tachibana supplies the original concept, while Tsunako’s character-design credit remains central to the brand’s recognition.
- Fun fact 5
- Web reception around the season is sharply split: positive commentary tends to praise the unusual genre mix and character interactions, while negative reviews single out predictability, thin characterization, and adaptation value even for existing Date A Live fans.
Studios
- J.C.Staff
