Hello and welcome to Project Nitsuj. If there’s one thing everyone can agree on in Date A Live is that Kurumi is the best character. No joke, even if you aren’t a fan of the series there’s no denying that Kurumi is the best character. She has the best personality, look, powers, and backstory out of all the girls in the series. So what do you do when you have such s popular character everyone loves? You give them their own movie and that’s exactly what they did with Date A Bullet. Based off a light novel which is a spinoff of the main series, Date A Bullet focuses on Kurumi and no one else. It got started in 2017 and still continues to this day where it was written by both Yuichiro Higashide and series creator, Kōshi Tachibana. In 2020, two films were made around the series. I call them movies, but honestly, they might as well just be OVAs. Both of them are under 30 minutes long and were produced by Geek Toys (Hensuki). The previews around these films did a good job hyping up everyone, so let’s see what happens. This is Date A Bullet.
The first movie starts in a chapel where Kurumi enters guns in hand (and cue the pigeons and chapel bells) getting ready to fight a white-haired woman by the name of Queen. The two start fighting each other where the two surprisingly seem to have the same power and are evenly matched. After the opening credits, we find out that this Kurumi is the same Kurumi that went on a date with Shido during the festival in the second OVA. After getting killed, she was brought to another world known as a neighboring world. Once she arrives, an announcement goes out announcing the start of a battle between other spirits in this world where the last one standing wins. Kurumi gets attacked by a ninja girl named Yui, but easily scares her away only to save another girl named Hibiki. Hibiki is pretty weak and defenseless, so Kurumi asks her what’s going on and why she’s here. Hibiki explains that in this world spirits have long since gone extinct and in their place are spirits known as the quasi-spirits, girls who are no longer human and are dead. The quasi-spirits are now fighting each other in the hopes of having their wish granted which can be anything they want, including going back to their own home (it’s basically Twisted Metal except with cute girls with powers). There are 8 girls total and each one possesses a different power and skill. Kurumi and Hibiki get approached by a girl named Biscuit Smasher who attacks Kurumi and knocks into the auditorium. It turns out Kurumi’s powers haven’t fully awakened yet and as a result she’s not as strong as she was previously. She gets forced to fight against Panie aka Doll Master a quasi-spirit who can control over 100 dolls. She’s already defeated one of the girls and has plans to make Kurumi her second victim. Thankfully, Kurumi awakens to her true powers and is more than a match for Panie. Just when Kurumi has Panie cornered, Yui, Biscuit, and Isami show up to fight as well (a shame these girls have to die. They would have been good conquests for Shido). Panie slips away before they start where she runs into Queen who kills her and seems to have some history with Kurumi.
The second part of the “movie” starts with a human Kurumi who did have one friend that she trusted, Sawa. Returning to the fighting, Kurumi and the three girls fight each other with Yui retreating after getting shot in the shoulder (you fail as a ninja) and Biscuit taking a liking to Kurumi’s strength decides to fight her last and focuses her attention on Isami. Hibiki shows up and leaves with Kurumi where they retreat to a classroom. It’s here that Hibiki says her wish is to bring back her friend. In the past she was betrayed and her friend happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and died because of her. As those two talk, Biscuit manages to defeat Isami and gets approached by Yui who calls for a truce because Queen is making her move and they both agree that she needs to die before she destroys the neighboring world. We find out that Hibiki is actually Queen in disguise. The real Hibiki was turned into a cat after having her appearance stolen by Queen who deeply despises Kurumi (given her history and messed up personality I can understand why). Biscuit and Yui fight Queen while Kurumi runs away to heal an injured Hibiki. Queen manages to defeat Biscuit and Yui and calls Kurumi to the chapel for their final showdown. We continue with the fight we saw at the beginning of the first part where it gets revealed Queen is actually Sawa (well this is quite the reunion). It turns out that Kurumi killed her in the past and her spirit went to the neighboring world where she fused with Queen another part of Kurumi that she abandoned a long time ago. At first, Sawa wanted to destroy everything, but now that she’s reunited with Kurumi she just wants things to return to how they used to be between them (that’s impossible at this point). Kurumi says that that’s impossible and decides to take responsibility for her past actions by killing Sawa. The two have a decent fight where Kurumi wins in the end and Hibiki manages to regain her human form. With Sawa defeated and I’m assuming the whole wish granting thing being BS, Kurumi and Hibiki head out on a journey to Kurumi’s world so that she can reunite with Shido.
Final Thoughts
And that was Date A Bullet. While not bad it leaves a lot to be desired. We do learn a little bit about Kurumi’s past such as how she had a best friend and it is cool to see the Kurumi from the OVA is still alive and fighting to return to Shido. However, I wanted to learn more about her past and how she became the person we see today. The other characters feel kind of pointless as we don’t learn anything about their backstories or why they’re there in the first place. The movies don’t do a good job explaining who these characters are and doesn’t show us the stuff that we would like to see or learn about. The animation and fight scenes are decent and the music was good as well. I really don’t know why they call these movies when they would have worked as OVAs. I feel like a third or fourth part would have benefitted this series and would have allowed it to better explore Kurumi’s past as well as setup the other characters and the world they’re in.
Final Score
The final score for Date A Bullet is a 5/10. It may not have lived up to what everyone was expecting, but if you like Kurumi you’ll get some enjoyment out of it. Will this tie into the fourth season in some way? I hope so. We’ll just have to wait and see. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time on Project Nitsuj.