English Dub Review: Date A Live IV: “Past Sins, Cycle of Salvation”

Overview: Kurumi (Alexis Tipton) reveals her tragic past to Shido (Josh Grelle) as well as the lengths she has gone for him without him realizing it. 

Our Take: Kurumi has always had an air of mystery surrounding her and these final two episodes do an excellent job of paying that off with a good backstory. It also does a great job of building upon the little glimmers of kindness we have seen from her, albeit not without a hiccup.

There is a nice mirroring between Kurumi and Shido in that she was an upstanding, all around good person, similar to how he is now. Where it falters, at times, is the cheesy and cheap writing in her being dubbed a ‘hero of justice.’ However, her relationship with her best friend is cutely endearing in their simple enjoyment of cats and caring for each other. Kurumi always longing to do more to help humanity is nicely subtle enough at least, acting as a good motivation for her eventually deciding to become a spirit for the spirit of origin who reveals herself to be Mio Takamiya, to protect people by killing mindless beasts known as spirits. It eventually segues into how they are not the heroic deeds Kurumi assumed and how her grudge for Takamiya came about. Kurumi, mistakenly murdering her friend and other innocent people, who have been seeded with a Sephira crystal by Mio for her own unknown purposes and turned into berserker monsters, makes for a well-founded motivation in her hatred. Although, with what has been set up, it more than likely has to do with Woodman. It also nicely answers the question of what the true nature of spirits are in people who absorbed a Sephira crystal and have strong affinities, like Kurumi and the other spirits, are able to control it and become the spirits we know today. With Kurumi’s past revealed to Shido, Westcott’s daughters attack once again, it goes into how crucial of a role Kurumi has played in helping him when a clone of her arrives. 

Kurumi really is a sweetheart at the end of the day. A very trigger happy sweetheart that has been saving Shido’s life when DEM has killed him various times. What really sells the horrific nature of it is how gruesome and heartless Shido’s various deaths have been. It further fleshes out Kurumi’s softer side in how much she loves him in rewinding time to save him after each of his deaths, despite it taking an immense toll on her. It is really sweet how she tries to hide her true feelings by being cold and dismissive towards Shido, when he finds out, and her other selves. Also, while nothing too hard to figure out, my theory was correct in Reine being connected to the origin spirit in some way when she gets outed as the phantom by Kurumi’s assault. With Reine being captured by Kurumi, it is curious what she is and the extent of her abilities in being at Fraxinus too when Shido returns to the ship and girls. With Shido getting the gang up to speed on Kurumi and vowing to save her, it very much is just the first part of the arc being concluded. However, it is an exceptionally strong end in developing Kurumi and thickening the plot surrounding the phantom and spirit of origin leading into the already announced Date A Live V.