The cast expands a bit as more of the regular lives of the characters is explored and how they adapt to the changes in their school lives due to DearS being there now.
What They Say:
After a UFO containing 150 sexy aliens crash-lands off the shores of Kasai, the Japanese Government enlists these “DearS” into a home-stay program to help them assimilate. Typically apathetic teen Takeya Ikuhara saves one of the aliens and names her Ren, who soon “imprints” upon him as her “Master” and serves as his personal “Slave”—and hilarity and sexiness ensues.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the introduction out of the way and the basic setting gone over, the show moves into the realm of introducing a few more characters and expanding upon the characters lives with how they deal with all the changes. A lot of the mystery is still here and we get a few more hints about what the DearS are really like and just how ignorant Takeya is about them.
Adjusting to school like Ren does a fairly good job of picking up the curriculum and running with it, particularly with such an oversexed and overly sexy teacher. Her mastery of English is an amusing start to the show as she reads off the smut books out loud but finds herself being corrected by Miu from the next class. In fact, this becomes a heavy recurring theme here as Miu goes so far out of her way since being accepted into the school. Be it Ren doing something in gym class, dealing with food or whatever the subject may be, Miu is there to correct her and put her in her place. Where it gets more interesting is when Miu tries to put Takeya in his place about how he’s dealing with his slave and his ignorance shines through which only serves to infuriate Miu more since it means things are not going as they should with Ren.
Miu takes it upon herself to go through the process of getting Ren as educated as possible and this leads to the amusing situation for the viewer of having her being at Takeya’s place a lot. After seeing how Miu has lived and existed with the grandparents in town it’s amusing to see her deal with the “younger couple” and all the things they bring to the table. All of this plays out in a fairly similar way to how the first episode does with it being school related but now in a more homemaker way or probably more specifically in the master/slave relationship that everyone seems to push the Dears in other than Takeya.
To my surprise, the episode that I thought would bother me the most turned out to be the most enjoyable as Takeya’s younger sister shows up in town and is shocked at what she finds out is going on there. Natsuki’s a few years younger and with his being adopted there are no obvious similarities between the two but they are close. Natsuki’s grown up a lot since he last saw her but she’s still at that awkward mix stage and just has a thing for her brother in the more traditional and non-disturbing way – even if she shows off how much her breasts have grown since last they get together.
Natsuki doesn’t take much to Ren being there and gives Ren a fair amount of grief and trouble. Neneko’s around as always and her commentary is a bit snarky in its nature but she sees exactly what’s going on. Natsuki pushes her way to getting everyone to go to the amusement park with her which leads to some minor challenging situations but what it reveals is the real situation behind which Natsuki has come to town as their mother arrives and sets things straight. What works nicely with this episode is that we do get an idea behind what Takeya is like as we see him not long after he came to that family after presumably losing his own and how he dealt with a younger step-sister who was now just all over him. The flashbacks are nice and seeing the interaction among them in the present shows how it’s evolved. If there’s anything to dislike it’s the lack of real communication that’s driven by the idea of people having to leave quickly and return overseas. Can’t you talk during car rides?
In Summary:
DearS has much the same feel as the first few episodes which leaves me with a strange feeling. There are some good fun moments to be had and I’m even continuing to enjoy the smutty teacher character but there’s something just isn’t right or doesn’t sit well. A lot of it I think comes down to Ren being such a cipher overall and what little personality she has not being enough to carry her character in the show which leaves it to the others to handle, often thereby causing some overacting. This batch of episodes is fun and what works does work quite well. Miu and Natsuki highlight the cover and also really are the highlights of these episodes.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Viewster
