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)
DearS comes to a conclusion with the final three episodes and at the end of it I found myself sitting there wondering what the point of all of it was. Then, of course, I realized there wasn’t supposed to be a point as most harem shows today are little more than fanservice fests. The storyline goes through the paces here about where Ren really belongs since she’s not exactly a standard model of the DearS community but it’s kept so far to the end of the show overall and even within the last couple of episodes that it almost feels like it was tagged on.
Before the show moves into dealing with the problem of recalling Ren to the Community, the cast have to deal with the problem that Takeya is doing so horrible with his schooling that he may have to repeat his sophomore year. Considering how chaotic his year has been with Ren moving in with him and then everything else that came with it, it’s not surprising that his grades are horrible. In a nice change of pace, they actually decide to form a study group so that Takeya will be able to pass so Miu offers her notes and to provide some guidance since DearS are already sent into the world with a university level education. There’s a fair bit of amusing comedy that ensues from it, including the arrival of Nia who is of course drawn to Takeya, and for a school based episode with plenty of gags about where Ren lives it all works well and provided for some good chuckles.
As the show winds down, Ren’s trying to figure out more and more about what it is to be in a relationship and how to interact with Takeya. Taking cues from TV about wives who basically please their husbands constantly in an unrealistic manner tend to be the method that she uses the most but Takeya isn’t up for that and just reacts badly to it. She tries to work through this as best she can and she ends up in an empty classroom with Hiro, the suave and sophisticated student who basically is the darling of most of the women. Ren’s naïve nature gets her close to making out pretty well and becomes such an incident that when Takeya walks in on them he can’t believe what he’s seeing. It does get him to realize that they aren’t quite in a relationship that’s normal and his balking against the master/slave thing only makes him further unable to really figure out what he’s really thinking or what he really wants.
Everything eventually comes down to the point where Ren’s being told she must go back to the Community where she’ll be kept in a permanent frozen state since her nature means she’s vastly different than mostly conforming society of slaves that she comes from. It’s given only a few blips worth of comment that tend to be vague in general but Rubi is set on forcing the issue and making Takeya choose whether to stand by her or not. She’s actually wanting a confrontation but the weak-willed Takeya won’t even give her that since he’s still trying to pretend he was like he was before about his distaste for DearS and everything associated with them. There’s a few showdown sequences as one of the Biters are sent to retrieve her but for the most part the show ends with a whimper.
And that’s where a lot of the problem with the ending here is. While it does resolve some things with the show, the overall feeling is still one of “so what” since it effectively has everything going on the same as before. With the manga series being only eight volumes, there isn’t exactly a lot of material for the show and we likely got the bulk of it in the anime version. There’s a lot of potential for new material to be explored here with what their society is, their actual history and so forth, but the mystery of Ren isn’t even given much lip service here as it ends. The relationship between her and Takeya is where they keep the focus but even that tends to push other potential things to the side and characters like Neneko and Miu get pushed to the background. DearS had some interesting moments along the way and I liked some of its style, but this is one of the least accessible harem style shows I can think of and one with the least satisfying ending – and that’s saying a lot considering how few even try to have an ending.
In Summary:
The conclusion to DearS left me pretty much in the same state of mind as a lot of the plots that were introduced throughout the series, which was pretty disinterested. Like the previous episodes, there were some good moments to be had and jokes and fanservice moments that work, but as an overall presentation, the series has little replay value for me. The anime fared a bit better than the manga which I couldn’t get into at all but in the end this is one of those series I’m not sad to see finish.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Viewster
