Da Capo II is the best portion of the Da Capo series, which lifts the series to one of the greatest stories ever told. Though other portions of Da Capo are good, it's truly Da Capo II which makes it great. There's only one problem -- most of Da Capo II has never been told in anime form. As a guide for what is and isn't told in the Da Capo II anime, look no further:
Da Capo II season 1 is largely filler, with flashes of true portions of the visual novel intermixed with pure lies and nonsense. The filler portions of season one are so bad that you're better off not watching them at all -- it will only poison your view of genuinely good characters and turn your heart against them. There is one exception however -- though a little mixed up, and with the vital ski portion of Minatsu's story left out, season one does faithfully cover Minatsu's story arc from the visual novel. It leaves out a lot of good details, and even leaves out what happens to her in the end, but in so far as it is talking about Minatsu, it is telling the truth and the story is really good.
The one episode about Nanaka in season one is filler. Nanaka is basically completely ignored throughout the series. To add insult to injury, they even changed the beautiful song she sings in the visual novel, which really makes you believe her voice is as beautiful as everyone in the series says it is, into a mediocre nothing that she inexplicably is forced to sing instead. That's the most upsetting moment, when the one time she's allowed on screen, she isn't even allowed to sing her defining song. What were they thinking? It's madness.
As for Koko, it's just a joke how badly they treat her, and how badly they mangle her character. The very essence of Koko is that she is a self effacing, selfless girl, who would never take aggressive action like confessing to a boy in episode 1. None of that romance happens in the visual novel, it's all lies. Koko isn't the Koko they pretend she is, and Yoshiyuki is by no means an awful boyfriend who ignores and abuses her, like the anime would like to have us believe. Furthermore, they even get Wataru's character wrong. In the real story, he's in love with Koko, but throughout the anime he's just attracted to girls in general, which is a disservice to his character which is actually quite deep and honorable.
Enough of the train wreck of season 1. Da Capo II Season 2, or D.C. II S.S., is where the story really begins. It actually begins at the beginning of the visual novel, almost word for word and scene for scene. It has to briefly skim over its filler nonsense with Koko, and it omits Minatsu who should actually be there with everyone else, but whatever. It also includes Otome and Yume on a ski trip that they most definitely didn't go on, which was supposed to be a huge portion of Anzu's or Minatsu's story, which they just blew off. All of this can be forgiven, however, because it does cover the scenes that really do matter. Otome's story arc from the visual novel is almost perfectly covered. Yume's story arc is mostly covered, and beautifully interwoven with Otome's in a way that doesn't feel contradictory at all. Sakura's story arc is perfectly covered, though shorter in length. And much of Anzu's story arc is finally addressed in the early going of the season. In these short thirteen episodes, a miracle occurs, and half of the visual novel is covered perfectly. It's also the best and most moving and most important part of the visual novel, so they even knew where to aim their budget when push came to shove. Every single episode of D.C. II S.S. is essentially right and extremely good. The situation is so emotional that for the second half of the season you'll be broken down into tears every single episode, just like Clannad After Story. They hold no punches in this series. The only way to make you sadder than D.C. II S.S. is to destroy the whole world ( i.e., Planetarian).
The wonder of the anime is that it is actually better than the visual novel. Just by adding Yoshiyuki into the actual picture with a voice and everything, interacting with everyone visibly, you feel so much closer to the action than you do in the visual novel. When Sakura jumps up and hugs him, you actually get to see it in fluid motion, it isn't just the camera shaking and a few words of text springing up in a box anymore, notifying you that you've been hugged. When Otome crumbles into a heap crying from indecision, there isn't just a picture of her floating in midair with a fixed sad expression and a lot of words telling you what happens underneath in a box. It's subtle, but the amount of emotion conveyed by constant motion above still paintings is enormous. Furthermore, by combining Yume's and Otome's storyline into one cohesive whole, it has twice the impact as each on their own in the visual novel can hope to provide. I feel that in some Platonic sense, the combined storyline must be the one true route, and the visual novel was wrong.
Even so, anime is only better than its source when it follows the plot. Any deviation is disastrous. The characters feel totally wrong and the events feel totally forced and bizarre. Since the anime never bothered to cover Koko or Nanaka, the only way to get their stories is to consult the visual novel proper. People would also benefit from seeing Anzu's true story, not the truncated version you were given in the anime. Even Minatsu and Yume are given more space in the visual novel to shine than the anime gives them. In the end, the only way to experience Da Capo II is to both read the visual novel and watch the anime adaptation. They both provide something the other can't. For instance, the unbelievably good anime opening to D.C. II S.S. doesn't even exist as a song in the visual novel. That's a loss no right thinking fan could bear.
To make matters worse, neither the anime nor the English translated version of Da Capo II really cover the Da Capo II storyline. The true story is much, much bigger. A world no one in the West has yet gotten to see, and may never see, lies right over the horizon.
Da Capo II was given an expansion pack, called Plus Situation/Plus Communication, featuring many new characters never even glimpsed in the original visual novel or anime. In addition, it added a sequel to the series, Spring Celebration, which the anime never reaches. There's also a collection of side stories, Da Capo II To You, and additional stories featuring the Plus Situation cast in Da Capo II Fall in Love (including the adorable Aisia). Granted, Da Capo II still forms the core of all these other satellite releases, but just as the core of the Earth is smaller than the mantle, the Da Capo II we're allowed to see is missing the vast majority of its actual content. We get one game -- Japan gets 5. And neither we nor Japan get an anime covering even 1/2 of the original game. Splendid, huh?
Maybe someday, dedicated fans will translate the rest of Da Capo II, since no corporations are interested in doing so. But at this point, it's been so long, that a better bet is that someday machine translation systems will get so good that they will eventually be able to automatically translate everything from Japanese to English automatically in real time. Once we get that level of A.I., we can just play the Japanese version and the computer will subtitle it all into English for us. No matter how long the wait is, it will be worth it to go back and read the rest of Da Capo II. Because Da Capo II is a story that only comes along once a decade. It's an irreplaceable gem in the ranks of human accomplishment, and we've still only seen the tip of the iceberg.
Recently, some idiot billionaire spent 155 million dollars on a single painting by Picasso. With that 155 million dollars, not only could he have translated all the remaining Da Capo II visual novels, he could have funded a new anime covering all of them -- and Koko's and Nanaka's arcs from the original Da Capo II as well. Instead, some old geezer gets to stare at a single still frame on the wall of his private mansion until he dies of old age. The ridiculousness, the depravity of such a missed opportunity, is proof that the rich don't deserve their money and should be taxed down to nothing ahead of time. All the money could be donated to an anime studio with a giant wishlist of unfinished classics they're required to fulfill. We can start with Da Capo, then go on to Haruhi Suzumiya, Full Metal Panic, Tomoyo After Story, Kud Waffe, Rewrite, Sword Art Online, Kenichi, Kenshin . . . $155 million could have gone a long, long way. And now it's just hanging on a wall somewhere. If only the communists had won the Cold War, we could all be watching Da Capo right now.
*Sighhhhhhhhhh*
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