Of all the girthy, long-running harem light novels, who could have guessed that Date a Live would be one of the rare ones to stretch into a girthy, long-running anime that isn’t that far off from being a complete adaptation. It just goes to show you that cute enough anime girls can fund a production. Although, to be fair, Date a Live does actually have a lot more charm than just cute anime girls.
Alternative Titles:
- デート・ア・ライブ
Year Anime Premiered: 2013
Animation Studio: AIC Plus+, Production IMS, J.C. Staff. Geek Toys
Number of Seasons: 5 + 2 OVAs + 2 Movies
Source Material Country of Origin: Japan
Source Material Available: Light Novel, Manga
Entry Last Updated: May 14th, 2024
Where To Start The Date a Live Light Novel After The Anime?
If you have watched all four seasons and wish to continue the Date a Live story after the anime with the light novel, you can do so at Novel 20.
Date A Live Season 5 ends the core story of Date a Live, but Novels 20, 21, and 22 are essentially a Tohka-centric extended epilogue.
Is The Date a Live Light Novel Over?
The Date a Live light novel is completed. It ended in 2020 with Volume 22.
Where To Start The Date a Live Manga After The Anime?
While Date a Live has a lot of fun spin-off manga, don’t be fooled, the series proper doesn’t have a manga adaptation. It got canceled in the first volume. It also tried again later with the Tohka Dead End manga attempting to adapt the first arc, but that was also cancelled after four volumes.
Spin-Off Series include:
- Date A Origiami (Complete) – Short stories drawn chibi style.
- Date A Strike (Complete) – Also called AST Like, it follows the members of AST.
- Date A Party (Complete) – Cute slice of life manga about the girls.
Date a Live also has some visual novels, but they are separate from the content of the light novel, not an adaptation.
What to Expect From The Date a Live Source Material Compared to The Anime?
Like any light novel adaptation, the Date a Live anime does leave a bit of the light novel content out. However, it isn’t doing all those story-altering things like skipping major plot points, cutting out whole major characters, or changing a characters’ core personality and purpose, thus it doesn’t really merit reading the whole series from the beginning unless you want to.
Will There Be A Date a Live Season 6?
It definitely seems, given Season 5’s ending, that they are pretty done with making Date a Live anime. However, we may see the Tohka World novels adapted in an OVA or a movie some day if we are lucky. However, no official announcement has been made.