Date A Live has long since stopped being aware of how silly their show is. The things people are talking about haven't been the case since 2014. I'm surprised it's been getting this much praise.
1 - Melodramatic as HELL. Nothing about this season is self-aware or not taking itself seriously. Feels like I'm watching a spanish soap opera with the amount of cheap twists or drama. For example, the main villain is completely capable of acting as though he's defeated 5 times in a single episode, just to whip something out of his sleeve (or something happens that feels like pure luck), and he'll be like "I'm playing 5D chess maaaan". Mindless character-killing on par with Akame ga Kill, to the point where I was completely devoid of emotion to watching these characters die. Two fake-out deaths that I can think of.
2 - Focus on fight scenes with 'big' stakes (when we know nothing will happen). Fights being a scream-fest (the last episode, every girl just screams the name of their angel and there's that).
3 - Lazy comedy scenes with jokes being oversimplified and with zero charm.
4 - Shido being such a weird character you can't even tell if he's supposed to be a playboy or a virgin. The confident Shido scenes gave me a headache, I audibly groaned.
5 - Laziness. Intriguing elements like the AST's involvement in the war oversimplified to safe on effort. Huge world-building details that change the way I view this world omitted until the last second. Shido whipping out powers we've never seen before to end a threat, because we've made the villain too smart.
6 - Ugly animation. Distractingly bad in fight scenes, and the studio completely gave up on animating facial expressions. Heavy hitting emotional scenes come off as odd because Shido will have the most mind-bending revelation thrown at him and not change his expression. It feels like I'm watching a child role-play with plastic, stiff figurines.
7 - Shido! Shido! Master! Shido! Darling! Shido! Shido! Boy! Shido-sama! Shin! Onii-chan! This is the extent of the dialogue whenever the group of spirits shows up. It literally gives me a headache, and I cannot understand why they felt the need to include the SAME scene so many times. That's pretty much all the girls do, too. In the one scene where they're not fighting, they're reminiscing on the things Shido did for them (and swooning over those memories).
In its defense though, I loved the flashback episodes. But the rest is simply bad. The show is DESPERATE to get you to feel something, and I simply felt nothing. I never sympathized with Mio, or Shido, or Ike, or Karen, or anyone. S1 was never desperate to grab you in, it did so effortlessly. S5 feels like they're simply trying too hard.
