Title: Shuffle! / シャッフル!Anime Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Harem, RomanceDate of Airing: 7th July 2005Date Concluded: 5th January 2006No. of Episodes: 24No. of Episodes Watched: 24"A mix of heaven and hell."*Wee, my 100th post. Never thought I'd make it this far, this fast. =) Thanks for reading.*I've just re-watched this series, mainly because I was sorting out the anime in my hard-drive, and after mosey-ing through episode 1, I just kept on clicking. Shuffle! is an anime based on, wait for it...another eroge (H-game)! Heck of a surprise, wasn't it? *sarcasm*. Hold on there, don't toss the notion of watching this into the trash yet. Surprisingly, while anime based on these games have turned out to be rather abrupt and erratic, they have also been rather good. Fate and Da Capo are among those, I guess. But I did have my reservations when I first watched Shuffle!. Not having played the game, but knowing the gist of what the game was about, I kinda expected your run-of-the-mill harem anime with the loser guy getting it on with loads of girls. Boy, was I wrong. Yet, sometimes I do wish I was right.Choosing meat is reserved only for serious air-heads. ^^Since your hair is short, I'll grow mine long and tie my ribbon on the right.Okay, long story short, Shuffle!'s synopsis goes something like this. Tsuchimi Rin was an orphan from young, and lives with his friend and her father Kaede. Kaede takes care of him and they go to school together. One day, the kings of Gods and Demons respectively decide to take up residence next door to our good friend Rin, with the intention of marrying their daughters, to Rin. Hence, begins every guy's dream of having more girls than you can count chasing after him.Nerine's demon powers. Exclusively for Rin-sama, of course.While there are rather surprising differences to your typical harem anime, let me warn you that Shuffle! is STILL a harem/romance anime. I'm a sucker for these sort of shows, so expect this review to be slightly biased. So maybe cut off a point or two from the final score if this isn't your cup of tea. Anyway, Shuffle! takes the generic harem-romance foundation of one bland, normal guy that a few pretty and sexy girls just can't get enough of, just because he's so bloody 'yasashii' (kind). This just makes me wonder, is the male population of Japan mostly made up of complete assholes? What drives them to write plot after plot of this crap?Nerine and Kaede.Rin's greatest challenge yet. If it wasn't for the hair, he'd never tell them apart.The bland guy in question is Tsuchimi Rin, who is really nice. He is portrayed as the guy who thinks of others before himself, and is really nice to all the girls. Thumbs up to the animation studio for not making him a lame-ass loser. And at least he doesn't sound gay. He's voiced by Sugita Tomokazu, who most of you will know well as Kyon of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu. Oh, just something I noticed too. I think there are around 3 seiyuus from Haruhi, which is surprising. Anyway, no idiotic, accidental 'boob-grabbing' here. And I must say he manages to hold his own and doesn't get all stuttery when communicating with the love interests of his life. However, his dripping niceness just makes him a pussy for most of the anime. 'Most' of, I say.Asa-senpai! Asa-senpai! Asa-senpai! Daisuki!Now, the girls. Kaede is Rin's childhood friend. She cooks for him, cleans for him, and washes his underwear for him. She's also very sweet, pretty and has the most cutesy, sugary voice you will ever hear. For the first half of the series, I just felt her character was just 'sweet girl with crazy obsession for Rin', and I wasn't too far off as I found out later. Except, make that 'sweet and deranged girl'. Nerine, also called Rin, is the daughter of the King of Demons, and Lisianthus, called Sia, is the daughter of the King of Gods. Oh, by the way, the King of Gods and Demons are the best of pals, how that happened, I don't know. Anyway, Nerine is sweet, pretty, and has the most cutesy, sugary voice you will ever hear. Sia, on the other hand, is sweet, pretty, and has the most cutesy, sugary voice you will ever hear. Waitagoddamnminute! What? Yup, you read that right. Indeed, their traits are more or less a simple job of 'copy and paste' of Kaede.No, really Rin-chan. Four times already. I need a rest. =PShigure Asa, or Asa-senpai, is the older girl who also has a crush on Rin, but we only see this slightly later into the series. And Primula is the lolicon from the Demon world. She's actually a test subject for some experiment, more on that later. Okay, all these girls have fucked up pasts, I kid you not. It's like the studio, or the game-creators thought..."We must make this as interesting as we can", then proceeded to ram some twisted tale into every one of these girls' history. Hmm...how should I explain this?Okay, the series started out just like I expected. Girls, girls and more girls for the unlikely hero. Beach visits, lingerie shop visits, and what have you. There's even an episode called "A Date of Panties". Oh, for crying out loud. However, that point was where we start to learn more about the girls, their pasts, their personalities and their crazy secrets. So, while the title was cheesy, the episode was okay. Halfway through though, the anime takes a dark, somewhat twisted detour. We find out about Primula, and her being a test subject and all. The experiments weren't very pretty either, what with the previous two experiments failing and killing many people. Then, this slowly builds up to Nerine's past, and her clone, Licorice. I won't say much more, but it was quite a sad story. I'm not a block of wood with no feelings, no matter how hard I try to be cool, lol. So yes, watching Nerine's past, and what Licorice went through...I had to catch myself, otherwise I'd probably have started crying. =PLicorice. Oh god, here come the tears.Primula makes her own bento. How nice.Really, I don't think the anime recovered to it's harem roots after this. Dark story followed dark story, and near the end, we just have this whole bunch of crazy/sad/twisted tales from the girls' pasts. Sia is shown as having a split personality, which she supposedly got because of her dead twin's soul. So, this twin, Kikyou, takes over Sia's body sometimes, turning her into a sexier, naughtier version. Even that part was tinged with sadness. Asa-senpai has a 'disease' (if you don't know what it was, I won't spoil it), which makes her body weak and prone to fainting and collapsing. The worst was probably seeing Kaede's darker side. She was totally mental when she was young, even trying to kill Rin with a blade. Then, she goes berserk again when she feels Asa is stealing Rin from her. And the way she does it is rather unsettling. Man, I thought I was just going to see a guy get lucky with hot babes. Definitely unexpected.Shades of Carrie.Which makes me rather undecided whether this darker progression to the end of the anime was good. By itself, it was quite dramatic, and certainly interesting enough to keep me watching. But when it's lumped into a package undeniably about romance and harem-type love...it starts to look out of place, and girls with dementia don't appeal to me. So, this makes it harder for me to say whether it's a good story or not. I enjoyed it, if that counts for something. But, this really comes down to personal tastes. If all you wanted was girl fun and panty shots, you may be turned off."Rin-kun, we'll be right here for you if Asa-senpai...you know, dies or something."Animation is pretty high quality though. There're very few 'head-only' shots, and it's pretty cool how that arrow thing swings onto screen when multiple people are talking. My only gripe is how every female character seems to have come off some factory line of cute schoolgirls. When 80% of the time is spent in IDENTICAL school uniforms, the animators should have worked harder on the differences in their appearances rather than just changing their hair colours. The opening song is noisy, but catchy. And the ending is a nice combination of sweet and melancholic music. Quite good. One last thing that made me liked the show...Rin chose the girl I would've chosen if I was the lucky guy in the game wondering who to bonk. Asa is sisterly, and always seems to give Rin the support he needs, while also possessing the traits of a girlfriend. I dunno, I just liked her the most because the others seemed too...'fluttery' for my tastes. And she's the least weird, in terms of screwed up pasts.Ah, the best scene of all. =)There's some frontal nudity (though you gotta be quick to catch them) and lots of panty-shots, but that's expected I guess. Rin makes up for his lameness by doing what he did at the end to save Asa. Takes balls of steel to do something like that, man! Here's where I take back the 'pussy' tag, lol. Like I said before, I'm a sucker for animes of these genres, so I definitely recommend it to anyone of my kind. =P Overall, a good watch, nothing overly different from the stereotypical harem show, unless death and psychotic drama count as something. Take off a point if you hate romance. =)*Out of 10*Animation (Quality of): 8Story (Depth, twists, and extras): 8Music (Songs, Suitability): 7Characters (Dynamism, Background): 8True to Genre?: 7OVERALL RATING: 7.5/10>>> AnimaniaTags: Animation, Anime, Japanese Animation, Manga, Shuffle!, Tsuchimi Rin, Shigure Asa, Tenjou
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