For some random reason, I decided to start Shuffle! during my spring break. As you may have guessed, however, I didn't finish it, since it's 24 episodes. I was surprised to find out that Shuffle! is based on an H-game. I actually feel stupid for NOT knowing. One guy...surrounded by 5 girls...all the time.
I really enjoyed the humor early on, and a lot of it is done pretty cleverly. However, I'm a bit past the halfway point, which is where the story starts to get kinda serious and more adult (R-15 discretion warnings started appearing halfway through). I ruined the story for myself because I read spoilers on Wikipedia, but apparently, things just sort of get a bit more messed up from this point on. It makes me sad, but at the same time, I am kind of looking forward to finishing it.
I really like the OP, so I'll have to get that sometime. The rest of the soundtrack isn't bad, but nothing really stands out, IMO. A fair portion of the vocal cast also did Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu, so the voices are pretty good. The humor pretty much your type H-game-based-anime humor, where you have an "innocent" young man surrounded by and more or less "pursued" by several girls.
The female cast is very interesting. I found out that since it's based on an H-game, each of the girls sort of cater to a different crowd of guys. For example, the first girl, Kaede, is the childhood friend of the main character Rin. She is 100% dedicated to him and states quite clearly several times throughout the series that her sole purpose of living is to serve him. (What I find interesting is that he just accepts it when she says it.) The next one, and my personal fav, is Asa. She is energetic and fun and likes to tease Rin a lot. But I think my absolute favorite part of Asa is that she is an amazing chef. Then there's Lisiathus, or Sia. She's the ditzy cute one, while her counterpart, Nerine, is smarter but quiet, and can't cook. And finally, there's Primula, who would be the lolita girl, and she caters to the lolicon crowd.
This show is pretty good, and there's a "retelling" called Shuffle! Memories that I'm looking forward to watching after I finish this series. I won't have much time for a while, but I'll get as much anime in as I can!
2 comments:
Very few harem anime (starting to hate the term since it gets a bad rep but whatever) are NOT based on so called H-games, though that's a bad term for them too. Just how the Japanese PC ai game market works. Consumers expect some sort of...er..reward playing the game so even if it's not in itself ecchi, it will have ecchi elements.
Others based off "H" games include Kanon (lol), Otome wa Oneesama ni Koishiteru, Air, Tokimeki Memorial, To Heart, Kimi ga Nozomu Eien ni, and surprisingly enough: Fate/stay night (fo realz).
So it's a pretty big part of the anime industry, esp when it comes to this "genre" of anime. Most are of course tamed a lot in adaptations, or the games are re-released as all-age versions.
btw, don't bother with shuffle! memories. Except for the last ep which is 100% fanservicey, the rest of the episodes are complete recaps of shuffle, so unless your into that sort of a full series of narration and "nostalgia" kind of thing, it might just be better to rewatch parts of the original. The first ep and last ep are worth watching for kicks but that's about it.
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