"Shuffle!" is not the best anime of the world. It is not even exciting. It is just a boring romance anime that travels nowhere.The plot is very, very straightforward. The main character is a high school guy named Rin Tsuchimi. He meets two girls--Lisanthus and Nerine. The former is the daughter of a god and the latter is the daughter of a demon. The next day, he meets their fathers. They inform him that their daughters are in love with him and want to marry him. If he chooses Lisanthus, he gets the power of the gods. If he chooses Nerine, he gets the power of the demon world.
That's the plot. The rest of the story focuses on the two girls trying to get closer to Rin. As you can see, this plot doesn't make for very interesting episodes at all.
Since this anime is based on a dating simulation game, there are more than just two girls vying for his attention. There's Kaede Fuyou, his childhood friend. Her mother and Rin's parents died in a car accident, so Kaede is living with Rin. There's Asa Shigure, a member of the cooking club who slaps Rin on the back for fun whenever she meets him. Finally, there's Primura, a child demon carrying a stuffed animal cat. She's in love with Rin too.
Usually I don't mind anime based on dating simulation games. Although all of the girls tend to focus too much on one guy, some of these anime have gorgeous imagery, or dramatic, unusual plots. However, "Shuffle!" hardly has anything interesting so far. The most exciting parts of this anime occur whenever Nerime, the demon girl, blows up people who try to hurt the guy she loves. Yet, at the same time, she tries to be more ladylike by spending an entire episode learning to cook a lunch for Rin. As much as I appreciate the Japanese tradition of girls cooking lunches for their boyfriends, cooking alone doesn't make for a very interesting episode.
For some reason, there's also plenty of guys trying to beat up Rin for being engaged to the two girls. I don't know why they want to beat him up, but they do. They always appear in every episode to fight Rin, and by the third episode, they are as annoying as the villains Jesse and James in "Pokemon".
The girls don't even show very much passion at all. Compared to the heavily emotional soap opera "Rumbling Hearts", this series is dull. All the girls just try to grab Rin's attention, because of the romantic memories they had with him as a child. The story is terribly illogical. It should be disturbing that this poor guy gets so much attention. For some reason, Rin doesn't mind the attention at all after the third episode.
One of the girls, Asa, hides Rin under a table from the guys who want to beat him up. She then pushes Rin's head between her legs to see her panties. Why does she want to do this? Well, she's in love with him. That's the only reason why all the other girls are rushing to his side. One would think that these girls would be frightened to have Rin in such a position, but they're all mindlessly in love, like robots with nothing better to do.
If you see this anime, steer clear from it. It's boring and repetitive. It offers nothing interesting or new at all. I really hope I don't have to see any more romantic anime such as this one.
Image courtesy of kurogane.animeblogger.net
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