NekoKriszty

Original date of add: 29th Nov, 2009

I watched Shuffle! a week ago, and to say it was a big surprise would be an understatement.

First of all, I expected a typical, Love Hina/Ranma-ish plot with at least 10000 girls crushing on one guy, but in the end he can't decide, or he's crushing on one girl, but she doesn't like him or they are just too shy to admit it. Ughh, I'm sick of these clichés.

Instead, what I got was

1) A NORMAL MALE PROTAGONIST. And by normal, I mean a guy who could even be real. He's usually calm, he's not too smart but when he tries, he gets good grades, he's far too chivalrous, but he also gets perverted ideas from time to time, and surprisingly, he falls in love.

2) Yes, ladies and gentleman, the main protagonist falls in love with a girl who likes him, and they DO get together.

3) The angst. This was full of dark pasts, memory loss, dark powers, and all kinds of psychological illnesses. Now, usually, I'm all in for this kind of stuff (chicks screaming madly a lá Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni), but in this series I was deeply disappointed by the lack of originality. Two girls with split personalities, and to top it, a girl, artificially created, threatened to get all her emotions shut off...

I could probably rant on and on, but I'll just stop right here. If you're looking for something harem-ish, but a little bit different from other anime, I think Shuffle! is a pretty good anime for you.