Seiren

Justhappydog Mar 14, 2017

8.2

Seiren , an anime taking a realistic view of a 2nd year highschool boy having relationship with  3 different girls. Relationship with each girls are unique and are in parallel worlds , that is they are not connected in any way. More like a Visual novel which you play three times and get all the three different endings. The main protagonist is the same while the three girls have different personalities and unique traits of their own. Each story is of 4 episodes and usually ends (i.e they show how they will end up in their future). Light-hearted comedy and romance, the main character have three different experiences of his life with different girls. Dont misinterpret this for Harem because the three stories happen in completely different worlds. The animation is very well done , nothing special to say about them. This anime gives off an non-mangaistic vibe , and cute , realistic characters.  The OP and Ed was good , but not that good. I didn't notice any specialities about the BGM too. And each story has its own ending song, so thats a plus. The characters , they took a realistic view and designed the girls. All with same hair color , well yeah in Japan the schools are more stricter than in anime. But Eventually , they cant just desigh all the girls with black hair , and they introduced some red and white heads too (lol) even though they dont seem to be the main female protagonists in the upcoming stories. Overall If you like lighthearted comedy and romance, where the boy tries to make a move, then this is for you.And also not to mention , why are there six girls in the poster , while this anime is said to cover only three girls? It would be nice if this anime has more than three stories.

Bonvantius Jan 15, 2017

1

This has to be the most dull first episode of anime I have ever seen. By the end it had left me with nothing to invest in. The story is painfully ordinary and bland. The main character is pretty pathetic in his leering pursuit of the girls in his classroom. The rest of the cast  I can't even tell  apart. They all have the same hair colour and faces, especially the girls. A poor example of character design. I'd only recommend this if you're the kind of person that enjoys anime with a low-energy, disinterested main character that has no enthusiasm or charisma and yet still manages to get a harem of girls.

JVAnimeReviews Apr 23, 2017

6.4

Positive *Seiren being an omnibus anime is immediately this anime’s biggest strength. Just like its precedent Amagami SS, you get several female protagonists and every one of them gets a happy ending. I addressed this in some of my other reviews but a “problem” with romance anime’s is that there’s only 1 girl who can win at the end of the anime. And that will piss people of since there are always viewers who were routing for the other girl. I myself have been at both sides of the spectrum, sometimes routing for the girl who eventually won and sometimes being so incredibly pissed off because the MC choose the other one at the end. But here in Seiren, there are several different options and surely there will be one female protagonist that is to your liking and it is certain that in 1 of the storylines, she will end up together with the Kamita. For a video review, check out my Youtube channel. Link on my profile page.  *Now for the rest of my positive points I have to go with details that I liked. Not because I think that Seiren was bland or a cheap knockoff of Amagami SS but because this is a very simple romance anime. *A detail at the end of each arc, that I liked, was the 5 or 10 year fast forward. That’s something that I haven’t seen a lot yet in romance anime’s. Usually such a serie ends with the main characters becoming a couple and we never get to see what happens than. And I sometimes wonder about how their relationship developed in the years after that. Now in Seiren we get a glimpse of how the relationship between Kamita and the female protagonist of set arc had developed, giving me a more soothing conclusion to their relationship. *Another detail came at the start of the Kyouko arc, in episode 9. At the very start, where we see young Kyouko playing with her friend in the park, we clearly saw a guy sitting there, apparently waiting for someone. Now this could be a total misinterpretation of me but, to me, that felt like a reference to Amagami SS. The story of Amagami SS starts with the MC Tachibana being stood up by his date on Christmas Eve and that happens in a park.  Negative *At the beginning of this review, I mentioned that Seiren being an omnibus anime was its biggest strength. But at the same time, it's also its biggest weakness. Because of the 3 arcs each being only 4 episodes, there's no time for major development. The romance between Kamita and the female protagonist can't become enormously complicated. And because of that the blooming relationships stay superficial compared to other romance anime's where the relationship has 12 or 24 episodes to develop. This was a problem that its big brother Amagami SS also had with its 4 episode arcs. There it was partially solved by a supplementary second season with 2 extra episodes for each arc.  *And a second negative point is that Seiren didn't avoid the stereotypes when it came to its female protagonists. The 3 female protagonists are all perfect stereotypes that we see in a lot of simple romance anime's and VNs. We have Tsuneki as the babe character, Tooru as the otaku and Kyouko as the inevitable childhood friend. So combining these 2 negative points, I can say that you don't have to come into this anime expecting new and revelating ideas.  Conclusion So as a conclusion, as I just said Seiren is a very typical anime for the romance shoujo genre. In some ways it was a copy of Amagami SS but imo Amagami SS was better than Seiren. There was more "choice" when it came to the female protagonists and I just felt more of a bound with those characters than I did with these. So overall I'm going to rate Seiren at 3 stars. But as I said in my preview of this anime, I wonder if there's going to be a second season of Seiren since both in the opening and on the first key visual, we see 6 different girls. And this season only covered 3 of them. So maybe we'll see more of this anime in the near future.