No.1427[Reply]
I've been watching this 2005 VN adaptation classic. Outside of the gimmick of the three dimensions coming together, which gives us some demon and god girls, it plays the harem tropes really straight, it probably invented some of them, but it manages to land it all well enough and not feel tired. That's something I've noticed about trend setting shows, even if a ton of shows copy them later the originals still manage to feel fresh. Sometimes the female characters in these shows can come off as way too big of doormats or cute/silly to the point of being awkward to me, especially in Key adaptations, but this manages to not take things too far in that regard. Not sure who best girl is yet. The art is generally pretty to look at. This era of anime design kind of resembles some of the appeal of those simple early 80s TV designs you would see in comedy shows like Sasuga Sarutobi or Urusei Yatsura, likely incredibly fun for the animators to draw and well suited for expressive motion in their simplicity. Which isn't quite lived up to here, unfortunately. The drawings are strong, and the motion is fine, but I would have hoped for more in the way of stand out charismatic character acting or something a bit more interesting in the odd action scenes that come up. There was a really nice rotation in episode 6 that caught my eye, but I think a bit more on the animation front would have elevated the show.The storyboards are strong most of the time .Naoyuki Kuzuya impressed me the most with his boards on episode 5, he had been active since the late 80s, and the veteran touches are very visible, lots of nice deep staging and good angles. The show also has a signature style of cut ins that are color coded for specific girls, which is a touch I always love, either in a restrained manner like this or the kind of wild stuff directors like Tomino do.I don't know if there are any Shuffle fans here, but who is best girl? Is the show going to surprise me? (though don't spoil it). Any other similar mid 00 Harems at a similar level of quality that don't get spoken of enough. I know this one was popular back in the day, but it seems to have faded into obscurity since then.
3 posts omitted. Click reply to view. No.1431
It's been a very (very) long time since I played the VN and watched the show, but I remember who my favorite girl was, and there's a couple of things I can think of regarding the anime adaption that might surprise you. I can't say anything about either until you've seen it!
No.1432
>>14317 episodes in and I like Asa the best. So far she seems to be the most multi-dimensional, I get a bit more from her than just "Rin is nice so I like him" like with the other girls so far. It helped that 7 has Keijo Gotou as animation director so the drawings and animation were all really good on an episode that focused on her.
No.1433
>>1427Well, I've finished Shuffle. I thought that it was a really good show. It usually looked really nice, the characters were endearing, their arcs worked well, and all the little threads tied together really well by the end. I also was happy that Rin chose well before the show was over and there was still more to deal with after that. Sia maybe needed a bit more time to shine but as far as adapting a VN that probably had way too much material to fully adapt it wasn't a bad job at all. Haven't seen that many Harem anime yet but this sets a pretty high bar.
No.1434