Mashiroiro Symphony: The Color of Lovers

When I first took a look into Mashiro-iro Symphony I never thought it would drag me in as much as it did. It took hold of my attention when I was watching, and didn't let go of me until I got though the whole anime; and yes I did marathon the anime for me it was that good. I've always been a fan of romance animes, they're what I go to when I need an uplifting story or a sad one; this anime does it that bill of being one ofthe higher end romance animes that I've seen (and I've seen a lot of them). It may have had those slow moments, and those slightly inappropriate moments but over all I thought the storyline and character progression really overshadowed those moments making it a very good anime. Especially one that can throw around your feelings like it was nothing. STORY 9/10 The story and how it progressed through each character is what I think make it worth watching. Each storyline per character had it's own story to tell, each one had their own part in the story that just made the anime, and it's characters click. It wouldn't have been a romance if it didn't have it's ups and downs right? The way those problems and resolves came in truly made this story very, very enjoyable for me. ART 8/10 I thought the character was really good, the uniforms were well designed and well executed in color. Each character had their own unique part of their character that made them different from other character designs I've seen in the past. Also the character expressions were really on point. Though there were little design mishaps, I believe in my mind that it did not effect the anime at all. SOUND 8/10 I thought the intro was amazing, I even downloaded it because I like it that much. The sounds in the anime were well place during certain parts which really added to the mood of the setting. The only problem for me was there were some parts where a song or two would have played well, but were just blank leaving for some awkward moments but other than that I thought it was really good. CHARACTER 10/10 Each Character have their own story, which adds to the mood of the story. They all have their own backdrop that pulls you in quite a lot. To be fair, each character were individually good at playing their part in the story that it is without a doubt one of the harder times you can pick out your favourite (couple/person) because each one has their own good qualities. Overall this anime will forever be one of my favourites! Mashiro-iro Symphony = MUST SEE

This is quite possibly the best anime that I've ever seen that has harem listed as a genre. I'm sure that you will all agree that the most annoying thing about any harem anime is the perverted characters who tries to hit on everyone/ gets hit on by everyone. Thus, I have more or less given up on the harem genre and steer well clear. However, this anime is like hope at the bottom of Pandora's box. I really like how the protagonist is not just a decent person for once but he cares so much about everyone around him. All he is ever trying to dois help (leading to a number of misconceptions). The story line is not about him and every other girl falling in love symultaniously but rather, it focuses on the development of a single girl's feelings... before disregarding them for the next. He takes everyone's feelings and attitudes to heart, and is always trying to help. I most certainly did not expect the ending of this. Plot: (Warning Spoilers) As I'm sure you've gathered from the synopsis, the series starts with our protagonist looking for his lost sister and when they find one another there is a girl, our other main character, from the presteious girls highschool with the sister. This makes you think, oh no - here we go again. There is a merger plan between the girls highschool and the protagonist's co-ed school and our protagonist, his sister and his (not perverted) best friend are enrolled in the experiment. Our main girl instantly makes the boys feel unwelcome and from there on its tsundre. The character development is mainly centred around her rather than every girl. But then suddenly, about half way through the series the main girl switches. Completely unexpected. The new main girl is also tsundre but more heavily so (if you know what I mean). She loves the protagonist but he doesn't seem to love her back. Instead he is falling for her best friend (who is the only one whom he actually loves).

Judging by the cover of Mashiroiro Symphony: The Color of lovers, I thought this was just another typical cliche harem, you know, high school environment, different females for the male lead to choose. As I was progressing through the anime, I realized the plot was very "unique" and was driven by "unique" characters. Mashiroro Symphony does not follow the typical harem outline. Does that mean this anime was outstanding? exceptional? NOPE Personally, I don't mind if a harem is cliched or not, i was not expecting a unique plot, just your typical average harem. even if it was different I wouldn't mind it. So what went wrong? STORY(5/10) I found the plot of this anime to be very "special", and when I mean special, i mean retarded special. It is not centered on one plot, rather it follows different routes (personally I don't like this). This anime starts off like a very typical harem. You are introduced to your protagonist Shingo Uryuu along with his sister and another girl Airi Sena whom you can easily deduce will possibly be the main female lead. The first half focuses primarily on the relationship between Shingo and Airi. I enjoyed this half very much, as watching the two leads interact, I established a very fond connection for the couple wishing to see more in the later episodes. However after the first half, Airi whom is our female lead is no longer the center of attention, instead the anime focuses on two characters who are already introduced in the first half: Sana Inui & Miu Amaha and this is where the anime truly becomes "special". I found this to be very weird, the first half was good but why change routes? Even so, it was not subtle, I was totally not prepared for it, the next episode, they just threw the spotlight on Sana and gradually onto Miu. Personally I didn't mind this change as long as the story somehow developed a strong relationship between the characters but unfortunately this never happens and it was a disappointment. The ending was one of the most disappointing endings I've seen, it was not the original purpose of the anime and felt more of a filler episode. As I watched the end, despite being a very touching moment, I lost my sense of touch with the characters and I could no longer appreciate what I was watching. If i had to relate a color, it will be black, confused to what I was watching and seeing no light. CHARACTERS (6/10) I will outline the characters: Shingo Uuryu - Male Lead, a hardworking, caring diligent student (Main) Airi Sena - Female Lead for the first half, a rude posh girl who seems to have a huge dislike towards the opposite gender, she does not want to show her weakness and is willing to do whatever to be seen strong among her peers. (Main) Sana Inui - A tsundere girl who's always picking on Shingo. Even so, she will go out of her way to support Miu (Main) Miu Amaha - Loves animals, is extremely hardworking in what she does and will do everything possible to protect injured animals. (Main) Sakuno Uryuu - The younger sister of Shingo, unlike typical harem animes she does not have a brocon. Quite mature for her age, has a very good relationship with her brother and the other females. (Support) Angie Sewell - The maid of the academy, she has a huge passion for being a maid and is happy to perform chores for her master. (Support) The male lead: Shingo Uuryu is very different from your average Harem lead, instead of the lazy, negligent or pessimistic character, our lead is quite the opposite, hardworking, diligent and caring. The very same can be said to most of the female characters however this leads to one problem: lack of character development. Not to say that there were any development, I believed Airi was developed extremely well coming off being hot-headed and rude to someone who could open up and depend on others when needed. However this is the only strong development seen in the anime. For Shingo himself, the already hardworking diligent student, how can you develop him? The fact he was perfect already flustered me, there were no flaws about his character which really was annoying to me. Even more so, he is dense. The story focusing on Miu and Sana was not developed well and thus has affected the way I perceive both characters. The first half of the story had left an impression on Airi and the immediate change of routes had caused me to become confused of the characters. The fact that there 6 episodes left and they were trying to develop 2 characters, it was not enough to help establish a connection with the characters, had the anime went 2 cour, this might not have been the case. Also looking at the character outline, it seemed difficult to create any STRONG development. There may have been development for Sana, but the story did not choose her to be the winning female thus her character was wasted. While there was development in the anime for those 2 character (Sana and Miu) it was extremely weak. The plot-structure of the anime also contributed to the weak development of these characters. Likewise our 2 beloved supporting cast, Angie and Sakuno had no character development whatsoever. EXECUTION (5.5/10) For Mashiroiro, it was rushed, there was excellent character chemistry between Airi and Shingo mainly because together Shingo helped Airi overcome obstacles, it brought out both characters really well and at the same time made the anime enjoyable to watch. This is the only highlight of the anime as when the route switches over to Sana and Miu, we never see a glimpse of proper action, the fueling desire to help someone overcome obstacles. Sana and Miu's character while developed weakly never satisfied me while I was watching the anime. Their weak development also led to me not being able to connect with the character thus feeling no sorts of empathy during the touching moments of the show. ART & SOUND (7/10) Nothing wrong with the art, infact I liked the way how Shingo was designed, a very mature looking person, something that looks quite different from the tradiational "half-ass" look of typical anime characters. The female leads however do follow the cliche design, cute-looking, innocent and beautiful. Not mucht to say about sound either, I love the ED personally, not so much the OP. The music during the anime was mediocre. OVERALL (6.5/10) If you want to watch an anime that breaks away from the cliche stereotypical harems that the industry have been shoving in our face for the past err im guessing 10 years or so then you might enjoy this anime. However, be aware of the sudden plot-change and lack of character development, it may leave you disappointed.

I decided, based on what I thought was sound reasoning to check out Manglobe's latest release Mashiroriro Symphony: The Color of Lovers. I'm not the biggest fan of eroge interpretations but when I have liked them they were usually produced out by the higher tier studios. I dug the output from studios like Kyoto Animation (Clannad, Kanon, etc.), Shaft (Ef series), and P.A. Work (True Tears) because those studios were able to mask the usual problems with harem/game based series with great animation, direction or story writing. I don't play eroge myself so I am not too certain about how often the sourcematerial affects the quality of the anime but considering that certain studios like Kyoani tend to constantly make good products and certain other ones tend to put out the same crap every season, I'd wager the studio plays a big role in whether these types of series turn out to be successful. For example, I understand that both Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate were made by the same game creator and were both just as acclaimed as games. One studio did a fantastic job producing Steins;Gate and another put out an hot mess with Chaos;Head. Although Manglobe looked like it was hurting a bit monetarily (as you can tell by cut and cover animation job in the penultimate episode of Deadman Wonderland), I had faith that they would try to be competitive with the top studios with Mashiroriro Symphony. They did a great job of animating The World God Only Knows and I even figured they would try to go all out with a moe show since programs in this genre have the potential to give a good return. I was very wrong. So far, I've spent most of this “review” discussing why I decided to watch this show rather than discussing the actual show for a reason. There isn't much to say about the program other than it's generic garbage. The plot synopsis is a boy from a regular school now attends a formerly all girl's school due to a school merger... and a harem ensues. I'm not even the type of person who is turned off by that type of plot off the bat (why else would I watch otherwise?). However, my view is that you have to distinguish yourself in this genre, either through quality or innovation, in order stand out. Mashiroriro Symphony is poorly made and unoriginal. All the anime does is throw a bunch of 'gap moe' characters into a typical situation and has the main character being nice to them. I know that's the general formula but if you don't add something to the general archetypes you aren't really producing anything worthwhile. While I would prefer that shows deviated from the general moe archetypes, if they are going to be used, they ought to be a skeleton or a starting point rather than having the archetype become the point where the character ends. As the characters go, there's a little sister in there who is your run of the mill quiet girl character, and then there are four other girls who are 'in play'. The most offensive of them is the maid character with the green hair. I don't mind maid characters. In fact I think a lot of maid characters are moe like Maria in Hayate the Combat Butler or even that spinning girl in A Certain Magical Index. But, for anything to be successfully moe, you have to buy into the context. An otherwise regular school isn't going to have a maid character. The whole thing is preposterous and this isn't a gag comedy like Baka Test or something where you expect preposterous things. So, first, she shouldn't be there. Second, there is nothing about her character beyond the things that comprise of the prototypical maid character. Her only trait is that she is a clumsy maid, which we've already seen in a thousand other anime. When she is on screen the only possible reaction is to marvel at how spectacularly uninspired she is. After the green haired maid, there are two tsundere characters, one with yellow hair and one with red hair. Again, there's nothing more to say about these two characters other than the fact of them being tsundere types. The only thing that separates the two is that the red haired one is a lot more emotionally embellished than the yellow one. You do learn some biographical facts about them but there isn't much interesting about their inner lives other than their interest in the main character and maybe the red haired girl's interest in the purple girl. The final girl is the incredibly boring purple upperclassman. She has a whopping two traits: she is nice and she likes animals. A good deal of the show focuses on her involvement with an animal nursery high school club. I guess one different thing I can say about this show is this sort of character would get a lot less shine in other harems; unfortunately, that's probably because the creators of other harem works realize that it's a bad idea to give the most screen time to the shallowest character. I get it though. A lot of these shows have the same character types without anything special added but a lot of them are actually watchable because of the production values. That makes sense because something you already know about can still catch your attention when it looks great. You will often see very cardboard characters in the Kyoani shows but they are so brilliantly animated that even if you are seeing something old, it's something old presented in a pretty way. When the production is bumped up or at least stylized, you're seeing characters you otherwise know in a new, more magnificent light. It's like seeing Final Fantasy IV remade in 3d and then in HD. Manglobe did a lacklustre job possible with art direction. All the backgrounds, even ones that should look pretty, like waterfalls, seem like super-plain stock footage. The whole show plays out with one camera angle and there are almost no innovative shots. Even Pokemon has cool shots sometimes. I realize that Manglobe isn't a money studio at this point in time but there was clearly no attempt to be creative with the direction. The only notable thing I can think of is one shot where they close up from outside of a window on a rainy day and you still see the rain falling outside as if the camera was actually there. Even that shot didn't look as cool as it was supposed to. This is my first review and I hate to hate on a show but I just can't think of anything redeeming to say. I actually did expect a lot from Manglobe before watching Mashiroriro Symphony and at the end of the day I didn't get anything. I didn't even get into the the various other problems I found but I think I've made my point