Summary: >

For the last ten years, gods and demons have come to the human world and intermingled fairly well. Rin was an average human who's parents died when he was young. He now lives with another family, including their daughter of the same age: Kaide; who seems hopelessly devoted to him. While not the most popular guy in school, girls certainly do take a liking to him. This gets complicated when the kings of the god and demon realms show up at the school and both declare he should marry their daughters: Sia and Nerine.

The fight for Rin's heart has begun, but it remains to be seen if he'll survive their quarreling, or even worse the jealous hordes of males who wish they'd even have one of those girls fighting over them.

It's hard to believe an anime with a setup this bad would have parts that are decent...

Thoughts: >

Shuffle is yet another harem date sim based anime which is about as bad as you could expect from such a tired concept at the beginning, but mid way through shifted to pull off a few surprisingly good stories. By the end of episode 1, the harem is set up, and just waiting for the same tired go around that would make me pray it would just end. Early on Sia and Rin get close enough to almost call it a day, but then she backs off so he can decide if he really "loves her the most" on his own, and she's not the only girl who decides to give him free reign when it looks like they're pulling ahead. Other points which made me gag involve girls saying things like "Is it alright if I love you even more?", and "I'll always love you no matter what".

Aside from these girls shamelessly throwing themselves at Rin, the beginning episodes are thoroughly poor in quality. They're loaded with fan service, devoid of interesting content, and about as bad as any harem formula you could imagine. But then this anime took a really weird twist when it started to look into the back stories for each girl. By episode 12 things aren't as upbeat as the rest of the series had been. I anticipated lame mid-point drama, however I didn't expect this to slide into stories of the other girls which were more serious, surprisingly deep (considering) and actually good. What I was totally unprepared for was Kaide's story.

From the beginning Kaide and Rin have been childhood friends, and she's been at his beck and call for a long time. People often tease the two saying they'd make a good couple, but Rin always shrugs this off. Being a bit of a cynic, I wondered if maybe she fawned over him a little TOO much. An even more interesting thought I had was what if he didn't end up with her at the end? She'd nearly go psycho.

Oh yes, it goes there! But not in a shallow butcher knife chase you'd expect from an anime. Kaide has deep emotional scars and is consumed by guilt and self loathing despite her cheerful outward appearance. As Rin continues to have his time taken up by the other girls, she becomes more and more desperate to remain useful to him. Watching her world crumble was honestly one of the more gripping dramatic stories I could name in anime, and I couldn't think of another title that went this direction. Hard to believe a silly harem title could pull off something on this level (though only for 3 episodes).

The ending after this had it's good and bad points. Rin had decided on a girl and their relationship was surprisingly well developed (considering the context of this title). The climax was way too melodramatic for my taste, but pretty gutsy all things considered. Then Shuffle slips back into the more shallow setup from the start of the series for the last episode.

I admit that Shuffle started so weak I'm surprised I even bothered watching it, but buried in the pile of junk there are a few good stories, and for one shining moment: a great one. The good news is that most of the "other stuff" is stuck together at the front, and it's pretty safe to skip. While I think you need to watch the first episode to get the introduction, you can skip the next 10 episodes (to Ep 12-13). Another option is to start watching and episode and then skip it if you don't like where it's going. Normally I wouldn't advocate the effort of "skipping" some bad parts, but they are pretty crappy and I do think the second half makes it worth the effort.

[+] Who wouldn't be king of the underworld?