Picture Perfect Paranoia

Opening Theme

YOU by Yuria

Ending Theme

Innocence by Hashimoto Miyuki

[screenshots pending]There’s always a typical staple in every haren anime series: the male lead. Adjectives that would best describe him, aside from being “dull”, are “bland”, “carefree”, and “nonchalant”. At the least pretext, he doesn’t do much to advance his feelings for every girl he’s beein been associated with, or rather the girls who fawn over him for his simple acts of kindness. He just lets the girls, who have eyes for him, struggle to either keep their feelings for themselves, or let it out and hope for the best. The result for the girls, or course, would be altering, as far as their love life is concerned.
The girls vying for the affection of the main male lead are another common element of the genre. More often than not, each of the characters feature a particular one-sided personality that it’s so obvious who each viewer will be rooting for. Of course, being a harem anime, this is inevitable.

SHUFFLE! seems to be progressing in that way, in the first few minutes of the anime. We have:

1. a female childhood friend who never ceases to tend to our needs, at the expense of her own well-being.
2. an upperclassman (I mean, woman) who teases the main male lead with her girlish charms
3. an underage girl who sets off loli vibes to any older brother type characters

and other cast of characters that I can fail to mention at this point.

Every female character the male lead is romantically linked to has some sort of serious psychological problems, but unlike most of the other shows of this genre, they happen for a very viable reason. Watch to find out what I’m talking about!