The series gets serious by focusing less on panties for a bit as the drama involving Primula takes over.
What They Say:
The long sought-after Rin is being pulled in a million different directions, and he just might go crazy from the emotional whirlwind. Crushes and competition are temporarily set aside as poor little Primula becomes deathly ill. The heavy truth about the girl s sad life is unveiled as the gang travels to the Realm of the Demons, hopefully to help with the healing. Everything is already confusing enough, and now Asa can t keep from passing out! What is up with this group of girls? Throw in a convoluted tale of cloned cuties created in labs, and it s a wonder that Rin has any time for himself…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The second half of Shuffle gets underway with these episodes as it deals with the issue of Primula. With her being a character that doesn’t do much for me, personality or story-wise, devoting three more episodes to her slows things down considerably. On the plus side, she is really absent from a lot of it, and the cast deals with the repercussions of what she is. But dealing with that puts a morose face on just about everyone as Rin is completely out of it because of her being gone.
Primula is kept mostly to her sealed chamber for the first three episodes and there’s little real interaction for her, which doesn’t really mean much. Even when she’s not in such a state, she doesn’t emote all that much and is just cared for by everyone because of the way she carries herself. The real drama is in watching Rin go through such a depression because of what he’s learned about her from Sia and Nerine’s parents. He’s become quite attached to Primula and knowing that she’s going through something so terrible is a real burden on him. He’s very empathetic with her, almost to the point where it’s potentially destructive.
The destructive aspect comes more in how he handles his other relationships. In keeping the secret from Kaede, he’s become more withdrawn which only makes her more upset. She keeps a lot of it inside, but she can read him easily enough after all these years and she can tell when he’s lying to her. With Nerine and Sia, he’s fairly decent with but his general withdrawn nature affects them as well. The relationships do take an interesting turn at first when he finds out that they’ve known everything all along and he’s not sure how to take that. The most telling thing however is that Rin is completely lost without advice and input from Shigure. She’s dealing with her own illness which has taken her down fairly hard and sets up a few potential revelations for later as she conveys a story of her past with her mother to Rin in order to get him to see what he needs to do.
The most interesting part of this entire story is the part that doesn’t revolve around Primula but instead gives us greater insight into Nerine. Each of the girls has their own reason to love Rin but when we get down to her interest in him, it’s really fascinating as we find that she’s another of the experiments of a sort. The story of her “clone” sister Lycoris highlights what the other worlds are doing to achieve their goals and how it’s affecting everything else. Using Nerine as a baseline and seeing how her clone deals with it is certainly a creative approach, but the way it ends up becoming quite twisted – both in regards to Nerine and later to Primula – is really nicely done and keeps your attention quite well. Nerine hasn’t exactly been a favorite of mine but with this, she has grown considerably. Understanding her deep interest in Rin and how she’s dealing with it in the aftermath of the Primula storyline really sets things up wonderfully for what’s to come.
The visual style of the show is one that is very much worth watching, particularly as the storylines change as we move into the second half. Much of the show through the first three episodes here are very dark and moody, with many scenes taking place in darkened and shadowed interiors or outdoors as the sun sets which casts an ill-feeling over things. The sixteenth episode opens with a very bright sunny morning shot of Rin’s house and it’s like a breath of fresh air after all that’s happened. There’s some tough material to be found in that episode as emotions and feelings are dealt with, but the visual shift in tone is very noticeable as you realize just how near oppressive it was getting at times. Even when they went for the panty shots, there was an air of despair about it that was almost intimidating.
In Summary:
As much as I’ve enjoyed Shuffle, getting past the Primula story has been the best thing it could have done for my enjoyment. The storyline has produced a number of interesting plots for the next eight episodes but it was definitely a chore to get through them. Of course, part of this could be that I’ve become such a Shigure fanboy that with her lesser presence here it just didn’t feel right. As the show gets “back on track” with the sixteenth episode and deals with the various relationships and how everyone is feeling about Rin, my enjoyment picked up considerably and it has me quite eager once again to see more. Shuffle may definitely be an acquired taste but it’s one that is worth acquiring and savoring.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Funimation
