After watching 15 episodes of Shuffle!, I decided that the anime is trying too hard to tell the stories of all five girls instead of concentrating on one of them. Although this was done to appease everyone, I don’t like how the overall story ends up forgotten and the whole thing becomes a series of under-developed substories for each character. Based on prior experiences, I figured that a lot of “shuffle”-ing must have been done in order to fit all five stories into one timeline (since they usually take place in lieu of one another in the game), so the creators must have cut out some details from each path in order to maximise airtime. Turns out I was only half right… (foreshadowing!?)

Nerine, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to be a two-tim... five-timer!

So, I dug out the original Shuffle! for PC (thank god for Windows Desktop Search) and finally installed it, just to find out if the series missed out anything about Nerine that I should know… (*cough*)

Read on for my thoughts after playing…

Welcome to McDonald's. May I have your order?

For those who do not know, Shuffle! by Navel was originally released for the PC in 2004. You play the main character, Rin Tsuchimi, an average guy who lives with his childhood friend, Kaede Fuyou. Together, they attend the National Verbena Academy, a school set up by the three worlds of demon, man and god. One day, two girls from transfer to Rin’s class. They are the daughter of the King of Demons and the daughter of the King of Gods and they both seem to know Rin’s name…

Neko~

The game itself is standard harem fare with not much to offer in terms of creativity unless you count the demons-and-gods thing. The elfish ears of the demon race are a plus point, though. ;) The cast is the same in the game as the anime, but the character design is much, much better. Nerine just didn’t look as good in the anime (except for a few rare scenes where she looked somewhat like her in-game counterpart). Storywise, it’s what you would expect from a game like this: cute girls with tragic past.

Trapped between heaven and hell. I'll take hell please!

Sadly I must say, the stories didn’t manage to stand out. I was right (remember my foreshadowing above?) to believe that the anime played around with the timeline in order to fit everything together, but at the same time it seems that the anime didn’t have to cut much to do so…because the game’s story is really short! Air was somewhat tiring with its epic novel-length story and I remembered wishing for something shorter, but Shuffle! is just waaaay too short! The two paths I tried contain nothing new compared to the anime and the endings leave you wondering which part was supposed to be the climax.

Sorry to disappoint you, Kareka, but there's no yaoi doujinshi here.

The characters are well-designed and the art is excellent, but the lack of a sufficiently well-developed story left a somewhat bitter aftertaste. I guess the only thing that Shuffle! has got going for it is the cute girls… Not that I’m against cute girls or anything, but I think Navel could have spent just a little more effort on the script.

You can tell that a girl likes you when she shows up on your calendar. If only that works in real-life...

Still, I will be lying if I say that I hated the game. I played through the paths for Nerine and Asa and they are both quite enjoyable. I will be playing through Tick! Tack!, a sequel based on Nerine’s family released just last month, as soon as I get my hands on it in a few days(?) time.

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