SPOILER-FREE!
This review was originally written in July 2021, published as a YouTube video on my channel.

What are the things you think of when anime comes to mind? That of course will be heavily dependent on who you ask. Do you watch anime for its takes on brain-bending science-fiction, or for its ability to make any sporting event seem like the most-amazing thing on the planet? Those are but two in a sea of possible answers. But there’s one particular aspect of anime that one cannot help but encounter, and that’s the idea of a male main character having women fall in love with him and desperately want him. That’s right, everyone! We’re diving into the ecchi harem genre, where the lowbrow, sexual comedy is the norm. Sometimes, you just feel compelled to go diving, even if it’s into a dumpster.

Shuffle! is hardly the first ecchi harem comedy show that I’ve seen, but was one of the earliest shows that I put on my watchlist years ago and only just got around to watching and finishing. As for why it took me so long to do that? Well, I guess you could call that the result of my own laziness. I’m certainly not averse to seeing shows that might be a little more, shall we say, risqué in their content, and knowing that this was based on an adult visual novel, I could only guess what lay in store for me.
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In a universe where humanity lives in harmony with gods and devils, Tsumichi Rin is a high school boy living with his childhood friend, Fuyou Kaede. After catching up with their mutual friend Shigure Asa, news comes out at their high school that a transfer student will be joining their class. Later that day, Rin runs into a blue-haired demon on a swing named Nerine, and a red-haired god at the grocery store named Lisianthus, or Sia for short. The next morning, it turns out that there were TWO transfers students rather than one coming to the school, and as luck would have it, it’s the same two girls that Rin met the day before. They’re accompanied by their fathers, who declare that Rin is to wed either daughter of his choosing. Oh, and it turns out that they’re the kings of the gods and devils and they also become Rin and Kaede’s next door neighbors. So begins a story of all these female characters trying to win Rin’s affection.

The lowbrow comedy begins manifesting itself almost immediately, with one of the main gimmicks of the early show being that the entire male student body turns viciously horny. While they already did so with Kaede before Nerine and Sia arrived, they take to forming their own societies of appreciation for the various girls while trying to seemingly flay Rin for his absurd luck in having so many women want him. This leads to several moments that, while not quite funny, are slightly amusing. The fathers themselves are not immune to being at the brunt end of the comedy, either – they’re absurd forwardness with Rin about trying to get him to marry one of their daughters leads to Sia demonstrating her amazing fighting skills with any nearby chair.

The various characters, while not necessarily being much beyond stock for the genre, never crossed into nauseating or aggravating territory. Part of the reason for this is that not only are all the characters aware that they all have romantic feelings for Rin, but also because apart from that, they’re friendly with one another. Kaede, Nerine, and Sia all tend to walk home with Rin together, and they treat Asa with respect as their senpai. They view winning Rin’s affection as a competition, but largely not as one rooted in furious jealousy. It’s as though because they acknowledge the bizarre situation Rin has been thrown into, they’ll accept whatever decision he makes. Their time alone with him isn’t centered in cutting the other women down, but rather in showing that they care about him.

Because Shuffle! is based on a visual novel, it takes the approach of trying to include enough of each character’s story arc in the 24-episode span. As Kaede, Nerine, Sia, and Asa spend more time one-on-one with Rin and their own stories are explored, it gradually gets revealed how they all tie into his life. The difficulty that arises in this approach is that in trying to feature all the characters, one runs the risk of an imbalance in how much time or development each character is given. The show manages to partially rectify this by featuring all the characters in most of the run, even during arcs where they aren’t the central focus, but even so, it cannot quite escape the problem. One character in particular, Primula, seems to get this problem moreso than the other characters. Her arc takes up a few episodes in the middle despite being introduced rather early, which is okay, but the arc itself doesn’t feel like it ever reaches a full resolution later on; it just kind of stops. She does get a few more moments in the latter half of the show, but nothing that feels solid enough to be considered growth or development.

Rin himself is also, as is typically the case in shows like Shuffle!, a rather weak character. There is very little to him that is worth commenting on, aside from the fact that he essentially relies on Kaede to basically function since he cannot cook or do other household chores. He’s a nice guy as far as personality is concerned, but not much beyond that, although he does have moments of coming across as an unintentional jerk to Kaede at times. His most notable trait though is his indecisiveness; he adopts the approach of holding off on making any kind of decision regarding the love interests until the end of the show, which makes his holding off on a final decision an especially-knowing one. By doing this, he is responsible for some of the events both leading up to and including the final arc, some of which I cannot help but feel could have been prevented if he had been more upfront from the beginning.

The final arc also highlights another difficulty in the show, and that’s in its transition at the halfway point. By making an effort to tell a more-compelling story, such as including the gods and demons aspect into various parts of the narrative, it doesn’t handle it quite as cleanly as it was going for. The second half of the show feels like it’s juggling too much, losing some focus as it spent more time on heightening drama instead of comedy, without feeling like things were progressing as naturally as they should have. Was it bad? Well…sort of; there were indeed some moments that worked. It’s just that the whole is not well put-together.

All that aside, it wouldn’t be an R-rated ecchi show without some topless nudity in it. Despite the sexual overtones present throughout the series, I was pleasantly surprised at the lack of visible fanservice nudity shots that Shuffle! so easily could have provided. For being twenty-four episodes long, I could count just about all of the scenes involving nudity on one hand. In doing so, the show seems to be making a genuine attempt to, like I said, bring more emphasis to the characters, overall drama, and non-sexual comedy. It’s worth remarking though that the moments where titillating nudity does take place seem to get a bit of a bump in animation quality. I must guess that the production staff knew when to pool their budget resources and go above and beyond.
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Shuffle! offers the occasional laugh, and the fact that it aspires to greater dramatic heights and does succeed every once in a while, makes the series more notable in the ecchi harem genre than others. Some characters don’t have nearly enough fleshing out to make their stories compelling, and certain things are dropped rather abruptly instead of properly following through. While I can’t quite bring myself to say that I liked it, this show managed to be one of the more-pleasant outings I’ve had with the genre. It may not be anything special, but if you’ve ever been curious to explore the genre for yourself but didn’t know where to start, this might be one worth considering.