SHUFFLE! – 12

Short Summary:
Summer is ending, so Rin, Sia, and Nerine find themselves catching up on homework. With Nerine’s help, Rin finishes early, so he leaves to do some sketching and runs into Asa, who grills him on his relationships with the other girls. Meanwhile, Primula notices that something odd is happening: liquids that she indirectly touch freeze over. This culminates into her fainting while watering the lawn, freezing all of the plants around her. After Primula develops a high fever, Rin asks Sia and Nerine if they know anything that could help, but they look away and don’t answer. Frustrated, Rin goes outside where Eustoma and Forbesii (Sia and Nerine’s fathers) call him over. They explain that Primula is an artificial being, part of the Yggdrasil Project, created for the sake of researching life. After Rin returns home and Primula wakes up, Rin asks Primula to return home to the Makai world. Primula initially refuses, but Rin returns again to make the same request after Primula gets some rest, and has a dream of when she was young. His heartfelt pleading convinces her, and so she parts with him and Kaede. Somewhere in the Makai world, a scientist tells Forbesii and Estoma that Primula can’t be return to being a human.

The R-15 shot this week is the final scene where Primula is naked in the medical tank. It’s too important of a picture for me to not include with the normal set of screencaps, so I kept it there and didn’t do a separate R-15 pic of the week.

This episode starts out pretty poorly in multiple respects, but redeems itself by the end. The animation is sub-par, and the general story is boring – parts of the Asa conversation feel like recap – until the Primula part starts. Once that gets going, the animation and the plot improve by quite a bit. I even felt sad when Primula said goodbye to Kaede and Rin (who are like her parents in that scene), and Kaede starts crying. And then we see her empty room, and it just gets sadder. The background song during that scene is one of my favorites, which probably adds to my enjoyment there.
The preview has me very curious about next week. They seem to be developing Sia a bit along with Primula, since the preview shows her face looking evil again. Combined with the serious music, the questionable return of Primula, and the title「斜陽の家」 (House of the Setting Sun), I’m quite intrigued.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that the interstitial changed. It’s now a fanservicey shot of all the main girls nude, but with the important parts covered.