SHUFFLE! – 02

OP Sequence

Short Summary:
Rin’s day starts with a bunch of Kaede’s admirers ambushing him and the girls, and they get out of the situation thanks to Nerine’s magic. At the school gates, Rin is constantly smacked on the back by male classmates, eventually putting him in the nurse’s office with a swollen back, which our three main girls tend to. Various unsavory males show up and chase after Rin, forcing him to hide. After thinking about it, Rin isolates himself from the girls for a day. He ends up at the game center when he finds a young girl. He offers to win her a stuffed animal, but realizes that he’s out of money. The girl calls him by his name and then clings to him all the way home (which involves a run-in with Itsuki and the infamous mr. loli-pedo-fiend line). When he gets home, he finds that everyone is there, throwing a tea party. However, Yustom and Foubesi and their daughters are shocked to see the girl with Rin, whose name is Primula. Primula says that she wants to live with Rin, and after the fathers agree that it was inevitable, Rin decides to take her in.

ED Sequence

OP: YOU by YURIA
ED: innocence by 橋本みゆき
I rather like the OP, even more so than Mirage Lullaby, which is the song from the of the prologue. It’s pretty fast paced with a lot of guitar. The sequence shows focuses on the girls, with several shots of when they were young. I’m curious who the two older looking women are. Maybe the mothers of Lisianthus and Nerine? We also get a new ED sequence this time, no longer the backwords recap of last week. Instead we have shots of the girls waiting in different seasons at a bus stop. What interests me is the fact that the sequence starts with a shot of a blooming flower and ends with a shot of Primula crying, which reminds me of the fact that all the girls are named after flowers. What that means, I dunno.

Rin’s feeling the pressure of having a harem already, with the school’s male population on his tail the entire time. Divine punishment and it’s only episode two. During his hiding though, he overhears Lisianthus and Nerine talking about their memories of spending time with Rin when they were young. I really hope that we get more backstory on that, and about their families in general. The OP makes me think there’s something amiss with their families and genetics and test tube babies and Primula. We’ll see how that pans out.
Lisianthus and Nerine’s voices still bother me greatly. I’m getting used to it, but when I first hear them, I definately cringe. And it used to be that Nerine’s bothered me more, but now Lisianthus does. Doesn’t kill the series for me, rather just annoys me.
The whole loli-pedo-fiend thing was hilarious, especially when Primula does it in the next episode preview. Speaking of which, next episode seems to be about Lisianthus. I hope I can survive an episode of that voice.