First Impressions: Mashiro-iro Symphony: The Color of Lovers

My last First Impression; here's Mashiro-iro Symphony: The Color of Lovers...sorry for the delays. Mediocre, but will it turn out all right like Amagami SS did or will it flop worse than Hoshizora e Kakaru Hashi? Only time will tell...

My bet is on chartreuse

As a Manglobe production, this shiny series clearly embodies the graphic style that many people prefer for lighter series today - a brazen set of colors, firm lines, nice blushing, skip the shades. The exact moment that I saw the first character on the screen I knew I was looking at something made by the producers of The World God Only Knows anime adaptation. Their famous productions - TWGOK, Seiken no Blacksmith, Deadman Wonderland, Sengoku Basara, and the Hayate no Gotoku! movie all resemble this to a T. Don't fix what ain't broken, I guess. At least in the graphics department I can't really take anything away, although they don't exactly get creative (that final, onerous frontier) with the visual details.

As for the sound, they play what seems like very...visual-novel-sounding, blaring music. It's hard to describe, but the electronic effects pop up like no other, and to be quite honest it's not all that bad. Nothing really special in particular, but the OP is rather decent. Take a look at the soundtrack sometime.

As for the plot...

I see the Japanese Ministry of Transportation has conveniently decided to ban sidewalks

If I had to describe Mashiro-iro in one word, it'd be "safe". What the production studios have seemingly learned from the failures of this year was "audiences like to see the same things over and over again". So in the spirit of gathering as many likable, slice-of-life/rom-com related things as they could, I firmly believe that they wrote down random objects or themes that they've seen throughout this year in rom-com series, put them in a hat, and then picked 5-6 of them out without looking. I mean look:

- Standard little sister/genki girl/tsundere/senpai/maid arcs? Check.

- Little animal pet thingies that look like they've been magically animated from the nearest Asian girls' merchandise vendor? Check.

- All of the harem travels around together all of the time to offer the most fanservice in the time allotted? Check.

- Insanely nice guy who doesn't do anything but walk around and visit everyone and offer them comfort yet eats up each girl like it's nothing? Check.

- A private academy setting (despite the fact that everybody seems to be firmly in the middle class), offering a justification for having completely nonsensical events (such as co-ed cooking) occur in the series? Check.

- Different colored hair + one or two unique social traits to distinguish each girl from the fact that they should act mostly the same? Check.

I'm not necessarily saying that all of these traits combined are bad, but jeez - be a bit more risk-taking, will you? I can feel my lack of catharsis from about seven weeks into the future after the series ends.

So I herd you liek tea

I don't want to go into too much detail to ruin the viewing experience, but if you want a solidly average series (not bad, not excellent) to watch, I will somewhat grudgingly recommend this. However, don't expect anything especially worthwhile to pop out, like it does in Denpa Onna or Hanasaku Iroha.

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Oh, and I dropped Maken-ki! and Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon. I just...I can't watch them anymore. Also at the breaking point with Guilty Crown and perhaps UN-GO. I might do a rant in a week or so. See ya around then!