White Album

  The second new series of the year is a romance based off of a manga that’s based off of a long running video game, White Album. The game is unfortunately one of those dreaded dating sim games that has been in existence since 1998. It originally came out for the PC but there is slated to be a PS3 game later this year developed by the same people responsible for the anime. The manga adaptation began in 2008.

     The story, so far, follows college student Toya Fujii. He is a melancholy and disinterested man who is dating an up and coming idol named Yuki Morikawa. He does his best to spend as much free time with Yuki as possible and religiously watches her appearances on TV. He struggles with the strength of their relationship, fearing that she will grow out of him in time due to her career. Yuki is kind, soft hearted and easy to please. She appears to care for Toya and spend as much time with him as she can but seems to not be able to express her feelings to him as much as she wants to. The first episode really doesn’t establish more then that. There are side characters that apparently try and do little things to help Toya spend more time with Yuki and to aid him in school and work. From discussions between Toya and his friend/peer Akira we find out about some incident that happened in the past that had caused friction between some of the characters. So far they have only hinted to it and we could find out more details as time goes on. Toya also has financial troubles and works as many part time jobs as he can to make sure he can continue paying for college and his apartment.

After doing the background research into this show I’m a little leery of it. The first episode was nice and comfortable, but there is the shadow of it being a harem title lurking around the corner. The games are harem type dating sim games and there are already a growing number of female characters that do their best to help out the hapless Toya. Only time will tell how the series will truly pan out, but the first episode was enjoyable. It was low key and easy going with the scenes of Yuki working at her agency being interestingly directed. The art is average with the character designs being typical of romance series, not as inhuman as the designs found in Shuffle but not wholly realistic either. For now though the series will stay on my list until it proves to me that it isn’t worth watching. I can already see a love feud brewing between Yuki and the head of her idol group over Toya.

UPDATE: it appears I may have to finish watching this series as a second season has begun airing in the Fall of 2013.