Shelf Life

City of Angels

I enjoy fairy tales as much as the next girl. I like the ideas of princes and princesses, and while I wouldn't mind being whisked away to another world, I'm an even bigger fan of coherent storylines. In fact, when I get the former and not the latter, it makes me feel a little empty inside, not unlike the lead character is Shattered Angels. Named Kuu, which means “empty,” she's always bemoaning how empty she is, and useless she feels. As I watched her and all the other pretty characters jetting all over the screen, I couldn't help but feel the same sense of vastness and futility inside of me.

Shattered Angels, which is based on the Kaishaku manga of the same name, takes a lot of elements from previous works by the authors, like Steel Angel Kurumi and Kannazuki no Miko. It has the same gorgeous artwork and the same doe-eyed females, but its biggest setback is its poorly told storyline. The events occur in a linear fashion and aren't terribly difficult to follow, but the pacing is so jumbled that viewers to fill in a lot of the blanks for themselves. It shouldn't be necessary to have to use the recap at the beginning of each episode to figure out what's going on, but sometimes that was more concise than the nonsense that was going on in each scene.

The story revolves around our emo wunderkind Kuu, who spends her time composing letters in her head to a prince she met as a little girl, and commiserating over how useless she feels. Living in the school town of Academia, things have always been a bit dull until the swarthy Mobile Morality Brigade comes storming through their school. With them is a new transfer student who looks just like the prince of her dreams, all the way from his flowing locks, to his goofy pince-nez. His appearance ushers in a slew of activity, in which girls start fighting each other in the skies with Giant Robo limbs that are summoned out of thin air. These girls are apparently Angels of some kind, and their energy is recharged via the luxurious kisses of their owners. Also, there's a snaggle-toothed cat girl who ought to be pummeled to death.

As far as the story lets on, these Angels are the product of some shifty science experiment that not only caused immense destruction to the world, but also killed the transfer student's older brother. Unsurprisingly, Kuu has something to do with all of this, but nothing concrete has been revealed yet.

This series does have one thing going for it, and it's the sleek visuals. Whether you like pretty boys who look like women, or pretty girls who look infinitely huggable, or giant robotic arms that materialize in the sky, your eyes will have plenty to feast on. That's not the concern. The concern is how your brain will feel after an episode, as it gasps for air and wonder who the hell copy-edited this thing. Action sequences are only cool if they accompany a story that isn't a mottled pile of ass. Buy it if you must, rent it if you want to, but if your better of spending your time on something that has more substance than fluff.[TOP]

After that, my decision for what to watch next was kind of a given. I Have a Secret—I am hopelessly addicted to Shuffle!. I am drawn towards harem shows like flies are drawn to carrion. There's something about the asinine situations that these girls land themselves in that pulls me back time and time again, just to see what unrealistic plot twist will happen next.

The series has morphed quite a bit since the first volume. It started out as a simple harem show in which hordes of women were falling all over themselves to be with Rin. Just as he was gravitating towards one in particular, drama struck. The devil child that was living with them became extremely ill, and it was revealed that she was a bioengineered being who could barely contain all the magic power stored inside of her. Now that she's been taken back to the devil world for treatments, Rin is incredibly heartbroken. Making it his mission to visit her, they all traipse into the underworld to see if they can help.

Meanwhile, another previously healthy girl is falling sick all over the place, and it turns out, she's probably on the verge of death too. At the same time, another girl is upset because she harbors a deep secret that involves another death. If it isn't apparent to harem fans by now, creators ubiquitously think that the fear of death is the greatest way to bring out the moe feelings in every man. If I could find one common variable between shows like Shuffle!, Kanon, and Air, it would be the prevalence of death. It's just a shame that they lay it on so thick sometimes that it's hard not to start rolling your eyes.

In a nutshell, Shuffle! is ridiculous. There's melodramatic, and then there's Shuffle!, which resides in a class of its own. This is the only show I've ever seen that can make a common cold seem like the influenza pandemic of 1918. Only, instead of just needing a compress and some soup, it usually comes with some strange caveat, like how regaining health means that you're not allowed to love anymore. If anything, Shuffle! wins an award for Most Obvious Metaphor Ever by cutting to a shot of a dead cicada. Hey thanks, guys.

Shuffle! has been an emotional rollercoaster, not just for the characters, but for me, too. I started out hating the show, then ended up liking it a bit… now, I'm just stunned by how inane some of the plot twists have gotten. It really shouldn't be this cheesy every time someone says, “Is it okay if I continue to love you more every day?” but man, what a doozy. If only this show wasn't my biggest guilty pleasure ever since Please Twins. With only two volumes to go, what could they possibly dredge up next? [TOP]