Mashiro-iro Symphony: The Color of Lovers

When boys suddenly get into places where they've never been allowed before, some girls tend to get upset. So when the decision is made to merge the elite Yuihime Girls' Private Academy and the coeducational Kagamidai Private Academy, everyone wants to take extra care in avoiding trouble while bringing the two Privates together. Therefore, rather than just bringing the Kagamidai boys into the Yuihime girls' school all at once, a plan is concocted in which a group of test males will be inserted into the Girls' Private Academy first.

Thus, poor young Shingo finds himself being thrown as a sacrificial lamb to the lionesses of Yuihime, who aren't exactly waiting for him with open arms. Will Shingo manage to survive the estrogen soaked death pit that is Yuihime? Can the girls learn to be more receptive to the boys? And just how long until something involving panties will cause emotions to flare, sparks to fly and the battle of the sexes to explode?

(Source: Sentai Filmworks, edited)

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Adaptation:	Mashiro-iro Symphony
Side story:	Mashiro-iro Symphony: The Color of Lovers Picture Drama, Mashiro-iro Symphony: Airi ga Anata no Kanojo ni!?

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Amaha, Miu

Main

Rikimaru, Noriko
Japanese

Sena, Airi

Main

Ono, Ryouko
Japanese

Inui, Sana

Main

Yoshida, Mayumi
Japanese

Uryuu, Sakuno

Main

Gotou, Mai
Japanese

Sewell, Angelina Nanatsu

Main

Ichimura, Oma
Japanese

Uryuu, Shingo

Main

Mizushima, Daichuu
Japanese

Pannya

Supporting

Sakurai, Harumi
Japanese

Amaha, Yuiko

Supporting

Yuimoto, Michiru
Japanese

Sena, Ranka

Supporting

Sakurai, Harumi
Japanese

Asakura, Itsuki

Supporting

Akasaki, Chinatsu
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Kouchiyama, Takashi

Producer

Tanaka, Shinsaku

Producer

Sakurai, Yuuka

Producer

Fukao, Satoshi

Producer

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Opening Theme

"Authentic symphony" by Choucho

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Ending Theme

"Suisai Candy (水彩キャンディー)" by marble

Reviews

Feb 24, 2013

Caleb_Marvell

Recommended

Once upon a time, I was browsing through My Anime List, looking for a new anime to watch. That's when I found Mashiroiro Symphony. From the look of it, I guessed that it was based off of a visual novel. I've been a big fan of visual novels being turned into animes, I guess that's why I liked A Bridge to the Starry Skies, The Rose Madder Colored Hills, etc. So, I decided to try it. I didn't expect to find such a masterpiece.

So, story wise, nothing fancy. It's your typical harem anime that starts out with a boy coincidentally meeting what appears to be ... the main character of the story when looking for his sister. After that, he meets a bunch of other girls, and boom. He has his own personal harem. What I was thinking at the time was "This is almost a cliché harem anime". I mean, this is basically how all harem animes start. HOWEVER, as I started getting further into the show, my opinion changed. The thing about harem animes is that 99% of the time, the first girl he meets in the show is the girl he falls for in the end. 99% of the time, and that's a fact. With Mashiroiro Symphony, it pulled the carpet out from under me, and halfway within the series the main girl changed. I wasn't expecting that. That's when the story started getting good.

Artwork was excellent. Actually, the artwork was why I fell in love with this anime. When visual novels get turned into animes, there's just something in the artwork that tells you "I used to be a Visual Novel". That may just be me, but either way, stunning. Absolutely beautiful. I loved the character art and the scenery. Gorgeous.

Sound-wise, I feel like I've heard a lot of the voice actors play in other animes, and by other animes, I mean other animes that used to be visual novels, so I was fairly happy that I recognized some of the voices in the show. Despite my love for the voices, there was a single voice that irritated the crap out of me. Sure, I liked the character, but when all he says is "Pyu" over and over again, it will seriously bug the hell out of you. I know it's a cat/alien, but at least let it have other things to say then "Pyu".

Finally. I've spent years trying to find a harem anime where the main character isn't either:
A) A Pervert
or
B) Someone who get's flustered easily.
What I'm trying to say is that Uryuu is the one lead harem character that doesn't annoy the hell out of me. Not only is he cool, but his choices in friends is 5 Star material. That brings me to the second thing I've been searching for for years in harem animes: The male role's best friend isn't a pervert either! Along with Uryuu, we got a bunch of other characters that made me happy to see. Sure, we've got a couple tsunderes, but we've also got an animal lover, a cool younger sister, and a hyperactive maid. +1 for the character designing.

I can say that I enjoyed the show. I really liked it a lot. It took me a few episodes to really get into it, but I feel like I've found a treasure in the harem anime/visual novels that get turned into animes vault. Definitely worth watching.

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Jan 15, 2014

sudokia

Mixed Feelings

Judging by the cover of Mashiroiro Symphony: The Color of lovers, I thought this was just another typical cliche harem, you know, high school environment, different females for the male lead to choose. As I was progressing through the anime, I realized the plot was very "unique" and was driven by "unique" characters. Mashiroro Symphony does not follow the typical harem outline. Does that mean this anime was outstanding? exceptional?

NOPE

Personally, I don't mind if a harem is cliched or not, i was not expecting a unique plot, just your typical average harem. even if it was different I wouldn't mind it. So what went wrong?

STORY ...

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Feb 7, 2012

retardation

Not Recommended

I decided, based on what I thought was sound reasoning to check out Manglobe's latest release Mashiroriro Symphony: The Color of Lovers. I'm not the biggest fan of eroge interpretations but when I have liked them they were usually produced out by the higher tier studios. I dug the output from studios like Kyoto Animation (Clannad, Kanon, etc.), Shaft (Ef series), and P.A. Work (True Tears) because those studios were able to mask the usual problems with harem/game based series with great animation, direction or story writing.

I don't play eroge myself so I am not too certain about how often the source ... material affects the quality of the anime but considering that certain studios like Kyoani tend to constantly make good products and certain other ones tend to put out the same crap every season, I'd wager the studio plays a big role in whether these types of series turn out to be successful. For example, I understand that both Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate were made by the same game creator and were both just as acclaimed as games. One studio did a fantastic job producing Steins;Gate and another put out an hot mess with Chaos;Head.

Although Manglobe looked like it was hurting a bit monetarily (as you can tell by cut and cover animation job in the penultimate episode of Deadman Wonderland), I had faith that they would try to be competitive with the top studios with Mashiroriro Symphony. They did a great job of animating The World God Only Knows and I even figured they would try to go all out with a moe show since programs in this genre have the potential to give a good return.

I was very wrong. So far, I've spent most of this “review” discussing why I decided to watch this show rather than discussing the actual show for a reason. There isn't much to say about the program other than it's generic garbage. The plot synopsis is a boy from a regular school now attends a formerly all girl's school due to a school merger... and a harem ensues. I'm not even the type of person who is turned off by that type of plot off the bat (why else would I watch otherwise?). However, my view is that you have to distinguish yourself in this genre, either through quality or innovation, in order stand out. Mashiroriro Symphony is poorly made and unoriginal.

All the anime does is throw a bunch of 'gap moe' characters into a typical situation and has the main character being nice to them. I know that's the general formula but if you don't add something to the general archetypes you aren't really producing anything worthwhile. While I would prefer that shows deviated from the general moe archetypes, if they are going to be used, they ought to be a skeleton or a starting point rather than having the archetype become the point where the character ends.

As the characters go, there's a little sister in there who is your run of the mill quiet girl character, and then there are four other girls who are 'in play'. The most offensive of them is the maid character with the green hair. I don't mind maid characters. In fact I think a lot of maid characters are moe like Maria in Hayate the Combat Butler or even that spinning girl in A Certain Magical Index. But, for anything to be successfully moe, you have to buy into the context. An otherwise regular school isn't going to have a maid character. The whole thing is preposterous and this isn't a gag comedy like Baka Test or something where you expect preposterous things. So, first, she shouldn't be there. Second, there is nothing about her character beyond the things that comprise of the prototypical maid character. Her only trait is that she is a clumsy maid, which we've already seen in a thousand other anime. When she is on screen the only possible reaction is to marvel at how spectacularly uninspired she is.

After the green haired maid, there are two tsundere characters, one with yellow hair and one with red hair. Again, there's nothing more to say about these two characters other than the fact of them being tsundere types. The only thing that separates the two is that the red haired one is a lot more emotionally embellished than the yellow one. You do learn some biographical facts about them but there isn't much interesting about their inner lives other than their interest in the main character and maybe the red haired girl's interest in the purple girl.

The final girl is the incredibly boring purple upperclassman. She has a whopping two traits: she is nice and she likes animals. A good deal of the show focuses on her involvement with an animal nursery high school club. I guess one different thing I can say about this show is this sort of character would get a lot less shine in other harems; unfortunately, that's probably because the creators of other harem works realize that it's a bad idea to give the most screen time to the shallowest character.

I get it though. A lot of these shows have the same character types without anything special added but a lot of them are actually watchable because of the production values. That makes sense because something you already know about can still catch your attention when it looks great. You will often see very cardboard characters in the Kyoani shows but they are so brilliantly animated that even if you are seeing something old, it's something old presented in a pretty way. When the production is bumped up or at least stylized, you're seeing characters you otherwise know in a new, more magnificent light. It's like seeing Final Fantasy IV remade in 3d and then in HD.

Manglobe did a lacklustre job possible with art direction. All the backgrounds, even ones that should look pretty, like waterfalls, seem like super-plain stock footage. The whole show plays out with one camera angle and there are almost no innovative shots. Even Pokemon has cool shots sometimes. I realize that Manglobe isn't a money studio at this point in time but there was clearly no attempt to be creative with the direction. The only notable thing I can think of is one shot where they close up from outside of a window on a rainy day and you still see the rain falling outside as if the camera was actually there. Even that shot didn't look as cool as it was supposed to.

This is my first review and I hate to hate on a show but I just can't think of anything redeeming to say. I actually did expect a lot from Manglobe before watching Mashiroriro Symphony and at the end of the day I didn't get anything. I didn't even get into the the various other problems I found but I think I've made my point

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Mashiro-iro Symphony: The Color of Lovers

Alternative Titles

Information

Statistics

Available At

Resources

Streaming Platforms

Synopsis

Background

Visit MALxJapan MALxJapan -More than just anime-

Related Anime

Characters & Voice Actors

Staff

Opening Theme

Ending Theme

Reviews

Interest Stacks

Recommendations

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