hontou ni sou omou?

Kudoes to Kawaii Heavens (They Of Fanbook Munificience) for scanlating the SHUFFLE! manga. Although we see the occasional series where the manga is licensed but the anime is not (e.g. Keroro Gunsou), I don’t think SHUFFLE! will ever reach the English-speaking market in either medium. While I’m enjoying what I’ve seen the manga thusfar, it mainly reinforces my impression that asread has done a brilliant job of interpreting the original eroge and translating that into the anime.

The first two chapters of the manga’s first volume basically cover the events of the anime’s first episode. The thing struck me immediately was what was missing.

Like the eroge, Asa doesn’t say the line from the anime that gives this blog its name. This inspired addition by asread’s scriptwriters represents how the foundations of the endgame were carefully being laid from that first episode. Rewatching it, it’s now so clear to me that Rin was also attraced to Asa from the start - evidenced by him telling Asa not to pull that kind of girly attack on him when she’s not interested and cursing to himself that she’s fooling around with his heart when she drops the Line just before leaving the locker area. What the events of the series serve to do is for Asa to gather up her courage to be less ambiguous and, less obviously, for Rin to recognize his feelings for Asa (via the other inspired addition of Takizawa’s confession to Asa in Episode 7 and the Primula Hell Visit) and then to act on them.

Upon rewatching, Rin’s easygoing relationship with Asa also contrasted even more starkly with the almost imperceptible tension and sadness when conversing with Kaede. Also, with hindsight, Kaede’s emotional blackmail of Rin over the Western breakfast conversation foreshadows her Psycho mode and the second chapter also hints at this but it just didn’t have the same impact in the anime. Mainly because the first episode and series premise had lulled me into thinking that this is just another harem series and even after I had played the Asa thread of the eroge because asread explicated and amplified the Psycho Kaede dimension.

Other than that, the manga’s SD art and pair of 4komas at the end of each chapter were plus points. I’ll be very interested to see how the manga develops and whether it will have an alternative conclusion to the anime.