Sometimes you follow a show and you have no reason as to why you did, but you did. This show did that for me. Maybe I was lazy or maybe I was between stuff. Maybe it was the cat (that odd basketball in the lower left box). But I will assure you that I found out much later that it was actually a dating game, and I will bet you that Keima Katsuragi from “The World God Only Knows” probably blitzed through the thing in a couple of hours. Or potentially the title drew me in: “Mashiro-Iro: Symphony: The Color or Lovers” (also known as “Love is Pure White”).

The traditional girls-only Yuihime Private Academy is considering the possibility of starting to accept both genders and has thus made an agreement with a neighboring school (Kagamidai Academy) to receive some of its students as an experiment to see the reaction to this adaptation. Shingo Iryu (the brown-haired guy, lower center and to the left) is one of the many students transferred for a ten month experimental phase at Yuihime Academy. He, his sister, and his fellow relocated colleagues are impressed by the sophisticated campus, but even more by the resistance of many students who don’t want the boys over there.

The resistance is lead by Airi Sena (that loud-mouthed number in the lower right) who just happens to be the principal’s daughter. Well, you can bet the friction is going to be long and loud on this one. Adding to the consternation is that Shingo has this amazing knack of walking in on the girls while they are in various stages of undress, furthering the assumption that all men are perverts (Psst! All men ARE perverts. That’s a given). But he is able to marshall the guys to be courteous and act well-mannered and be gentlemen, which starts to soften opposition to the merger.

Our little entourage helps Miu Amaha (that’s the one cuddling the cat basketball) who runs the Nuko Club, which nurses injured animals. Their presence turns it into an official club and it avoids abolishment, as there were a lot of protests about wild animals on campus. Meanwhile, all these activities are causing Airi to perhaps feel she is falling for Shingo, as well as how the others act and interact with their potential new classmates.

There is nothing wrong, per se, with this show. Overall, it’s just another in the romance genre. There’s just nothing overwhelmingly spectacular about it, but there’s nothing teeth-grinding about it. But, for the most part, it just kind of sits there. Things could have been done better to draw me in. I really felt that the emotional distance between everyone was annoying. Six people in a room and there is zero chemistry and sometimes the love scenes felt forced. Perhaps that is the feeling they were going for, but I never felt a genuine thaw in things

Now, I will give it its chops and say that it is a good-looking show, especially the backgrounds and the other settings. The characters aren’t too bizarre-looking (I mean, this is anime, so there is always going to be some goofy hair styles that defy both gravity and social conventions) and once you get your head around Pannya (the basketball cat), it settles into the usual tropes of understanding, misunderstanding and re-understanding, as they grow and mature and realize how complicated love and friendship is.

This would be a good bridge show, a caliber of palate cleaner, but don’t expect too much from it.
On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork           9 (Nicely rendered)
Plot                  6 (Pretty standard)
Pacing              7 (Slow and steady)
Effectiveness    6 (The lack of direction makes it drag)
Conclusion       7 (It reaches a ‘save point’, but it has a kind of)
Fan Service      5 (A similar show would be “Maburaho”)

Overall            7 (A typical entry)

And remember, it’s first run until you’ve seen it. A review-colored reaction to things.