Mashiro-iro Symphony and Majikoi Double Review

Congratulations Mashiro-Iro symphony! You have done something a lot of harem series failed to do, choose an actual good character for the end

For the sake of comparison, lets compare this series with another harem series that was made off from an eroge, Majikoi. Yes, that will be reviewed here as well.

So before I begin lets cover the series’ general plot line and character lists, Mashiro goes first

Mashiro-Iro covers the merger of two schools and the story between the characters of said schools. One school being the Co-Ed Public school while the other is a private prep school for girls. Our main character is Uryu Shingo, yet another boring male lead. He and his step-sister (of course…) Sakuno and a handful of other students are picked to attend the all-girls school in preparation for the merger. Shingo, Sakuno, and his friend Hayato go to their new school and meet Ange, a student but also the maid for the school. She helps the trio get used to their new school’s enviroment. Through the day, they meet Sana and Miu members of an unofficial animal care club and finally Sena, the principal’s daughter and also the hotshot who hates guys. Our story goes from there

Characters

• Shingo: He sucks, badly, but he becomes a winnar in the end because he actually chooses a girl that I wanted him to, good job man
• Sena: The tsundere and misandrist. She is focused on for the first third of the series and then is promptly discarded as a side character. Of course, she is the first love interest, or at least, she was to Shingo whom the latter didn’t care as much as he did for another character
• Sakuno: Cute and calm, she isn’t focused as much which was kinda sad. But theres another character who didn’t show up that made me dissapoint
• Ange: Ange is the quote on quote “Stray maid” who serves the school and apparently lives there. She’s also a student but wears a maid costume. She was pretty cute and I rooted for her in the first few episodes. She also becomes an adorable crybaby if you take her maid headdress off.
• Sana: No not Sena, Sana. Sana starts out as a likeable character. Unlike Sena, she doesn’t hate men…until our main character gets a little closer to Miu, her senior. She becomes our core man hater and the girl who constantly abuses our main character. But she happens to end up as a main compettor for Shingo
• Miu: Miu is the oldest character (in terms of the student that matter) and also the shortest. She has a huge love for animals and due to a childhood incident tries to care for animals a little too much. She also has this cat…thing named Panya (for some reason, I want to mercilessly beat it to death)
• Yutsuki: Only appears in the last episode. Me so sad.

In case you didn’t know, Shingo ends up with Miu and they actually had a legit kiss, something I haven’t seen a series do. It was kinda…strange how they went for Sena but then tossed her aside and brought Miu and Sana into the picture. It’s an outrage that they only had Yutsuki show up for like 7 seconds.

Moving on to Majikoi’s synopsis

Majikoi is centered around the most strangest school I have ever seen. The school focuses on keeping samurai traditions and also, the practice in the battlefield and weapon use. Some school eh? Anyways, the school has this small group called the Kawakami Family, a bunch of kids who grew up together. Throw away your understandings of physics and average highschool fighters, it’s dragonball z in here

• Yamato: He’s our brave and clever main lead, who stupidely made me hate him in the last episode. He can’t fight but bravely stands alongside his warriors/bitchiz
• Momoyo: Momoyo is the girl who says “f*ck you physics” and punches it out of a 10 story building. She is literally like Goku from Dragonball Z and uses some mysterious power and blow shit up. She got confessed to Yamato years ago but since then has rejected him. Something about her eyes….I don’t know but it creeps me out. She’s proficient in hand to hand fighting.
• Kazuko: Kazuko is Momoyo’s “sister” in a sense of familiarity and time spent together. Kazuko is a workout freak as she drags tires and runs laps around the usual hangout place. As much as she is a workout freak, she is completely naive and can be considered un-educated, moreso acting like a dog than an average human being with some sort of intelligence. That happens to make her extremely cute. Also, by naive, she hates perverted things, strange, people and dogs love humping things. She uses a spear, or the traditional glaive polearm
• Miyako: Miyako is the pervert amongst the girls but usually is very quiet and shy. Only in the anime is she pretty loud and more outgoing. She has been aiming to gain Yamato’s love just as the latter wants Momoyo’s. Miyako is pretty persistant and is pretty clever in her tricks to get it on with Yamato. She uses the bow and arrow.
• Yukie: Someone help this poor girl who talks to her cellphone strap. Yukie is the daughter (or was it grand-daughter) of a famous swordsman who found a dojo, and such she is very skilled with a sword. She regularly converses with her cellphone strap, Matsukaze, a paper horse who arguably is the best character in the show. She’s the great cook among the girls and another shy girl, but only in the game as Miyako’s pretty shy too. As cute as she is, I compare her to Mr. Garrison from South Park and how he conversed with Mr. Hat, his handpuppet that represented his gay side. You could say Matsukaze is literally Yukie’s outgoing and awkwardice in one simple being.
• Chris: Chris hails from Germany and naively believes Japan is exactly what she sees in her T.V dramas. Chris is the pretty tsundere, but I don’t hate her as much. A big point which I find strange about Chris is that she slashes or swings her weapon of choice, a Rapier. Rapiers were usually meant to pierce and use thrust to try and go through the weakpoints of armor, but rapiers usually had sharpened points and its edges weren’t the killing factor of the weapon.

To be honest, there a LOT of other characters but literally only focused on these girls most of the time. We had side characters like the two perverts, the S classmen, Cookie and so much more. Not to mention Kuki Ahega from a different (but relevant series). They also had a character from the game’s unreleased fandisk (more or less expansion set, Tsubame, and she only showed up in the first and last episodes.

Now lets compare these two series so I can start the homework assigned to me on this wonderful winter break I have.

Like I said, Mashiro gave us an acceptable ending, which was that Shingo ended up with Miu. Majikoi dissapointed us by having Yamato confess that he fought for his crabs (he owns two hermit crabs in his room) after he inspired everyone to fight alongside him, or more like save his ass from getting beat. I guess it’s the ending that impacted my judgement the most. I wanted more Majikoi eps to be released during its airtime mostly because it was a lot funnier and more insane than Mashiro was. Mashiro gave us a good ending while Majikoi fell flat on its face trying to make something look awesome. Series like Majikoi must be hard to fit in on 12 episodes. You have to cover fight sequences, storylines, and the girls while in Mashiro it’s just school life and the girls. Majikoi the game was well recieved, moreso than Mashiro but the animes for me completely switched as I ended up liking Mashiro a little more than Majikoi.

That leads to the question of watching it, most of the people who are reading this probably watched on of these or both. Mashiro is just another series adapted from a regular highschool eroge, I am suprised however with no inclusion of a beach/hot springs episode. But it featured an ending, one girl for the main guy to be with so that actually got me. Majikoi was filled with fanservice (still with no beach/hotsprings) and had some more funny moments than in Mashiro but once again, bad end. Now to be honest, I would have hated or seen Mashiro a lot less…acceptable if it ended with someone OTHER than Miu. Like Hoshizora, they just HAD to pick Ui…literally I would have given the show props if they had a twist and the main character from Hoshizora was screwing the innkeeper.

For me, Mashiro should get a watch for good end and for Majikoi, you should watch the first half the series when they didn’t focus on the custom made plot for the anime series.

Pictures of Yutsuki from Mashiro