Drama, Romance, Harem (as you will find out later)

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White Album is the story of two college students, Toya Fujii and his friend (whom he is in love with) Yuki Morikawa.  Yuki is an up and coming idol who is constantly on the move from one job to another.  She ends up missing most of her classes and is drifting away from Toya.  Yuki is very close to her contemporary, Rina Ogata, who is a well established idol within the Ogata Productions Group (yes, her family owns it).

The first episode of this series introduces us to Toya’s life, which involves work, school and his making jokes at the expense of his friend Akira Nanase.  In between he attempts to keep in contact with Yuki, but their time together is becoming less and less.  Yuki attempts to deal with the harassment from others at her agency; showing that she is very capable of thinking on her feet.  In the end, it appears that Rina wants to meet Toya.

In the second episode Toya hangs out with his childhood friend, Haruka Kawashima.  She acts both distant and yet somewhat close.  We are reminded of her past, in which her older brother has died (alluded to in the first episode).  Later, at his workplace, Yuki and Rina visit him.  After asking Yuki if it’s “ok”, Rina asks Toya for his phone number.  At the end of the episode, we are left hanging on her calling him.

While there was some character development and interesting plot points throughout the episodes, I found it VERY hard to get involved with the characters.  A good character will pull you in to their story and make you feel for them.  With the exception of Haruka, all of the characters feel rather two dimensional (pardon the pun).  Overall, I would give this series an F so far…

Then I was reminded that this was based on an adult game… oh, maybe there is a shred of hope.

Overall Hook Rating: D >.>

Tags: anime, drama, romance