Imagine a world where gods, demons and man peacefully coexist and interracial partnership is allowed? Welcome to the world of Shuffle! …! The title has an exclamation point, so… Tsuchimi Rin is a normal high school student living with his childhood friend Kaede and has an eccentric and playful friend in school, Shigure Asa aka the Mary S—*ahem*. Rin might as well be the future ruler of the universe because the royal families of the God and Demon world moved into Rin’s neighborhood. Apparently, the daughter of the king of the gods, Sia, and the daughter of the demons, Nerine, are deeply in love with our hero Rin after having met him in the past. With lots of girls vying for his love, Rin has a lot of things to do. While this a token harem anime, Shuffle! was nice enough to give every girl character development and a decent entry point if you’re interested in diving into the world of harem anime. You’ll be watching the show like you were reading the Visual Novel the anime is based from. Seeing Sia’s, Nerine’s, Asa’s and Kaede’s stories and them why they fell in love with Rin. It’s great and the art is great too… if you can get past the rather chipmunk voices of certain characters…

Oyamada Kouta (voiced by Mamiko Noto) is a country boy that moved to the city to attend high school. His life changed quite chaotically as he encountered Minamoto Chizuru — a well-endowed fox spirit… girl. As typical as anime goes, Chizuru finds Kouta very attractive and spared no expense trying to seduce him. Things get more chaotic after the two attracted a wolf spirit named Ezomori Nozomu… obviously a girl despite lacking the defining features of a… never mind. With two supernatural entities around him, trouble is bound to happen — Kouta is involved in many supernatural events. Kouta’s high school life will never be the same. And he’s a lucky ba—*ahem* Sorry, my jealousy got the best of me. How do I put this… Kanokon is similar to Shuffle!, like the guy met the girl at a young age, they meet again a few years later, and girl announced she’s in love with the guy. Kanokon’s pacing usually deals with something supernatural and Chuzuru seducing Kouta using the plump body of hers. Unlike Shuffle!, Kouta finally declared his love to Chizuru, but like Shuffle! (one of the girl is fine with polygamy), Chizuru is fine with having Kouta as a mistress. Hey, it’s anime logic. Don’t argue.

Suminoe Keita, Suminoe Ako, and Suminoe Riko are step siblings (yeah, I know) after their parents remarried. Since this is a romance-centric anime, the sisters are very attracted to our hero in a very, very, very, VERY lustful way. Initially Keita avoided her (step) sisters’ advances since he thought it wasn’t right to get so—romantically involved with his new family. Things changed after Keita transferred to the same school as his sisters. He’s slowly getting attracted to them. Incest is one of Japan’s favorite fetish and Kiss x Sis is one of the best out there, but… It’s not really “real” incest since Keita isn’t related to her sisters. But who cares! The story is usually centered around their school lives developing feelings among the three. Keita would get jealous when his male classmates flirt around his sisters and same thing for the sisters getting all jealous when Keita is with some girl. Oh, and their parents totally approve. Lucky guy!

Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière (that was a mouthful) is a young magician who rather sucks at conjuring spells, resulting in either an explosion, or an explosion, or an explosion. Due to her lack of mastering the arts, she is nicknamed “Zero Louise” by her peers. Which is not entirely true, by the way. Making things explode is a successful conjuring of a spell too, right? In an upcoming test, each student must summon familiars, or a servant to support their masters. Despite Louise’s desire to summon a powerful familiar and prove that she can summon properly, she ended up summoning a boy from Japan named Hiraga Saito. Since Saito was summoned, he is officially Louise’s familiar. Despite him being a familiar, Louise is slowly developing feelings toward Saito. I mean, come on, it was obvious. A girl and a boy together? You do the math. The relationship with Saito and Louise is rather… well… unstable. Let me ask you: How many seasons does Zero no Tsukaima have? Okay. And what is the most common plot element you see in them? Yeah, that’s right. Even though Saito and Louise became lovers in season 1, Saito is a playb—I mean, a flirtatious young man. The majority of the female cast, from the well-endowed maid Siesta to the future Queen herself, are all attracted to him. Louise really needs to chain Saito down like a dog.

Kiss x Sis on crack? You bet! Aoi Aki and Aoi Sora are a pair of close siblings that shared a strong intimate bond when they were young. During their, you know, puberty, she finally realized their the feelings for each other and eventually they made love. Aki and Sora have another sibling, Aoi Nami, and they try their darndest to keep their new relationship a secret from Nami and, well, she wants a piece of the action. As any anime goes, Nami eventually found out. It’s not a spoiler if it’s already obvious. You know, John Wayne Bo—never mind. Aki Sora can be summed up with one word: Lust. Sora is the typical short guy who happens to be the nicest guy in the world and girls love him for this trait. Like, you know, the only reason why guys in other harem anime get a harem. The story is rather sad and the most tragic character is Nami. She’s not sure she wants her brother’s love, or wants a penis, so she can bone her best friend. No, I’m not saying that metaphorically.

Yasaka Mahiro, your average and blandest boy (fact) around was minding his own business until he met a mysterious girl named Nyaruko. This girl is a special agent who was sent to Earth to protect Mahiro from monsters. Why are the monsters after Mahiro? Does he have something that they want? And who is Nyaruko? And is H.P. Lovecraft rolling in his grave after he found out Japan turned his Eldritch horrors into cute and sexy girls? You get lots of fanservice from this one, courtesy of the Eldritch horrors trying to seduce Mahiro. Unfortunately, the relationship involving Mahiro and Nyaruko is rather slow and it took two seasons and 3 OVAs for something to happened. Mahiro may be the blandest boy in the history of anime, he at least has some standards for a girl to love, and it clearly showed in Season 2 where Cthulhu, another Eldritch horror under the guise of a cute girl who practically stole the show. Nyaruko is in trouble unless she does something.

Kawakami Kiiko is a girl with supernatural powers: she can move things with her mind. Kiiko meets an attractive young girl named Saitou Aaya and starts developing feelings towards her. The two eventually get together and while everything’s fine for the both of them, Kiiko will soon discover that Aaya holds a secret that could ruin their relationship. Interstellar Space Lesbians! Aaya is a very sexually active young woman and the series revolves around them playing hooky. If you take out the constant love-making, the story overall is very barebones, but it won’t deny the fact that these girls are madly in love. There was a two year gap between episodes and the cliffhanger at episode one made a lot of people upset and speculate. At the time, it was one of the most controversial yuri anime and people speculated and argued for many, many months. Did the final conclusion satisfy these vocal fans? That’s for you to find out.

Yamada (no, not that Yamada from Working!!) is a 15 year-old virgin who just entered high school. She is fairly attractive and any guy will fall for her, but there is one problem that’s been bothering Yamada for a while: She thinks her vagina looks weird. Ah, anime. Ever so creative! So Yamada’s dream was to have sex with 100 men. However, she fears that experienced partners will tease her about the look of her vagina or find out that she’s in fact a virgin. Luckily she stumbles upon fellow virgin Kosuda Takeshi and with his help, she’ll be able to gain more experience and bed more experienced men. Unfortunately for Yamada, Takeshi doesn’t know how to sweep a girl off her feet. Yamada’s journey to sex is going to be a long and difficult one. The anime suffers from the usual “open ended story, must read manga for ending” syndrome and while it sucked, the anime is good at viewing sex through a female perspective. Yamada wants to have casual sex with many men, but can’t make that jump. She sees Takeshi as a tool so she can achieve this goal, but soon realizes she fell in love with Takeshi and eventually find out that making love to the one you love is more enjoyable than having sex with 100 random guys.

Daisuke Aoki is a 3rd grade teacher who meets Kokonoe Rin, a very young girl with long hair. After an act of kindness from Aoki, Rin made Aoki, her teacher, her lover. Rin literally wants her 3rd grade teacher to be her lover. Who would have thought that your biggest obstacles in your life comes from the most unexpected places. But is Rin’s love for Aoki really true? Are her feelings just puppy love? Or is it genuine true love? Does actively seducing Aoki mean something else? Aoki got 99 problems, but a lo—okay, that was bad. The content of the show is really not for the casual viewer because, well, the synopsis states a love story between a grown man and a very young girl who seduces Aoki on several occasions throughout the series. Admittedly, I didn’t watch rest of the OVAs and OADs, so I can’t say Aoki and Rin ended up together, but if you read the manga, something did happen. This kind of romance story is very rare in anime. But it’s interesting!

Bakemonoagatari tells the story of various characters with different circumstances… like… them being supernatural beings and all. Enter Koyomi Araragi and due to certain chain of events, he retained his humanity after being bitten by a vampire. After the encounter, Ararararararararagi (sorry, keys got stuck) meets people with supernatural issues and problems. One of the people Ararararararararararararararararagi meets is Senjougahara Hitagi, a girl who doesn’t weigh anything and has this thing about staplers. The story mainly involves the two as they argue and talk about their lives. Supernatural lives. Bakemonogatari is number one mainly because it has a good story to tell and the development and relationship between Arararararararararararararararararararararararagi and Hitagi are realistic despite the show’s fantasy setting. Their constant banter, or as I like to call it machinegun dialogue, is an amusing source of humor. And that’s it… Saying any more will ruin it. Go watch Bakemonogatari if you haven’t already! Try keeping up with this fast line of delivery though. Bakemonogatari, isn’t technically an ecchi show with lots of boob and panty shots, but rather Bakemonogatari has lots of well-placed dirty humor and a few semi-nude shots. Which is good because the show is focused more on the story rather than the fanservice.