Mashiroiro Symphony HD -Love is Pure White- tells the story of romances slowly sparking in winter. This romantic comedy by developer Palette is set in the prestigious Yuihime Girls Private Academy as it trials a merger with a regular co-ed school.
This 2024 English release by Shiravune is based on the Japanese 2023 remake, titled “Mashiro Iro Symphony -Love is Pure White- Remake for FHD”. This version improves on the graphics and user interface of the 2009 original release.
Girls Who Hate Boys
Shingo’s little sister Sakuno tends to get lost often, leaving Shingo to go and find her. One day while she’s lost, she runs into another lost girl named Airi who helps Sakuno to meet up with her brother.
This first meeting with Airi initially feels like the start of a wonderful new friendship between the three of them, where they all instantly clicked with each other. This makes it all the more shocking when they meet her again at their new school and Airi treats Shingo like dirt. It soon becomes clear that most of the girls of Yuihime don’t want the merger to happen, and Airi is leading the opposition to it.
The common route introduces us to the four heroines and supporting characters, as the boys work to win over the Yuihime girls. While it nicely introduces the other heroines and gives everyone enough screen time, it feels like Airi is the main heroine of the common route with a focus on the acceptance of the merger.
Mashiroiro Symphony HD -Love is Pure White- often uses perspective changes to see the heroine’s point of view and feelings. This works well here in exploring Airi’s conflicted feelings about Shingo and the merger. The fact that she’s still good friends with Sakuno who clearly loves her brother makes it even more difficult for her.
This aspect is something the visual novel of Mashiroiro Symphony in particular does brilliantly in all of its routes. There does exist a 12-episode anime of the series, but it just doesn’t have the space to do that. The VN takes the time over its 24-hour runtime to build up relationships and explore the slowly developing feelings from all sides. It doesn’t just focus on the relationship between the protagonist and heroine of each route but involves the entire group of friends.
Great Friends
Mashiroiro Symphony HD -Love is Pure White- is a romance comedy, but the friendships within the cast’s oddball group are often on display even before the romance. One of the main themes involves Shingo having an overly adaptive personality to try and keep things pleasant, which links into the group dynamics as well.
There’s a really fun dynamic between the characters. They have their own friendships with one another, and bounce comments off each other a lot. Each character has a strong personality that keeps the conversations exciting and full of comedy. The jokes usually aren’t over the top, instead using misunderstandings and plenty of wordplay along with more absurd comments from the ‘mad maid’ character Ange threaded throughout, keeping it constantly entertaining.
I particularly appreciated that the protagonist wasn’t always involved. We sometimes see characters going out of their way to check in on others when they have problems. It really gives the feeling that they’re all friends and that not everything revolves around Shingo. When relationships do start to develop, the other characters will have their thoughts on it. Whether it’s joking around and teasing the new couple, or showing jealousy, or something else, they all weigh in. This happens throughout, but is particularly important in one route.
When it comes to friendships in Mashiroiro Symphony, Hayata is worth mentioning. He’s the protagonist’s male best friend and is a much better friend than most who take this archetypal position in other visual novels. He’ll joke around, but he’s always quietly supporting Shingo in the background and willing to listen to him. The perspective changes that Mashiroiro Symphony often use also give us brief glimpses of partial conversations between other characters to hint at things happening in the background for foreshadowing, and we often see his support here.
The Serious Student Airi
Airi seems kind during her first encounter, and always treats Sakuno nicely, but she shows her colder side afterward. Confident, extremely stubborn, and always giving 100 percent, she stands apart from most of her class despite her popularity. She’s a classic tsundere, slowly warming up to the main character over time.
Her route focuses on her relationship with her family, and explains why she was against the merger. You get a good look at how her thoughts change over time.
Her relationship with the protagonist isn’t ideal, and seeing them deal with this was a lot more interesting than many romance routes in other visual novels where everything goes smoothly. There’s also some touching moments between Airi and Sakuno, alongside cute romantic events with Shingo.
The Mad Maid Ange
Angelina (Ange) is Mashiroiro Symphony’s oddball character. She’s a half-English ‘masterless maid’, working for the school while she searches for her true master. She’s excessively helpful and often pops up out of nowhere with ninja-like stealth, despite her loud and excitable personality. Ange and Shingo relate to each other well, since they’re both always trying to make things better for those around them.
It’s made clear that Ange’s identity is tied to being a maid and her route looks at this more closely. It shows both her and Shingo growing and changing for the better.
While Ange is the most comedic character and her route has the silliest events, there are some very nice moments of romance in there too. The ending and what it alludes to work particularly well.
The Sister Sakuno
Sakuno is Shingo’s non-blood-related sister, though they’ve been together since they were very young. She has a rather stoic personality, which makes it all the funnier when she delivers jokes and comedic lines in her deadpan voice. She loves Shingo to the point of being overly attached, and is always his ally who quietly supports him.
Her route is a slow realization over time about their feelings for each other and the trouble they have navigating them. This understandably involves more drama than some of the other routes, and events don’t go smoothly. There’s a reluctance to change their relationship or to face the challenges that will come of it, which makes it a much more compelling read than many other sibling routes in other visual novels.
While I did enjoy Sakuno’s route quite a lot, one of the biggest problems I had with it was predictable and easily avoidable, which detracted from it a bit.
The Missing Miu (and Stormy Sana)
Miu is the kind of heroine that’s easy to fall in love with. She’s kind to everyone, always has time for Shingo, is a hard worker, and volunteers caring for injured animals as part of the ‘Kitty Club’ at school. Her calming aura soothes everyone around her and the cute unknown animal Panditty that accompanies her is always welcome too (other than by Airi who is terrified of it).
It’s helpful that she makes such a good early impression since she’s put on the backburner until the second half of her route. Instead, we end up spending plenty of time with the other member of the Kitty Club, Sana. She absolutely adores Miu and hates men, so you need to earn her approval first, but she’s extremely harsh and constantly berates him (and all men). Still, we do see her kind side here that we only hear about in other routes.
This route feels more like Sana’s route than Miu’s during its first half as it slowly builds up their relationship, but if you want to read Sana’s route, you need to buy the standalone expansion, Mashiroiro Symphony HD -Sana Edition-. While Sana did take the spotlight, she frequently mentions the charms of Miu and their experiences, which helps to keep it from feeling like Miu gets sidelined.
When it does come time for Miu to appear more, we discover an unexpected strength behind her kind smile, along with some problems that need to be overcome. It also gives us a look at her family life which leads to some amusing and unexpected behavior from the normally calm Miu.
This was my favorite route. On top of just how sweet Miu is, there was some unexpected depth here too with some relatable moments. It also helped me understand just why Sana won a fan favorite character poll and got her own standalone expansion. It felt like two of the best heroines in one route, along with some great drama.
Localization
If you’ve read a localization by Shiravune before, you more or less know what to expect. While I can’t comment in too much detail, it does seem that some lines had fairly liberal translations.
Honorifics are omitted as usual. There are a few noticeable instances of changes as a result, with Sakuno addressing ‘Onii-chan’ as ‘Shingy’ being the most common. I can see why this was done, as she calls him different things depending on the situation, but I imagine some will dislike it.
The only significant change among those I noticed that I thought was unfounded was ‘Pannya’ being ‘Panditty’ in English text. The audience is likely to understand ‘nya’ and there’s a line explaining the name. I thought this especially odd considering that existing fans of the anime already know the name as Pannya, and it’s frequently in the voiced lines.
The editing seems good for the most part, though there are occasional errors. Missing letters, typos, incorrect pronouns, and such all pop up infrequently. There’s a few lines with little errors like “I’m loved you since…” instead of “I’ve” or “outdoor shores” instead of “shoes”.
Overall, while some may disagree with the style of localization used, I felt it reads well overall aside from those occasional errors. Characters feel distinct and the comedy comes through.
One issue which I can’t see a solution for is that sometimes there is speech playing in the background without any translation, and I presume there was no Japanese text for these lines originally either. This happens while the narration is focusing on other things like Shingo’s thoughts. It doesn’t tend to be important lines, so it’s not much of a problem, but it’s a pity that these parts are missing translation.
Adult Content
Mashiroiro Symphony HD -Love is Pure White- cuts out significant amounts of story content including all heroine routes unless you install the adult content patch, making it essentially mandatory. It is strongly recommended to buy on a storefront supporting adult content or to install the patch as explained in our guide/walkthrough.
Despite this, there isn’t a huge amount of adult content in Mashiroiro Symphony. There’s a slow progression to sex. As Airi put it, she wasn’t ‘raised to just give it away at the drop of a hat’ and is embarrassed even holding hands.
It’s not like the adult content in some other visual novels either where the heroines all seemingly turn into succubi. They’re very much first-timers, making mistakes and figuring it out together. There’s an issue here in Airi’s route that suits her character and development up until that point well.
For those who dislike adult content, using Ctrl to skip through is possible. There’s nothing too important here, just some commentary on character traits during the H scenes, like Miu acknowledging her possessiveness.
There are eighteen H-scenes, but one does repeat a few times in Miu’s route, so you could count it as only sixteen. Some parts of these scenes are partially animated, so you can see characters moving back and forth, clothes moving, jiggle physics, and so on. The moving tongues in one scene are a little disconcerting, but it works well for the most part. The content is mostly vanilla and retains mosaic censors.
Palette Art and Sound
Art is a strong point for Palette as a developer, and Mashiroiro Symphony is no different.
There are a good amount of sprites and poses, including a wide variety of expressions and even the rare back sprites. They’re used creatively, popping in at angles and moving around the environment to blend with the backgrounds. In one case, we see Ange’s sprite moving around different desks while serving tea.
While sprites look great overall, some of the close-ups on sprites do look a bit low quality in comparison to the high quality everywhere else, with one of Ange’s in particular standing out in this regard.
The CGs are strikingly beautiful. One nice feature is it shows the CG without any overlay briefly when it first appears, giving time to appreciate it. Sakuno’s CGs have some particularly great compositions.
Mashiroiro Symphony HD -Love is Pure White- includes 32 tracks of music. It has a nice mix and suits the scenes nicely, whether it’s a slice-of-life scene or a more dramatic moment. The voice acting is all fitting too, with an experienced cast who have plenty of visual novel credits.
Verdict
Mashiroiro Symphony HD -Love is Pure White- is a great romance story that explores relationships from all angles rather than just showing the ideal ones. It nicely mixes in comedy, moments of drama, and some great friendships between characters. Supported by some amazing art, it’s worth picking up as long as you’re a fan of these types of stories.
MASHIROIRO SYMPHONY HD -LOVE IS PURE WHITE- IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Walkthrough/Guide: Click Here
If you enjoy romance visual novels, consider checking out our review of Irotoridori no Sekai – The Colorful World. Or, check out our section on visual novels covering a wide variety of genres, both originally written in English and localized from Japanese, by clicking here.
Many thanks go to Shiravune for a PC review code for Mashiroiro Symphony HD -Love is Pure White-.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
