Spoilers ahead. Context Airing in 2009 White Album was a latecomer to the 2000s gold rush of adapting romance visual novels into anime. To name just a few: https://anilist.co/anime/685/ToHeartRemembermymemories/ https://anilist.co/anime/1530/Kanon2006/ https://anilist.co/anime/1555/TokimekiMemorial/ https://anilist.co/anime/2167/Clannad/ With so much prior material for reference and inspiration and the visual novel itself being popular one might think that White Album had all the makings for a successful anime. However its clear that Seven Arcshttps://anilist.co/studio/35/SevenArcs werent going for another safe cookiecutter production. Direction Not a scene goes by in the anime without some bizarre choice in direction cropping up. Strange camera angles bad crops uncomfortable pans and more. But even if one discounted that simply as poor quality control and lack of skill there are some truly jarring choices made that are clearly deliberate: 220https://i.ur.com/nsnIHm0.png The typically hardtofollow inner thoughts of the MC appear as onscreen text a few times each episode with no clear pattern as to when and why. 220https://i.ur.com/UW34bo7.png Once every few episodes youll get treated with a sudden shift in art style for just a brief second. Granted its used to good effect in some significant moments but other times it calls attention to something that even after the fact can only be described as arbitrary. 220https://i.ur.com/zCi6Zsr.png 220https://i.ur.com/ermWHYE.png My favourite moment of wacky direction is this threeminute cut in which we very slowly zoom in on a motionless Rina during her very long monologue. This struck me as some beyond Evangelionlevel cornercutting. Theres also an absolute obsession with telephones. Every character has a telephone in an individual colour some have answering machines though mostly everyone is missing each others calls anyway some use pay phones and one even owns a car phone. As much as Ive searched for symbolism though Im really not sure what theyre going for. 220https://i.ur.com/aBclynD.png One of the many many telephones. Characters Ive got this far without mentioning how much of an unbridled scumbag the MC is which is really the core of the show. He Touya: is a bully to his only male friend Akirahttps://anilist.co/character/18207/AkiraNanase this shows halfprice Sunoharahttps://anilist.co/character/4610/YouheiSunohara whose tsukkomi never quite lands insistently ignores the kindhearted Harukahttps://anilist.co/character/18204/HarukaKawashima. The reason season 2 spoiler? cheats on his girlfriend left right and centre with every woman who will make eye contact with him who are bafflingly many lies to his girlfriend left right and centre to sustain this cheating behaviour is inexplicably rude to his father is dangerously overfamiliar with high school girls is so broke that he has to rely on his girlfriends staff for rides around town is catastrophically bad at keeping promises and focusing on his priorities objectifies women to the extent that he names random strangers the goddess of the day. This is actually an interesting contrast to the usual romcom/harem MC who is either a complete herbivore or a straightup alpha male this guy breaks the mould by being both despicable and pathetic to the core. The one poetic justice to his character is that his ostensibly outofthisworld idol girlfriend is vacant and always out of reach. Essentially they are made for each other. As for the other love interests? Their personalities range from wellmeaning to scheming to mysterious to playful and actually theyre all pretty engaging. Conspicuously more so and certainly more available than Touyas actual onpaper girlfriend which I suspect was an intentional writing choice to attempt to excuse his infidelity. Story While much of the shows draw is in following the mesmerising immorality of Touya an experience like gazing at the sun for too long there is nonetheless a compelling story gluing the whole show together. Each character is driven by something or other and somehow Touya manages to collide with each of their worlds like a snooker ball bounding around a table. Not to say that he really helps them chase their dreams. Hes mostly just there as a spectator watching them put in all the work. But theyre all up to something interesting and its easy to get invested in their stories and curious about what will happen next. Surprisingly I found the side stories to be the most enjoyable parts. The actual core idol plot suffers from overexposure to the enigmatic director Eiji Ogata who always seems to smugly know about something that we dont yet he never clears things up to the point that everything hes involved in just becomes tiresome. His bits become a necessary quagmire to wade past in order to get to the good stuff. Conclusion White Album is characterised by hamfisted yet artsy direction a depraved MC a pretty engaging cast of characters and a fairly decent story. It is by no means a masterpiece but it makes for very entertaining group watching through its sheer quarry of things to critique and scratch heads over. If you like Bmovies I cant think of a better anime to recommend