Mashiro Iro Symphony REMAKE FHD SANA EDITION (ましろ色シンフォニー REMAKE FHD SANA EDITION) Review

I vaguely remember it — a night about eleven years ago, back when I was still a pure, innocent little 2D virgin.

I’d followed the Mashiroiro Symphony anime all the way to the end, and like most of the fat otaku who watched it back then, the redhead’s crying at the end was where it all began.

And at the end of the anime, they told you a PSP version with an added route for the redhead was coming out. I had a PSP at the time, but my Japanese wasn’t good enough, so I did what everyone else does — waited for a fan translation.

That wait turned into two years.

In 2012, the fan translation of Mashiroiro Symphony PSP dropped. It was a winter night. I picked up the handheld and started playing.

I remember the common route being pretty long. The redhead’s route came at the very end of Miu-senpai’s route, and it was especially long — you watch the calendar go from October, day by day, all the way to February of the next year. Nearly five months of in-game time, and at Chinese reading speed, close to eight hours of total playtime. That hit me hard.

What I remember most is the choice prompts on the redhead’s route — the translation group kindly marked them for you, right there with a bracket: (pick this one).

By the time the redhead’s route ended and the ED started rolling, the sun was up. That was the first time I’d ever pulled an all-nighter on a visual novel. Afterwards I even wrote a game review that, looking at it now, is embarrassingly chuuni and stupid. So stupid. I can’t even bring myself to look at it again.

Later I played the other newly added heroine, Onomiya Yuzuki. Frankly her story was way better than the redhead’s — it’s just that the redhead was so popular and her route spanned so much time that I still can’t forget it. Especially that night.

And now, eleven years later, I beat this so-called Mashiroiro Symphony REMAKE FHD SANA EDITION on another night. Didn’t make it to sunrise this time, but it still gave me a feeling I hadn’t had in a long while.

Maybe that feeling was for the game. Maybe it was for the me from eleven years ago. Back then I was a fat otaku, sure, but I was young. Now I’ve lost a bit of my life’s dreams and my innocence.

Anyway, back to the game. Palette shamelessly released Mashiroiro Symphony REMAKE FHD, a high-def remaster of the classic Mashiroiro Symphony. Honestly I’ve seen so many remasters that I’d started to hallucinate that Mashiroiro Symphony had already been remastered before. And at the same time they put out another version I can’t wrap my head around, Mashiroiro Symphony REMAKE FHD SANA EDITION — as the name suggests, it adds the redhead’s exclusive route.

What I can’t understand is this: the PSP version, with its far tighter storage limits, managed to include routes for every original heroine and add two new heroines on top — content-complete, the whole unified package. And now, years later, the remake splits those routes up and sells them separately. I can’t think of a single reason for that other than milking the fanbase.

And even stupider: the PSP version’s added Onomiya Yuzuki route is just gone. It’s as if she never existed in the entire game. Did they just not manage to book Taguchi Hiroko again, or is LGBT just too unpopular in visual novels now?

So what did this remake actually “remake”?

First and foremost, the visuals — upgraded to FHD. How exactly they pulled that off, everyone probably knows. Without waifu2x, we’d be playing maybe half as many so-called “remasters” as we do.

Worth mentioning: the base remaster, Mashiroiro Symphony REMAKE FHD, bumped the resolution from 1600x1200 to 1920x1080… the aspect ratio even changed. Is that really an upgrade, or just a crop? As for the redhead’s SANA EDITION, that one’s more interesting — it was probably upscaled straight from the PSP version’s visuals… the ratios line up.

On the other hand, the SANA version adds the redhead’s HCGs from the PSP version. As everyone knows, the PSP version was all-ages — no R18 allowed. But port it back to PC and that restriction disappears.

They also claim to have tweaked the story to keep it consistent with the anime. I don’t think having the anime go straight down the senpai route was a good idea, but at the time it made sense — they were trying to sell the redhead’s PSP version. Doing the same trick all these years later and selling the redhead again is just too stupid. And I honestly can’t tell what they changed — I forgot the details of the original story long ago.

The game also got a new UI, new OP and ED, and they even dragged out the redhead’s now-middle-aged CV to sing a special solo version. They really spare no effort when it comes to milking you.

At least before I played this game, I’d always assumed it was a cash grab. And while playing it, that preconception never really changed.

Nothing has changed from ten-odd years ago. Same story, same music, same scenes, same characters…

Especially when you hit that familiar choice branch on the redhead’s route — everything is exactly as it was. The game is even full of that “last-generation visual novel roughness”: out-of-proportion character sprites, the old-school day-by-day calendar. Stuff you rarely see in today’s visual novels.

When the game reached the HCGs I nearly lost it. The HCGs are newly added — same artist, supposedly — but the gap in art style and coloring is enormous. It’s the difference between a caveman and a Trisolaran. Then the devs pulled a stunt and added the animated HCGs from the 9-nine- series. Clearly Palette plans to make animated HCGs standard across the board. I’ll admit the idea is good, but the execution is weird — like a black-and-white film suddenly cutting to a full-color 3D lens-flare sequence. And the animated HCGs repeat 9-nine-’s mistake: too short. Only two or three scenes have them, the rest are still static. For people with, uh, demanding needs, it’s more like edging.

Oh right, the original version got animated HCGs too — one image with a little motion effect. Real no-fap energy.

But a lot of things are strange. Playing through this game again after all these years, I actually think it’s pretty good. Especially in today’s visual novel market, it’s genuinely a fine work.

Take its depiction of romance — compared to today’s “suddenly horny” story structures, it’s a dimensional beatdown. The art is rough, but set aside those superfluous new CGs and it’s remarkably consistent; you don’t get that awkward “these characters look like they’re from different games” thing. The sprite work is incredibly rich, letting the direction pull off all sorts of imaginative shots — face-to-face conversations, characters dropping in from above, distant perspective shots. All things today’s visual novels are missing.

The in-game phone CGs are industry-leading: the text messages display right on the screen interface, unlike today’s stiff approach of popping up a garbage HTC phone UI with a Line chat slapped on like a band-aid.

The CV lineup is the backbone of the previous generation — I don’t need to tell you how strong it is. I’ll just say the redhead’s CV is the weakest of the bunch and she still has this many fans. The rest speak for themselves. The music is consistent in style, waltz-like pieces built on electronic piano, all titled around “flowers” — clearly a lot of thought went into production. Even crazier, the BGM has actual vocal harmonies. Yes, they hired actual singers to slowly chant as backing vocals in the soundtrack.

I ask you: do today’s visual novels get that kind of treatment? Do they think staying home and making a three-track piano piece in a DAW counts as a soundtrack?

And the strangest part is that all these strengths I just listed have nothing to do with this “remake.” They were always in the game. Looking at it now, the production budget for the original Mashiroiro Symphony must have been staggering (compared to today). Especially the redhead’s route — you’d be hard-pressed to find any contemporary visual novel that shows you nearly five months of romance, day by day, flipping the calendar every day. Pulling that off is extreme.

Which is exactly what makes this so frustrating. A game this well-made deserves another “remake” — a full refresh to the same standard would surely be another dimensional beatdown on today’s coasting, assembly-line visual novel market.

But obviously Palette doesn’t have that kind of money anymore. So they just threw in some animation and HCGs on a whim, and in my view it backfired. It would’ve been better to just sell the old game as-is.

So this Mashiroiro Symphony REMAKE FHD and SANA EDITION remake feels completely unnecessary to me — a step backward, even. But Mashiroiro Symphony itself is still worth revisiting after ten-plus years.

Even if you treat it as a new game, it’s still top-tier. More ironic still: a game from over ten years ago hasn’t just failed to age — in many ways it’s far ahead. Doesn’t that mean the visual novel industry hasn’t actually progressed, and is in fact regressing?