White Album is a 1998 adult visual novel by Leaf adapted into an anime in 2008. A second season was released in 2009.
Nothing to do with that White Album, by the way.
The story deals with college student Touya Fujii and his girlfriend, the rising Idol Singer Yuki Morikawa, and the accompanying stress — along with the rest of Touya's semi-wanted harem — that is their relationship. The series is actually set in The '80s, and the lack of cellphones is important to the plot. Seriously, this story wouldn't work set in the present.
There's also a Spin-Off, White Album 2, with different characters and story but set in the same universe.
Yuki and fellow idol singer Rina Ogata appear as playable characters in The Queen of Heart, a series of doujin Fighting Games by Watanabe Seisakujo (Now French Bread), with Yuki debuting in QoH '98, and Rina debuting in QoH '99.
Much later, both girls would also be featured as support characters in Aquapazza, a Fighting Game made jointly by Aquaplus and Examu.
This work provides examples of the following tropes:
- Art Shift: The art occasionally shifts into a kind of soft, pastel-ish style that is very, very pretty.
- The '80s: The series is set in that decade, it seems specifically so that Yuki and Touya can conveniently miss each other's calls.
- In Yayoi's sedan (in LHD), you can even see a built-in phone handset in the middle between the driver and front passenger seats. Modern sedans made in the 2000s and beyond don't have that feature anymore.
- Freak Out: Rina's brother has a massive hallucinatory one in one episode of season 2. Yuki at one point freaks out and starts biting her own wrist.
- Harem Genre: Deconstructed. Touya begins the series with a well-established girlfriend, who progressively becomes less well-established as her busy career creates distance between them and Touya's eye begins to wander as other options present themselves.
- Lonely at the Top: Rina is the most successful of the artists, at the top of her game. And incredibly lonely. Of course, in this series, everyone is.
- Love Dodecahedron: About half a dozen girls like Touya; two of them have stalkers of their own. One acquires a boyfriend in addition to her stalker.
- Please Put Some Clothes On: Touya to Haruka. She does. Then he kisses her and they end up having sex anyway...
- Updated Re-release: The original game received an all-ages port to the PS3, subtitled Tsuzurareru Fuyu no Omoide ("Memories Like Falling Snow") in 2010 with updated artwork. Later, this version of the game was also released for the PC.
- The Voiceless: Franky, the Master of the bar, until episode 24.
