Citrus

Genre(s): Romance, Yuri, Drama, School

Age-Appropriateness: 15+ (Language, sexual themes)

Platforms: Crunchyroll, Funimation

Episodes: 12

TheAwersome Rating: 7.1 / 10 (Like a good fanfic)

Premise: Yuzu, a high school gyaru who hasn’t experienced her first love yet, transfers to an all-girls school after her mother remarries. She’s beyond upset that she can’t land a boyfriend at her new school. Then, on her first day, she meets the beautiful black-haired student council president Mei in the worst way possible. What’s more, she later finds out that Mei is her new stepsister, and they’ll be living under the same roof! Yuzu, getting no reactions from Mei whatsoever, starts teasing her only to have Mei shove her to the ground and kiss her before storming out of the room. Yuzu is left to wrestle with her conflicting feelings of enjoying it, and her intrigue toward Mei’s mysterious personality.

TheAwersome’s Thoughts: Yup. It’s one of those. This is why I said it feels like a fanfic: you’ve got this absolutely ridiculous premise of Student President is now stepsister with the school’s biggest problem child and they also have the hots for each other. Upon adopting that mindset, this was surprisingly enjoyable once you get past hearing Yuzu say “Mei!” about 30 times an episode. Somehow a single word can become an earworm. When I say I enjoyed this, I don’t mean that it was good. Classic drama ensues, and the same plot point of “oh no, another girl is trying to get between them!” happens no fewer than three times, and I’d have been happy were the whole show two or three episodes fewer for this reason.

What this show does very well is the spicy moments. The ones that make your heart all doki doki. While the animation of kisses themselves is a bit awkward, the moments are something special, so I guess props to the directing. Surprisingly, there’s little skin-service in this.

TLDR: A spicy snack show, but a snack show, nonetheless. Good for scratching a Yuri itch.

I picked this up because I actually was interested in “Bloom Into You” which is allegedly like, the holy grail of yuri anime or something but it wasn’t available on any streaming platforms I had access to. So instead, I get the diet version mixed with Domestic Girlfriend, but probably better to do it in this order than the other way around.

Something that was likely done for shock factor but was a bit refreshing regarding anime norms, was the frank explicitness of this show. Not in visuals (sorry, this isn’t an ecchi) but in attitudes. I feel too often in anime there’s so much playing around certain topics that it’s done in a “wouldn’t it be crazy if that happened?” kind of way. Often, it’s done via the “comical” embarrassment of walking in on someone changing. That, or just hinting at something sexual but never actually doing anything, off-screen or otherwise (and that’s even in the specifically ecchi shows). They don’t do that here, and it surprisingly allowed me to take the show more seriously? Which is weird because it’s such a fan-fantasy borderline hentai premise? Odd how that works.

It’s also worth noting that the music is surprisingly good in this show, as is the art for the backgrounds and settings. I was intrigued and wasn’t too surprised to find that this was the same studio, Passione, behind Interspecies Reviewers. I have to reiterate again though, the spicy moments in this get the heart racing a lot more than most ecchi, despite significantly less skin-service, so that alone gives this some merit.

You’ll likely enjoy this if you enjoyed:

• LGBTQ+ Romance Dramas such as Yuri!!!! On Ice
• Romance Dramas in general such as Your Lie in April, Toradora!
• Taboo step-family romance such as in Eromanga Sensei, Domestic Girlfriend, and all of [redacted]