(And I wouldn't care if it was a real one, honestly).
They are basically complete strangers to each other, not real family members.
Here's the real problem though.
'Yuri' is not a literary genre in a traditional sense. It simply is a colletion of narrative tropes about female homosexual/homoromantic relationships. 'Drama' is, however. If one of the main female characters (Mei or Yuzu) would be a man, everyone would be screaming about how Citrus is one of the cheesiest (in the worst way imaginable) and overrated romance stories in the history of romance manga and anime, with boring-ass one-dimensional character interactions and overblown conflicts.
But if it's yuri, then it suddenly becomes acceptable for some reason, because "your expectations are too high, calm down", "YAY, GAYYY GRILLS IN ANIME" and etc. This is the mindset that bothers me very much. People are so blinded by their thirst for 'gay girls like me' or 'hawt lesbian action' in anime, that they almost don't realize, that if one would strip Citrus of yuri tropes, it will become an empty shell. It is an empty shell.
I perfectly understand why it's Citrus and not any other yuri manga - because it's pretty freaking popular right now at this moment of history, that's why. Any adaptation needs to be commercially successful. But it still pains me deep in my heart. There's so much truly unique yuri manga, yet instead they are adapting...this.
And if someone wants to talk about how there's not enough queer women in anime, then I'd add that Citrus is clearly not the best story in terms of representation of a healthy relationship. It's basically just another cliche romance drama that starts from abuse, when one of the future partners acts like a complete asshole and another one falls for him/her for random reasons, usually because the author is completely oblivious to the concept of "character motivation".
(And I wouldn't care if it was a real one, honestly).
They are basically complete strangers to each other, not real family members.
Here's the real problem though.
'Yuri' is not a literary genre in a traditional sense. It simply is a colletion of narrative tropes about female homosexual/homoromantic relationships. 'Drama' is, however. If one of the main female characters (Mei or Yuzu) would be a man, everyone would be screaming about how Citrus is one of the cheesiest (in the worst way imaginable) and overrated romance stories in the history of romance manga and anime, with boring-ass one-dimensional character interactions and overblown conflicts.
But if it's yuri, then it suddenly becomes acceptable for some reason, because "your expectations are too high, calm down", "YAY, GAYYY GRILLS IN ANIME" and etc. This is the mindset that bothers me very much. People are so blinded by their thirst for 'gay girls like me' or 'hawt lesbian action' in anime, that they almost don't realize, that if one would strip Citrus of yuri tropes, it will become an empty shell. It is an empty shell.
I perfectly understand why it's Citrus and not any other yuri manga - because it's pretty freaking popular right now at this moment of history, that's why. Any adaptation needs to be commercially successful. But it still pains me deep in my heart. There's so much truly unique yuri manga, yet instead they are adapting...this.
And if someone wants to talk about how there's not enough queer women in anime, then I'd add that Citrus is clearly not the best story in terms of representation of a healthy relationship. It's basically just another cliche romance drama that starts from abuse, when one of the future partners acts like a complete asshole and another one falls for him/her for random reasons, usually because the author is completely oblivious to the concept of "character motivation".
You're right. All the yuri hentai should be the ones to be animated. Their sole character motivation is to fuck and I think that's a great motivation.
2 minutes into the show and already disappointed. tho it's personal preference since I don't tend to like normie-esque romance anime. show seems high quality animation-wise.
gonna update after watching 3 episodes.
update:
plot is terrible. almost too convenient for progression's sake. lazy writing.
that said, I will still watch this. fuck my life
Well I am disapointed but it's probably my own mistake because I though this would be better and deeper, not your typical romance bullshit just with two girls
I wanted to try shoujo-ai for the first time, I do not have any kind of problem with woman/woman relantionship but like I said the romance is cheesy, plot doesn't make a sense most of the time etc. etc.
At least art is amazing and I do really like Yuzu she is very well made character, maybe too good for such cheesy over-dramatic romance
I always got baited thinking this might be a good romance anime but nope, haven't seen anything like that for very long time
personally, i loved the manga and was thrilled to hear it was being turned into an anime adaption. It's definitely not the best manga out there but it's pretty good for a yuri/shoujo ai story (because most of them have NO story)
I am not disappointed, I like the manga and the anime is good (NTR quality was not so good). It's like any other romance manga, the difference it's that in the straight one the market is bigger so they run for a long time and in monthly release, so the drama comes in long waits, Citrus turned monthly few months ago, so the drama needs to be always there, but there was some volumes that we see the progress too...
I'm ready to be revolted. I love BL and GL stuff when it's consensual, but apparently the lack of consent in this anime is a meme of it's own. I'm watching it effectively knowing that it's going to disgust me, and be the dictionary definition of what an unhealthy relationship is.
Oh... already with the MC getting gro-I mean, "frisked". And already, they're steppies... yikes. Nipple-hair principal is certainly a character that exists... oh boy, why did I start watching this again? At least I'm not super-repulsed like I was with Ojou to Banken-kun, because that one rea- Oh... the end of the episode... no... that's not okay. Fuckin'... no... there's nothing romantic about that. That's straight-up assault. This might be GL, but this ain't love.
Ah, so we're just going to sweep the thing that happened last episode right under the rug! Got it! Seriously though, is this anime really just going to treat consent as if it were a fictional concept? That shower scene, in an anime that respects consent, I would've been like "aw...", but this just got me like "ew...". Even Harumi saying "You looked like you wanted it" adds to how horribly backwards everything here is. And of course we just gotta sweep that under the rug too! And the whole thing of "It's okay, she's just horny" or whatever the hell what's-her-face tried to say, that doesn't justify ANYTHING! Then Yuzu is about to kiss Mei while she's asleep, then proceeds to talk all high and mighty about non-consensual relations? I'm not even going to talk about the rest of the episode, since it's more almost-rape shit that gets swept under the rug. That rug is looking awfully lumpy now with how many times they just let shit like this slide.
Gonna watch some Yuru Yuri to chill myself off now.
Yep. Honestly, "Dank Sisters" is probably an apt description for this anime. I think I'm just going to call it "Dank Sisters" from now on.
Yes, I know it says "Pink Sisters", but the letters P and I are obscured enough that it looks like "Dank Sisters", so "Dank Sisters" is the only truth I'll accept.
And of course, more non-con forced kissing, this time because of blondie... the things I do for a fuller anime list.
Woooo! Verbal consent given and respected!!!! It only took three back-to-back episodes of consentless assault to finally get one with consent!!! Hopefully they don't fuck it up with more sexual assau- OH COME THE FUCK ON!!!!!Jesus fucking Christ, I hate this fucking anime.
What? Huh? Uh... I'm... not hating this now? I actually kinda liked this, like 3/5 sorta. I still think that the amount of non-con so far has been pretty vile, but at this point, I'm just going to pretend like there's a parody tag now, and that this is the sort of thing that a re-adaptation would've handled better, or even excluded.
Woah! An actually GOOD episode?!
Can we stop this "let's nearly commit sexual assault, because why not" thing, please? It's cheap and nasty.
Come on!!!! No!!!!
Damn it!!!
We good? We done? Can we just get to the two having an unimpeaded relationship now?
NGL, consent. Consent given, Mei respected. Consent revoked partway through, Mei respected. Now if only we could stop it with the drama.
WHYYYYYYY?!?!?!?! JUST LET THEM BE GAY AND HAPPY, DAMMIT!!!
Done with this. If this were to somehow get a remake that handles everything better, then I'd watch it, but this was just too rocky (And rapey) for me. It's not as simply as "this anime is gold" or "this anime is trash", as it made me feel the full spectrum. But like half of what it made me feel was pure annoyance with what I was watching. 6/10, it's not trash, but it screws up what it's trying to do way too often. I've seen much worse, and this anime has a few redeeming factors, enough for it to pivot from a 3/10 to a 6/10 in my book, but nothing more.
So everything above was written before I even read OP's post (I know BBCode, so I wrote everything in a regular text editor ahead of time), as I saw the post title on the forum, and thought that it'd be fun to see what my opinions started as, without any external influences. Now for the part that I started writing after I finished the anime, and after I read the actual post.
Is it fetish bait? During the first three episodes, it seemed like an undeniable "yes", but not after watching the whole thing. Are the characters unlikable? 40% of the time. Was it worth it? No. Do I hate it... also no. I will say that I am disappointed, mostly that it was neither great nor terrible.
Also, I screwed up somewhere with the BBCode, so there's two episode 6's, and I don't know which is which anymore.