Yuzu Aihara preparing for her first day of school at Aihara Academy High School Division Credit: @_saburouta
“Citrus” was originally illustrated and written by Saburouta who publishes her works in the magazine known as “Comic Yuri Hime” in which she writes about romantic relationships between women. The work gained recognition from “The New York Times” as one of the bestselling manga in 2015. The manga has recently been adapted to an anime series.
“Citrus” is about a girl named Yuzu Aihara (Ayana Taketatsu) who moves to a new school after her mother remarries and she unexpectedly gains a sister named Mei Aihara (Minami Tsuda) who happens to be the student council president of their school. The story follows the two of them as they develop their relationship and affect the people around them. Yuzu and Mei face challenges in their romantic relationship because of the social stigma of their society.
The tone of the piece is constantly changing throughout the episode, keeping the audience engaged, so they never expect what is coming, unless, of course, the audience had already read the original content by the author. The company, Passione, tried to stay true to the original work as much as possible. From what has been shown on the show so far, the audience can recognize that the company genuinely respected the author and the work itself by the way that they presented the piece. This is commendable because many times when a work is adapted from one form of media to another, it loses that essence of love and care that the original artist tried to convey to its audience.
Although the show is overall coherent, there were some parts in the first half of the premiere that felt choppy. Because of this fact, some viewers may not enjoy the show to the fullest extent possible. Another bothersome aspect of the premiere episode is the fact that they changed the appearance of Himeko Momokino (Yurika Kubo). They had noticeably decreased the size of her eyebrows, which were emphasized in the creator’s original work. For the most part, the voice acting was well done except for a few instances where it was a bit overdone. However, they may have been attempting to establish the traits of each of the characters early, which is reasonable.
This show should be of much interest to people who have read the manga because they will get more out of what is being presented in the show than those who have not read the work before watching the show. The reaction of a person who has not read the original content of the work will be starkly different from that of those who have not read the manga. This show is also recommended for mature audiences because it is a lesbian romance containing explicit implications. Overall, the show looks promising with its interesting line of characters and plot points.
Rating: 3.5
