Minimum Tempo

I’ll be honest; the sole reason I started watching this was because of the yuri content. That’s never a good reason alone to watch something because usually it is a disappointment. Strawberry Panic did just that. It was a disappointment in the yuri department.

A kiss was usually as far as most couples went.

Although I’m not an avid anime fan, I tend to get obsessed with really good animes. But as much as I loved Strawberry Panic, I don’t think I would sit through it again especially alone. At times the storyline disappeared, and overall it was pretty unrealistic. However, that’s anime, eh?

The quality of the series was a little below professional; certain sound clips (example: the first time you hear the horse make a noise, it’s an extremely bad quality sound clip) and syncing problems between the voiceovers and animation plagued the show. The background music seems almost repetitive, especially since I, with my goldfish memory, realized they were using the same five or so songs over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, I loved their choice for the music, especially Strawberry Panic’s OP and ED songs. The opening credits change half way through the series, and I personally like the change. Along with the OP sequence, the ED song/credits are changed as well, and I can’t decide for the life of me which one I like better. They both rock.

The second OP sequence, begins about the 14th episode in.

The first ED sequence, replaced same time as opening credits change.

Now on to the story!

Strawberry Panic chronicles the life of one Miss Aoi Nagisa, who arrives as a transfer student to St. Miator’s Girls Academy, one of the three all-girls private schools on Astrea Hill. The first girl she meets is Hanazono Shizuma, the “Etoile” (and most adored person) of the three academies. Nagisa runs into Shizuma by mistake, but instantly falls for her. At that first meeting, Shizuma tries to kiss Nagisa, but the nervous Nagisa faints. She later awakens in the school’s infirmary to Suzumi Tamao, her roommate and soon-to-be best friend.

Let’s talk about Shizuma for a minute…

Shizuma is the Etoile, a position that could be best equated with a high school student council president. Her duties include supervising student council meetings, greeting new students and taking care of the secret greenhouse. She is the archetypical character of the quiet, sexy lover with a mysterious past, and reminds me of a female version of Yuki Eiri from Gravitation. Her best friend and roommate is Rokujo Miyuki, the president of St. Miator’s student council. Shizuma is probably one of my favorite characters, solely because she’s the girl everyone wants. Yeah, she’s that hot.

Strawberry Panic also follows some secondary characters, Konohana Hikari and Ohtori Amane, the “Prince” of Astrea Hill’s St. Spica’s Girls’ Institute. Amane is once again the strong silent kind of girl that everyone at Astrea Hill wants, yet this time the questions about her past are not answered. Hikari acts the way many girls do when they typically have a crush on someone, so that story line is rather unoriginal.

I’d recommend Strawberry Panic if you wanted a sweet drama with lots of girls running around being girls. Tea parties, deep friendships, crushes and optimum cuteness drive this anime. If you’re bitterly single and have been for some time, I wouldn’t recommend watching this alone, as watching happy couples enjoy their lives together will not lift your spirits. Even if it was slightly dull at times, I managed to marathon the first twenty episodes. I don’t know how I managed that, but hopefully that means there was something interesting about it.

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Verdict: B+

The bad: The story is slow at times, and the lack of any character backstory leads to one-dimensional characters. Oh, how I would do anything to attend a school made of only lesbian students with no parental presence and little faculty interference. As beautiful as some fantasies are, this one was just too good to be true.

The good: Although many animes already normalize lesbians, this one stands out because an American company has actually licensed it. What’s that? An AMERICAN company has actually started releasing lesbian anime DVDs to the public? Yes, it’s true. So let’s hope that Japan can make more yuri anime so that American companies can show the American public, “LESBIAN IS PEOPLE!*”

*I’ve had “soylent green is people!” stuck in my head for sometime now.

This post is tagged Anime & Manga, Japanese School Girl, Lesbians, Review, Strawberry Panic, Yuri

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