Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo

Title:Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo
Oh Maidens in Your Savage Season
Overall:Buy
Keywords: , , , , , , ,
Notables: ANZAI Chika
ASAKURA Momo
KONO Hiyori
KUROSAWA Tomoyo
R1 License - Sentai Filmworks (ADV)
TSUCHIYA Shimba
UESAKA Sumire
The five girls of the literature club--Sugawara, Onodera, Sudou, Sonezaki and Hongo--can't help noticing that mentions of sex are intruding into their lives from all directions. Kazusa Onodera in particular is uncomfortable with the sweet and pure boy she has known since childhood, Izumi Norimoto, becoming the center of attention of girls at school. And then she realizes that he may not be as sweet and pure nowadays as he once was.

12 episodes
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Buy 8 8 8 7 9 9 Ggultra2764 [series:3731#1552]
This romantic comedy features the five female members of a high school literature club each undergoing varying experiences dealing with the blurred lines between love and sex with potential romances. O Maidens strikes a good balance between comedy and drama in exploring each of the dilemmas that the literature club girls undergo with trying to deviate between what is romantic and what is sexual in the varying relationships that they pursue. The relationships vary in their developments involving childhood friends, love with a popular boy, and crushing on a teacher. The series isn't afraid to be frank at points with dabbling into the sexual elements of a relationship and the awkwardness that our five lead girls go through in trying to comprehend the blurred lines between love and sex. The majority of the girls get good development and focus in their relationships and characters, though Momoko's character arc felt a bit underdeveloped in comparison to the other girls. Still if you are looking for a fan romantic comedy to get into, O Maidens in Your Savage Season should make for a fun time with its solid mix of comedy and drama dabbling into teenage girls trying to understand the complications of learning about the blurred lines of love and sex in a relationship.

Last updated Friday, September 20 2019. Created Friday, September 20 2019.
Rent Stretch [series:3731#628]
(All episodes watched):

I got a good feel about this show right from the start, from the first few moments of the first episode. We quickly get to know these five likeable girls in a manner which is more fascinating than onerous. There's the popular, stylish Sugawara, the prudish, glasses-wearing club president, Sonezaki, the 'mysterious author' Hongo, and the two relatively ordinary girls, Sudou ('Mo-Chin') and Onodera. The character designs were a bit unusual and interesting. This show was quickly looking like fun, with dynamic characters that I could care about. They do not tell jokes or engage in slapstick, but it felt like a comedy in the sense that the perfectly realistic situations they found themselves in were sometimes hilarious. The episode took longer than most to watch, because there was so much 'meat' to it--so many things to think about, make sense of, and keep track of. But it was always a pleasure rather than a grind. I desperately wanted to know more about how these girls would cope with coming of age. "This world has too much sex in it!" Kazusa protests at one point. This was the first full-length show of the summer 2019 season that I got genuinely excited about, and I was left confident that it would be either my favorite or second-favorite anime of the season.

Each of the girls has her own peculiar problem with coming of age and dealing with sexuality. Sonezaki has a reputation as an unattractive female nerd, while blond-haired Sugawara(?) is, if anything, too attractive. Hongo feels she needs some sexual experience in order to be a successful author, while Mo-Chin has yet to feel any attraction to the opposite sex when she is thrust into a fairly adult situation. And Kazusa doesn't know what to do as she discovers Izumi has become interested in girls. I must admit that, while fun, the bulk of the show didn't seem as intriguing as episode one had. Perhaps what disappointed me a little is that the theme of these girls valiantly resisting the onset of sexuality--which would be unusual and original--seemed to be largely forgotten. They could have decided that romance is just something that your DNA tells you to do, not something you choose via free will, and therefore they will fight it. But maybe nobody but me would have found that approach to be intriguing. At any rate, I think Hongo's romance was the one that interested me the most--she takes an aggressive approach, but clearly has some vulnerabilities as a young virgin. She is spited when she discovers that her internet boyfriend is in fact a person she knows and does not get along with all that well, which is titillating. The other girls' romances seem relatively tame in comparison. Hongo may be a little too aggressive, however, as I found myself sympathizing with the boyfriend that she alternately loves and hates more than with her. In general, I found myself having a hard time keeping track of where each girl's love life stood at the moment, because they weren't really exciting enough to stick in my memory. When episode nine began and Kazusa was in a blissful mood, I couldn't remember why she would feel that way and was sure that at any moment she would wake up and realize it was all a dream. Things get to the point where several of the girls might just have sex for the first time, but it didn't seem all that tense and I wasn't on the edge of my seat, wondering 'will she or won't she?'. Something seemed missing from the story and my interest had flagged somewhat.

Things reach a crisis when Sonezaki is falsely accused of scandalous behavior, and the girls take drastic action to prevent her from being expelled. How their plan would do anything other than make the problem worse initially escaped me. The conclusion was sort of satisfying, sort of confusing. Will the very serious action they took--which could have landed them in jail--be laughed off? Is the understanding that Kazusa and Izumi come to a good enough outcome to have been worth the time we viewers invested in them? Where do things stand for the other girls? Satisfactory but hardly brilliant was my impression of the conclusion. Indeed, despite my high hopes early on, that same assessment might be applied to the series as a whole. I don't feel deeply disappointed, but I wish this show could have maintained the degree of excitement and intrigue that was evident during episode one.

Last updated Sunday, October 06 2019. Created Friday, July 19 2019.

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