Final Thoughts – Bloom Into You

Let’s face it; the problem lies with the source material.

I mentioned in my updated impressions post that my only real issue with Bloom Into You is that it doesn’t concern itself with Yuu’s consent; not only is Touko still pursuing her aggressively despite Yuu firmly giving her a no, but the show itself wants me to think that this is acceptable simply because Touko is damaged and with the understanding that the two of them will inevitably end up together anyway. I thought we’d gotten mostly past this, but as of episode 9 – three-quarters of the way into the series – Touko is still cornering Yuu and demanding a kiss, not listening to her protests.

I object to this on principle.

I don’t care how the story ends at this point; I can’t root for Touko at all anymore. Despite still being a well-animated production (though the bright aesthetic still hurts to look at, honestly) the story has completely lost me.

Dropped after 8.5 episodes. 4/10.

Updated Impressions – Bloom Into You

Being perfectly honest, I almost dropped this one.

I gave it the traditional three-episode-try (even though I don’t really subscribe to that way of thinking, hence why I drop most things after one or even half of one episode) and at the end of the third episode, Bloom Into You had completely lost its hook in me by making Nanami utterly insufferable with her constant pestering of Yuu about her unrequited love for her, not developing any of its side characters, and not making any real plot progress. I am happy to report that the following three episodes made a pretty decent recovery, but I want to stress that episodes two and three are very boring and off-putting.

Still with me? Good.

The second quarter of the show manages a rerailment by recontextualizing Yuu’s refusal to reciprocate Nanami’s feelings as explicitly being her uncertainty over whether she can feel that way about anyone, and does a great deal to flesh out other members of the student council into at least two-dimensional people. We’ve at least reached the level of “good”, but there are still issues I’m having here with the way this show is produced.

Normally, TROYCA make excellently-animated shows, and Bloom Into You isn’t an exception to that, but the aesthetic of this show is, while somewhat stylized, very boring. The average color trends somewhere around beige-orange, and it doesn’t work because the show doesn’t lean into this filter the way that, say, No Game No Life does. It just perpetually looks like the sun is setting in the background of every scene.

Bloom Into You still has a bit of a hill to climb in my head before I would strongly recommend it, but it is at least still doing better than NTR or Citrus, so there’s hope yet.

Score so far: 6/10

Premiere Impressions – Bloom Into You

This is all very, very gay, and I’m living for it.

After NTR, after Citrus, finally we have an honest-to-God, heartwarming yuri romance that doesn’t have to involve questions of consent, and I am just so very ready for it. Studio TROYCA is also continuing its streak here of fantastic-looking productions (barring perhaps IDOLISH7, which I have yet to sit down and finish).

The setup is actually pretty clever, too, as it steals the traditional slice-of-life scenario of an indecisive girl getting dragged into a club she wasn’t particularly interested in. In this case, though, what she finds is a group of mostly rational, normal people just doing their jobs and drinking tea. It’s weirdly refreshing to see a student council that’s exactly what they would be in real life, minus the fact that you have to walk through a forest to reach the club room.

I quite like our couple, too. They’re not particularly out there, but I’m very much ready for a depiction of an average high school lesbian romance, with all the confusion and awkwardness that goes along with that.

The one thing I’m kind of concerned about is the backpedal near the end of the episode, right after the climax. It makes it seem a little cheap to come right up to the line of a love confession and then just have someone declare that they weren’t really sure what they were doing and just take back the whole interaction. But it also isn’t exactly uncommon in immature romances like this one, so I’ll let it slide.

HIDIVE just needs to champion this over all its other shows this season and maybe it can turn its bad habit of backing the wrong horse around!