O Maidens in Your Savage Season (Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo)

What happens when you take your usual slice-of-life dramedy anime with cute high school girls, and add raging teenage hormones to the equation?

O Maidens follows the five members of an all-female literature club whose main activity is reading passionate literature aloud. Including very steamy literature. As an unfortunate result, they end up having a hard time not thinking about "esu-i-batsu". We thus follow Onodera Kazusa, Sudô Momoko, Sugawara Niina, Hongô Hitoha and club president Sonezaki Rika as they each deal with these questionings in their own (often hilarious) way.

The manga is written by Okada Mari, and so is the anime. There are currently 3 episodes out.

And boy did Hitoha strike gold in episode 3. XD Just hoping she doesn't develop an actual relationship with Yamagishi, because that would be a out-of-bounds… Still, she got lucky because what she was out to do was incredibly reckless…

That scene with Kazusa's parents was also pretty sweet.

I'm less fond of the end of the episode. Felt a bit too much like a repeat of episode 1's last scene, but more cliché. Also, how many times are they gonna not stay for dinner at each other's places? >.>

Episode 4 has a little more focus on each girl's… male partners, for lack of a better term. Since I wouldn't want to call Yamagishi a "love interest" and damn, Hitoha, there's being horny and there's crossing red lines. You might not want to cross this one.

Sonezaki with her new haircut looks like Shirase from Yorimoi, which is always a plus… The guy's confession is cute in a way, but it's kinda… shallow? "What do you like about me?" "You'e cute (×265)." That's realistic in a way − you don't always know why you love someone beyond superficial traits −, but still.

To be fair given how stand-offish she is, Sonezaki hasn't really given anyone a chance to get to know her beyond the superficial level.

That's… also true.

Episode 5! Holy damn… A pedophile character who keeps his urges in check and is neither played for laughs nor depicted as a monstrous predator? That might be the first time I see that in… any kind of media. I mean, there's something creepy about all this obviously (as Niina and Izumi's reactions show), but still.

Meanwhile, Momoko and Rika encounter both types of teenage boy idiocy − the "eeh, no thanks" kind for the former and the "omg that's kind of endearing" for the latter. I could see a bit of my high school self in both, though in a meeker flavor…

Edited by Lyendith on Aug 3rd 2019 at 1:13:21 PM

Episode 7… Oh god, please not a fucking love triangle. I mean, I trust this series to handle it well, but that particular trope is very easy to mess up… And why would you take advice from that creep, Niina…

Meanwhile, I was suspicious from almost the start but now I'm pretty sure that Momoko is the lesbian of the bunch. Something would be missing from this story if it only tackled het relationships after all.

Also interesting how Rika is reveling in the sweet fragrance of her first love… but does nothing to actually commit to it when she's with her supposed boyfriend. I feel pity for the poor guy.

Episode 8. Rika is happy to tell the boy she likes that she does. Kazusa is happy to be told by the boy she likes that he does too. Momoko is happy to tell the boy she doesn't like to piss off.

That "fake legend plan" did do wonders to add that little touch of romanticism to the festival. Meanwhile, Niina has awaken her berserker mode.

PS: I declare "Boys are humans too!" the best anime line of this year, period.

Episode 10. Two girls try to make a move. One guy gets hard. One guy doesn't. And the latter is probably the better outcome considering how Niina fucked things up with Izumi. In a way, Momoko's impromptu love declaration might be what Niina needed to be humbled at this moment. That's when you realize how much that Saegusa's, err, "education" really messed with her emotional development.

Edited by Lyendith on Sep 8th 2019 at 4:23:40 PM

Epiosed 11. Welp, this went from dramatic to awesome in a few minutes. Poor Milo-sensei, he's had a rough year. Hopefully he can fulfill his own love at the end of the road.

Also, good punch, Niina. Ouch. Not sure that solved her problem, but that should at least be one weight off her chest.

This is one of the few anime where my main reaction was "actually they really should've trimmed it down"

there were like five plot cul-de-sacs spread out in the last four episodes

All the girls were flawed to a fascinating extent to the point where I'm not quite sure how I feel about Hongou and Sugawara. I don't know what it says about me that I gravitated more towards Momoko and Sonezaki because their arcs weren't as messy.

The casting for the guys where the heavyweights are the more ambiguously awful and unknowns as the love interests is actually really good.

It's wild how they admitted the director was a pedophile and then never brought it up ever again.

To end on a positive note, the artstyle being soft is one of the highlights and the animators did a really good job with it.

I think it need more episode, and an ending that was less of a train wreck of the plot threads.