Headscratchers / Strawberry Panic!

• How can Shizuma get away with her systematic sexual harassment of other students? Normally such a person would be expelled pretty soon, especially in such a high position as hers.
  • Maybe Miyuki pulls strings to keep her out of trouble. She is the head of an Absurdly Powerful Student Council, after all. Likewise the Spica president and her evil lesbian subordinates.
  • Shizuma is extremely charismatic particularly in the sex appeal department. This is why the girls she kisses, fondles and gropes do not mind. Furthermore, a girl's own popularity is raised considerably if Shizuma touches them this way in public. It seems Shizuma never gets in trouble for being a shameless invader of personal space, because no one is complaining.
  • Also, Shizuma gets away with this for the same reason Kaname, Tamao, and pretty much anyone else who acts like a sexual predator to any extent gets away with it. All the students, on some level, are participating in a gigantic Masquerade on the fact the overwhelming majority (if not all of them) are lesbians, and since it's further implied the faculty is ignorant of this (and the fact it's a Catholic school, where official church doctrine really wouldn't be anyone's friend on the matter), the students are willing to bury any evidence to keep the Masquerade going. To be fair, even the worst offenders (Kaname and Shizuma) are fairly aware of the Masquerade, and have been fairly discreet with their worst offenses.
  • It's perhaps a bit much to call it sexual harrasment, since all the girls she goes after seem more than willing, and know of her reputation. Barring Nagisa, whom she stops trying to seduce pretty quickly when it's clear she doesn't like it.
• Why is the most emotionally mature character single? Minamoto Chikaru is fun loving, confident, hardworking, a loyal friend and most importantly devoid of angst. Her friends love and adore her, but no one seems to be romantically attracted to her. Perhaps she is one of the few straight students. Then again, one of her favorate hobbies is photographing the cosplay club in Les Yay poses.
  • I guess that's why they have the Visual Novel game; so our favorite Ensemble Dark Horse would be single no longer...
  • Also, it's not so out of the ordinary for straight girls to enjoy the prettiness of other girls. Still, it's doubtful that Chikaru's straightness would prevent other girls from chasing her, seeing how aggressive most of them are in their romantic pursuits. Maybe she is just good at some martial art.
    • Who says Chikaru is straight? She's usually paired up with Kizuna in art from the original magazine stories as well as the light novel cover.
• Assuming this takes place in Japan, why would there be such a big tripartite Christian (seemingly Catholic, since they're the ones with saints) school? Christianity is something like one percent of the population.
  • That still makes over a million, of which enough should be enough lesbians to fill a big school with 'em.
  • On the other hand, it's said that Miator is over 100 years old
  • Word of God says she herself went to a Catholic school in Japan, hence the basis of her story.
  • It's not like one has to be a devout Christian to attend a Catholic school anyway. The fact that some of the new transfer students (like Nagisa) are shown as being somewhat ignorant of Catholic rituals and holy days on arrival shows that they likely don't come from Catholic families. So there's probably a sizable chunk of the student body who chose to go there more because of the schools' prestigious academic/social environments than the religious aspects. Plus, a lot of Catholic schools, especially in mostly non-Catholic countries like Japan, were established more for spreading the gospel to the unconverted than they were for preaching to the choir.
• Why the heck was Kaori still attending school, anyway? Shouldn't she have been in a hospital or something?
  • Kaori was clearly very depressed, she was probably dying no matter what and her parents wanted her to have some fun and see more of the world than her own house and hospitals, before she passed.
• According to the manga, St. Miator is a school for "brides" where "over half the students are engaged by graduation." Assuming they're talking about marrying men (since same-sex marriages aren't recognized in Japan) how is this possible? Even beside the fact that it seems like a significant number of the student body are lesbians, they're living on an isolated hill surrounded by other all-girls' schools. It's even suggested that men aren't allowed at all on Astraea Hill. So how would they be meeting guys to marry? We know there are students like Miyuki who are in arranged marriages, but more than half?
  • Why can't they all be arranged marriages? It's a small, prestigious school, and Japan has a population of 130 million. Why can't it attract a couple hundred girls from rich and powerful families who'd arrange marriages?
• Could someone please explain to me why Nagisa was so opposed to running for etoile? The whole thing flew right over my head. I figured it was partly because it would involve acting like she was more than friends with Tamao, but that's just weird. Okay, all the etoile partners we've seen (Shizuma and Kaori, Amane and Hikari) were dating, but surely that's not a required part of being the etoile.
  • Nagisa has extremely low self esteem — at least when it comes to Shizuma. She probably didn't think she was worthy of being Etoile, especially since she was a new transfer student.
• Do the names of the three schools have any particular meaning or origin? My guess is that "St. Spica" comes from the star in Virgo, as a reference to the Virgin Mary (which would fit with the school's white and blue theme colors). However, I couldn't find any non-Strawberry Panic usage for "Miator" and I'm not even sure if "Lulim" or "Le Rim" is correct because I've seen it spelled both ways, one in the light novel's English translation and the other in the anime subtitles.

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