YMMV / Citrus

• Adorkable: With her cheerfulness, friendliness, and hopeless romantic tendencies, it's hard not to see Yuzu as this.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • How much does Mei truly care for Yuzu? Does she truly value her for contributing to her development, or does she merely love her because she serves as an emotional crutch for her personal issues? When you consider that girls at Aihara Academy consider their Pseudo Romantic Friendships a way to "have fun" before their Arranged Marriages, and that Mei knew for some time that she'd had a second engagement set up, but didn't tell Yuzu, is this proof that Mei still sees Yuzu as a temporary diversion, or did Mei honestly love Yuzu, but feel as though her duty to her family required her to accept the engagement?
  • Does Mei's grandfather have at least some suspicions when it comes with Mei and Yuzu? If so, is his pushing of another arranged marriage his way of ensuring that she would inherit Aihara Academy without a hitch?
  • While Amemiya's having a mistress on the side is proof that he doesn't care for Mei, what about his relationship with the other woman? Is she as much of a plaything to him as Mei is, or was he honest about loving his mistress and planning on using Mei to give them financial security?
• Angst? What Angst?: Despite the social stigma against divorce in Japan, Mei doesn't seem to angst very much about her mother divorcing her father, mainly angsting about her father's subsequent change in personality.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: To some, the Flirty Stepsiblings trope is a turnoff, especially for those who find it to be too close to incest for their tastes.
• Awesome Art: The manga has been praised for its art.
• Awesome Music: The opening for the anime adaptation, titled "Azalea." It can be heard here.
• Base-Breaking Character: Mei. Some fans like her for being a Broken Ace in need of a hug. Others, however, dislike her for all the trouble she puts Yuzu through due to said status.
• Broken Base:
  • Many yuri purists dislike that the manga focuses more on drama than yuri. Others, however, find that while the manga is a bit of a Cliché Storm, said clichés are ones typical of romance dramas, like telenovelas, which makes the series feel more refreshing when compared to other yuri titles.
  • The manga's treatment of the Flirty Stepsiblings aspect of the series. Some readers got turned off by the borderline incestuous nature of Yuzu and Mei's relationship. Others counter that since Yuzu and Mei only met at the start of the series, as teenagers, the Westermark Effect shouldn't apply, and their relationship isn't too squicky. Still others feel as though the manga didn't do as much with the taboo nature of Yuzu and Mei's relationship as it could have, save for milking it for angst.
  • The ending. While there are some fans who are happy that Mei and Yuzu do get together following an emotional conversation between them, others feel that the drama from the last few chapters related to the former's second Arranged Marriage, which is also not very well liked in and of itself, is quickly swept under the rug via a montage of panels without dialogue.
• Die for Our Ship:
  • Whenever a new girl who has a crush on one of the two main girls appears, she is labeled as a rival by some fans and this does not sit well for them. This includes Matsuri and Sara.
  • Mei's grandfather gets hit with this hard. Early in the manga, he's hated because he outright forbids Yuzu and Mei from being around each other and even forces Mei to move out of the house. He seems to better after Yuzu saves his life, but then he becomes hated again when he pushes Mei into another arranged marriage.
• Draco in Leather Pants: A large majority of the fandom tends to continually find reasons to justify Mei's behavior even though she had engaged in acts that could be seen as borderline sexual assault, or how she tends to emotionally manipulate Yuzu. Reasons for supporting Mei range from her looks to her backstory which while depressing doesn't completely cover everything that Mei does in the manga.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Harumi is as beloved as Yuzu and Mei by the fandom.
  • In some extent: Ume, given her acceptance to Yuzu and Mei's relationship and marriage.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: During the summer trip arc, Shirapon/Himeko began to become popular due to the subtle Ship Tease the two have during the arc, which only increased after.
• Growing the Beard: It is generally agreed upon that the series had a marked improvement once that Yuzu and Mei finally confessed their feelings for each other and became girlfriends at the end of the school trip arc.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Those who hate the drama aspects of the manga like to keep reading it due to its beautiful art.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Harumin gets shipped with Yuzu, Himeko, Maruta, her sister Mitsuko, and Matsuri. Almost as a form of Pair the Spares when her biggest ships, Matsuri and Himeko, come from the casualties of Mei/Yuzu. Though as she got more legitimate Ship Tease with Matsuri, shipping Harumin with other characters has died down significantly.
• LGBT Fanbase: As with the rest of the Yuri Manga/Anime, Citrus also had a gay following.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Mei the rapist.^Explanation After the first episode of the anime added a ton more force to her and Yuzu's first kiss, fans started calling Mei a rapist.
  • Some Love Live! fans occasionally compared Umi Sonoda and Eli Ayase as Yuzu and Mei's "School Idol" counterparts.
• One True Pairing:
  • Yuzu and Mei.
  • As of Chapter 13.5, Harumin and Matsuri.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • After her arc was resolved, fans started to warm up to Matsuri and even begun shipping her with Harumin.
  • Sara got this treatment when she more or less made Mei/Yuzu happen.
• Ron the Death Eater: Those opposed to Mei often over exaggerate her negative traits, reinterpreting her as a sociopathic monster who uses Yuzu solely as a plaything.
• Seasonal Rot: The manga lost a significant portion of its fans when it entered the final arc, particularly the revelation that Mei had a second Arranged Marriage that she'd never told Yuzu about, and the hasty resolution to the above. Citrus Plus only exacerbated things, particularly with Yuzu and Mei's romance regressing to a more chaste relationship.
• Strawman Has a Point: Mei's grandfather expelling Yuzu in the early chapters is meant to be a knee-jerk overreaction, and he even admits as much after Yuzu saves him from a heart attack, but considering what she had just done, it's understandable that he would be furious at her. She seemingly broke a multitude of school rules to publicly air his family's dirty laundry, embarrassing him and one of his teachers who he personally chose for an Arranged Marriage in front of his own students, and considering that she was never shy about flaunting her disrespect for the rules even before that happened, it's no surprise that he was already out of patience with Yuzu and overreacted when he thought he had caught Yuzu forcing himself on his granddaughter, even if he was wrong about that one.
• Tainted by the Preview: Pseudo-incest aside, the manga became somewhat notorious for its early use of sexual assault for drama, with the main instigator behind it often being Mei. While this aspect was eventually dropped, it nevertheless turned off a lot of potential readers, and made the anime adaptation one of the more controversial titles of the Winter 2018 season.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Yuzu and Mei's relationship is taboo in Japanese society for two reasons: they're of the same gender and stepsiblings. One would think that they would face opposition from their family for this, and Yuzu worries about what her family and friends will think. However, after Mei leaves Yuzu for her Arranged Marriage, Yuzu comes clean to her mother and stepfather, and they're fine with her dating Mei. The ending, in which Yuzu and Mei somehow get married (disregarding how same-sex marriage isn't legal in Japan) seems to imply that even Mei's grandfather gave the couple his blessing.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • While Mei definitely has her reasons for being the way she is, the fact that Yuzu ends up putting in much more effort to get her to open up and keeping the relationship going to the point that it seems like the latter is carrying the entire thing on her back is not lost on many readers. This is especially apparent in Chapter 35 when it's noted that a full year had gone by and Mei is still more or less the same. Then when it's discovered that Mei is in another Arranged Marriage, the fandom hoped that she would finally open up to Yuzu.^note Especially since everyone else decided to not get involved this time and let the two handle the problem themselves to strengthen their bond. Chapter 36 then reveals that Mei did tell Yuzu at the last moment in a letter, which is basically the equivalent of getting a divorce via text message. While her reasons for doing so were also understandable, it felt like less of a want to protect Yuzu from a heartbreak and more of a result of Poor Communication Kills since there was really no reason to not let Yuzu know about it early on.^note If anything, letting Yuzu know about the Arranged Marriage early on would've relieved them both from a nice chunk of the drama by letting the fact sink in and giving them time to either prepare for the eventual break-up or formulate a plan to stop everything, or Take a Third Option and run away together.
  • In Chapter 40, Mei becomes even more divisive when she quits school in order to rush the arranged marriage. Additionally, Shou himself is meant to be seen as sympathetic given how he's remorseful for being absent from Mei's life. However, from the looks of Chapter 40, he's done nothing to make his father reconsider the situation despite Yuzu telling him that she's in love with his daughter. Granted, he helps get Mei out of the arranged marriage, as shown by a panel showing him talking with his father and given detail on Citrus Plus, but some believe he should have intervened sooner.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Early on in the series, Yuzu and Harumi stop to do karaoke on the way home, and end up getting in trouble merely for not going straight home, not for anything they did on their detour. While Japanese schools are concerned about the students getting into trouble and thus adversely affecting the school's reputation, Western viewers see this rule as overly harsh. While most schools have this rule, it's hardly enforced and doubtful anyone would say anything unless the student got in legal trouble.
  • Mei being upset with her father because he changed into a happy-go-lucky free spirit while he was traveling abroad, in opposition to the image she had in her head of him as a stern teacher who puts his job ahead of anything else. In Japan, working long hours and being a stern disciplinarian are considered to be sacrificing your own feelings for the sake of your family and being a good role model; Mei is therefore getting upset because her father betrayed the image she had of him. In the West, that would be considered neglect, at the very least, and viewers would wonder why the hell Mei is getting so angry that her only living parent was trying to be nice to her and seemingly rebuild their relationship.
  • Around the time Yuzu and Mei start going out, Yuzu considers telling two of her old friends about it, but reconsiders when she hears them mock two women for flirting in public. Part of their reaction is because Japan is more heteronormative than many Western countries, and part is because public displays of affection are disapproved of.