Citrus

Ive watched 12 episodes of this anime, I have calculated every single angle and aspect of this anime ranging from the story, art, sound, character, and enjoyment and from this I have deduced that the main character may or may not be a lesbian. Fuk this doGshit anime

Texual Evidence: In the intro, features 2 girls, Mei and YuzuBitch kissing and that was my first clue to this claim that they may be lesbian. My second piece of texual evidence was from the christmas when Mei tried to s8x with YuzuBitch but to my displeasement they did not have fuck so Im not sure if they ... are lesbians at this point.

Counter Claim: Some may argue that they are in fact lesbians but according to my calculations it does not seem this way because they did not have fuk.

Overall: I will have to write this anime a 2/10 because i am clueless as to whewther they are gay or what.

Highly Recommand.

Ok! This is the first review I write in this site, so, why here and why on THIS THING?
Keep in mind that this is from someone who smoked the 10 volumes of the manga in one sitting. So here we go.
Well, I can go on rampaging about it for a looong time but I'll keep it simple if dont want to read all of this:
The Citrus manga is good, like... really GOOD.
Soooo, in short, go and read THAT instead of wasting your time in this abomination.

While its not perfect by any means, the manga shows by itself that a lot of thought, care and ... passion went into it.
This... THING (on the other hand) is just a cheaply made cash grab that fails horrendously at... well... pretty much everything!

So, to cover the bullet points! I'll try to keep this as breaf and PG as possible, even when right now Im cursing like a pirate with a broken leg.

Story: You have the summary, its nothing earth-shattering, but having only 12 episodes they cut it at the worst possible time, since the following arcs are the really juicy stuff of this series. They left all the setup, but none of the good stuff.

Art: The biggest offender by far. Cheap. This guys where probably working on a budget, and paid by the hour.
All the beautiful and expressive character shots that deeply showed their emotions in the subtle details, GONE! Replaced mostly with cardboard.
The biggest problem here is the direction, not only did they failed to emulate the mood of some the key scenes in the story, but they sometimes outright butcher entire scenes. One might argue that being "faithful to the source material" is a good thing, but if an adaptation goes coping and pasting poor renditions of the original panels its not being faithful, its just being lazy; those shots and angles worked in the manga, but animation is a different media, if doesn't work that way (specially if the passing of said scenes is as awful as in this case). So yeah, they butchered it, I'll leave it there or I'll by here all night listing every single detail.

Sound: Same as before, but worst. The music is... ok, but the choices in the score don't match the tone of the scenes and sometimes completely miss the mood, it doesn't make any sense. Sound design is none existing or mediocre at best. Also, no heart pounding? I mean, REALLY!? SHAMEFUL.

Character: Since the story didn't go any further, they didn't show their development. And since the subtlety of their emotions got compromised by their poor renditions, they ended up misrepresented, its just sad. The voice actors did what they could, thou.

Enjoyment: Watching the last two episodes was a torture. I was raging from start to finish.

Awards time!
-Soulless:
Not enough people in the payroll gave a damn about this project, and it SHOWS.
-They butchered it:
Cut the story at half and destroyed some good charades in the process, bravo!

And the final award!
-It's time to stop!
Do not make a sequel, you destroyed it enough as it is.

So that it!
Ps: Matsuri best girl.

Esa fue mi reviu de Citrus para Nintendo 64, y espero que les aya justado, Chau.

This is my first review, my apologies if it's biased majorly.

Guys, Citrus is bad. Really, it's terrible. I wanted to like this show so much, I mean, it's one of my favorite manga, but seriously, it's BAAAAD.

I made myself watch this since I loved the manga. The PV looked promising, I loved how the art looked, and oh my GOD, is that Yurika Kubo as Himeko?! This show was going to be my favorite of the year.

As your Local Lesbian, I was quite hyped for this anime to come out, homosexual representation is always great! Ever since that first PV...

Sadly, that was soon to be ... quite the opposite.

I'll start with the positives first:
Art:
The art is actually really, really good. I loved how vibrant Yuzu looks and how she always has a differentiating outfit every episode. The animation is also great; it looks amazingly clean in some shots, though in certain other scenes it can a little stiff. (8/10)

Sound:
The sound is also alright. Decent, must I say. I can't stand the opening, the music is great but that singer really annoys me. I was never a big NANOripe fan, so that might be a reason. Voice acting is good, as I really can't resist Shikaco (Yurika Kubo.) I never really found myself paying attention to the music, but it wasn't bad in any way. (6/10)

Now now, the list of negatives...
Story:
It's quite similar to the manga, and this is something that can hold it's own I guess. The premise was simple, Gyaru Yuzu goes to a new girls-only high school and seito kaichou is now her little sister. They did well enough to adapt that into the anime, but it's still lacking from the manga. (4/10)

Characters:
This is where I began to hate the anime. Yuzu is so unlikeable. I understand that she's thrust into this unfamiliar situation and her sister is after her (and shes sorta after her sister, too), but the anime adapted it terribly. They took everything likeably-cute out of Yuzu, making her an obnoxious, ignorant brat. Mei is a bit better, but she has this whole "I'm going to act emo, but then, I'm sensitive, Aubrey! Which gets me into deep shit." I can't even explain how much I dislike these characters. I knew the Sekaiichi Hatsukoi anime had some unlikeable characters, but oh my GOD.

The only likable character I found (without their voice actor) is Harumin, she's actually a really cool character. Since I can't give this category a 0% (MAL, please add that just for this anime), it gets 10%. (1/10)

Enjoyment:
I really hate this anime. I'm most likely biased because it adapted the manga so terribly, but I hate it. On its own, it would be a solid 5/10. Instead of being a yuri for yuri lovers female and male alike akin to the manga, it's a yuri anime for gross dirtbags with useless fanservice and terrible characters. You can clearly see the target audience, which wasn't the same as the manga. But hey, at least the art is nice. (2/10)

Overall: (3/10)

This is gonna be my first review. It can contain some spoilers.

You know these Latin American soap operas? They just have one objective: to entertain people with a shoddy plot. Well, citrus did exactly the same.

Citrus was entertaining but a garbage too. It had the stupidest and cringiest scenes I’ve ever seen in anime.

The story was an average “oh I have a new member in my family and I’m already sexual attracted to it”. But i agree that a repetitive plot can be certainly good, but in case if Citrus it was a wasted potential. None of the characters helped in ... making this interesting, it was all a meaningless drama accompanied by a lot of fan service.

The characters were fake, boring and you weren’t able to feel empathy for them. Sometimes they were very cringy, specially during love confessions. For example, the part that make me want to rip my balls off the most was in episode 11 where the purple haired girl felt in love with Mei and referred her as her destiny, all that in 5 hours! So lack of sense!

The animation was ok, i don't have issues with it. The opening and ending songs were very nice.

So, if you want to see a fully japanese animated soap opera, Citrus is your best option!

It's weird to watch this anime. The title lies, there are no citruses over there.
To be fair the only good thing is that, it is yuri. I'm serious the story was 12 episodes of frustration with characters that simply can't make up their minds. When more characters get involve into story it gets even worse. I dunno why but when I should cheer up for main protagonist I simply can't because she's too annoying.
If you want watch this I assume because the yuri part, but even that part could be better.
Side characters are simply meaningless because they come and go without much input, I mean ... they make some but it matters only because protagonist is a moron.
To sum this up, if you want watch it, do it. It's just 12 episodes, right? 12 episodes of mediocre characters (a seriously frustrating main one), decent story (tbh story is so simple that it isn't awful but isn't good either) and pleasant to watch art. Oh and there is yuri stuff too, but not too much, to be fair Citrus is enjoyable only because yuri/gay scenes.

I had seen this anime pop up here and there and when I finally sat down to watch it, I was (for lack of a better word) excited to watch this. I am constantly looking for good shoujo ai/yuri anime and when I noticed Citrus seemed to be a bit more popular than other shoujo ai I mistakenly thought "ah then it can't be that bad." But I was wrong.
Despite what I have heard some saying, the sexual assault in this anime did not add any deeper meaning or lessons. It just happened and there seemed to be no consequences. Not only that but the ... relationship between the two characters is not in anyway cute. It is (again at a lack of a better word) very toxic, and I am fine with media portraying a toxic relationship to show how bad they can be and how they can be hard for everyone involved and spread a positive message with the story. But Citrus did not spread any message at all, it just (IN MY OPINION) casually threw in some sexual assault, in what was the main relationship that you supposed to root for, and then just made the relationship toxic and hard to watch. Anyone who would want to be in this sort of relationship or think anything they did would be okay or cute to do, should get themselves mentally checked.

My God, where do I start? Citrus is awful from beginning to end. The way the characters act and interact with each other makes no sense, and it is an incredibly inaccurate and honestly harmful portrayal of sapphic people.

At the beginning, we are presented with Yuzu Aihara. She seems like an upbeat and cheerful character, which is true, but throughout the story, she loses more and more of what made her interesting to start with, leaving us with a strange shell of a person.

The reason that this dramatic change happens, is because of her step sister, Mei Aihara entering into her life. I seriously ... don’t know how to start with their relationship. It’s already off to a bad start due the fact they are sisters. You can argue that ‘they aren’t blood related’ but really, the fact that they are related is only really there for the shock factor, and because of the whole pseudo-incest thing. If you move past the obvious issue of them being sisters, it still won’t improve much from there. Their relationship is founded on a lack of boundaries and there is never any form of consent to the acts they do, which leads to the scenes feeling weird to watch (as if they don’t already) and gives them a rapey feel. Literally in their first day of knowing each other Mei gropes Yuzu to confiscate her phone, and pushes her down and essentially sexually assaults her. Their relationship doesn’t improve from there, yet Mei is treated later on as a sweet girl who just doesn’t know how to express feelings other than with her body. As a concept that’s something that could be explored, but the romanticisation of her actions takes away from any opportunity for that to happen.

Other than Mei and Yuzu being together, the rest of the show (which there isn’t really much of) really isn’t much better. Yuzu and Harumi’s friendship always stuck out as strange to me. They became friends right away, which is fine, but later on it just stops feeling like an equal relationship. Harumi is always there for Yuzu and lets her stay with her often, yet Yuzu is usually too preoccupied with thinking about Mei to even give Harumi a second thought, which just makes me wonder why Harumi is even friends with Yuzu to begin with. Harumi says to her something along the lines of ‘there’s nobody else to have fun with on campus’ when she meets her, so when Yuzu becomes a shell of what she once was due to Mei, why does Harumi stay with her? I’d normally understand, you know, the whole ‘friends stick together’ idea, but Yuzu and Harumi barely know each other, so why are they presented as so close?

Another thing I never understood, was why the relationship between Mei and Yuzu is so readily accepted by pretty much everyone. When Sara is made aware of the nature of Yuzu and Mei's relationship as sisters, she backs off and even encourages it, in the name of 'true love'. In reality she would probably be disgusted and rightfully so.

The only thing I genuinely like about citrus is the art style and animation. It looks great. Not much more to say, apart from that it's a shame that so much time was wasted on making this trash as high quality as it is.

I could go on for hours about every issue I have with Citrus, but I don't really have the energy for that, and I don't really think many people would be willing to read that.

Overall, Citrus is a show that depicts sexual assault and the queer experience is a wholly wrong way, that is incredibly harmful to those who it supposedly represents. 3/10

Citrus was advertised as a cutesy lesbian romance, but turned out to be a disgusting mess. The unconsensual groping and kissing scenes happen at least 5 times an episode. The characters aren't really well designed either and there's to many love triangles to keep up with. It's not "deep" like some may say, it's just a cash grab on some anime girls kissing. There's also some weird underage sexual implications.

Good: Art is okay (main character has different clothes and her design is actually pretty cute), at least is some form of wlw.

Bad: Rapey. Unnecessary plot points (*COUGH* they didn't need to be siblings *COUGH*)

Overall: ... I don't recommend watching. I almost stopped after the first 2 episodes but it somehow kept me interested. The show will keep you wanting to watch if you're bored and can't find anything else.

Passem longe por favor, mas se vc tem gosto peculiares e tara em orelha talvez seja o anime perfeito para você.

Personagens patéticos, você não consegue ter empatia ao ponto de ser confortável acompanhar a história, mal desenvolvidos e com características batidas e clichês, que se pelo menos fossem bem feitas seria possível ter algum prazer em gostar de algum personagem.

Animação no geral é boa, mesmo com defeitos e descuidos durante a produção não chegam a doer os olhos ao ver, provavelmente é a única coisa aceitável nesse anime

Em poucos momentos me vi gostando do anime antes de dropar e posso contar em um dedo a ... quantidade de vezes que me senti cativado a continuar a história, nos momentos onde me vi dando risada foi vendo a desgraça e as cenas "sensuais" deprimentes que o anime tenta fazer.

É um anime feito para um publico específico (que realmente não me encaixo), com gostos específicos ( e peculiares).

Se quiser tentar a experiência, as vezes pode acabar se cativando pela história das duas (não tem nada de errado mesmo sendo estranho) ou você pode acabar dropando igual eu (que é o mais normal).

No geral a nota final resume, e os 3 primeiros episódios explicam o motivo de ter dropado. Não recomendo e não pretendo ver animes do mesmo gênero sem dar uma boa pesquisada antes.

TL;DR Review

Nothing against yuri... It's just that this anime is pretty bad... I'm sorry. The story's pretty bad, it's just some high school girl who wants to bang her step sister... And? Yup... that's it! Not going to lie though, the art was pretty nice to look at, and the characters all sounded pretty normal to me. However, that's really it. You may ask, why did I give it such high grade for enjoyment? Well, truthfully, this anime is so bad that it's actually good... Makes sense? I ironically enjoyed this anime; however, it's not a good at all.

- Spacecraft555 UwU

Alright, so, I was pretty psyched about this anime at first, since I saw it's beautiful animation and thought: "Hm...This looks good." My first mistake was not reading what the plot was about.

I know they aren't blood related, but this common and poorly used PORN plot is nothing to really base a good anime over. In bad taste, overall.

Next, the commonly complained plot point over the first two episodes showing quite violent sexual assault. First off, to those who say this is just a plot point or something they bond over, no. You can fuck off. This anime doesn't glorify the sexual assault, which I ... admit, however, It leads into the rest of the anime and it is even the basis of the main characters feelings developing for her step-sister.
Aka: "All of this because you kissed me."

None of this anime was a healthy portrayal of a real relationship, but all just sounded and felt like desperation. A way to express feeling after being repressed by social ques, but not in the good way.

0/10 would not recommend.

This show is...okay? When first starting up the show, I found it to be semi-enjoyable, however the first few episodes of the show are incredibly cringey and, in some ways, really creepy. As the show progressed, the show became a little bit better with the cringe and creep levels lowering a bit, however it still leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. It's just too dang creepy. It honestly feels like a dude had a fantasy about all of these girls hooking up and decided to make it into a show. I'm too deep in at this point to back out, I might ... as well watch the final episode. I can't really tell how the show will end, as I don't think the final episode will be able to wrap everything up nicely, and I highly doubt that the show will receive a second season, as it really doesn't deserve it.

Well, this was terrible. Absolutely terrible.

The anime is a romance anime apparently but my word the relationship building is embarrassingly poor, these characters have no actual reason to like each other and the attraction was started by what can only be called sexual assault...just awful, a heartless relationship with zero proper development except some weak attempts at emotional scenes which all fall flat because of the hollow nature of the relationship.

The characters are terrible, the side characters especially are so poorly written and poorly related to the plot, they have basically no purpose. The main characters are just annoyingly stupid and poor at communication ... in a very repetitive way, it is so dull.

The animation is also not very good with several poorly done scenes and unnatural looking movements.

There isn't enough comedy imo, good anime romance shows have lots of funny moments and hilarious side characters, just look at something like Horimiya or Domestic Girlfriend.

It is a 1 out of 10, which may seem harsh but from episode 1 to episode 12 this show bored me to a new level and is quite frankly an embarrassing anime.

Citrus was my ex-girlfriend's favorite anime and my god, does that explain a whole lot.

Anyways I knew this anime was about some weird step-sister incest shit, but I still watched it because I just felt like watching something shitty. I was prepared for the incest shit, not for how rapey the show is. To be honest, this show could've been at least decent without all the gross shit. God, I just want healthy lesbians relationships in anime, not gross, yuri shit, and THIS.

First of all, Yuzu and Mei are sisters? What the fuck? Step-sisters but still sisters. "Oh well it's not biological so it's fine." ... Legally? Technically in some states, yes. Morally? It's still gross in most cases. If they were raised as siblings, or see each other as siblings, then it's gross, because they still have a sibling relationship. Step-siblings are still siblings. I have step-siblings and since I saw them as my siblings the idea of dating one of them makes me wanna die. Yuzu and Mei weren't raised together, but they call each other their sister and stuff. And the show is all "Oh! Look at these sisters making out. Isn't that so hot?" It's like they wanted to write some gross incest crap but decided to use the "Oh, well technically they're step-siblings!" as an excuse.

The incest isn't the only problem I have with this show. It's also super rapey. The characters sexually assault each other many times throughout the show and it's portrayed as sexy and romantic, and even brushed off as a joke. It seems that every time Mei kisses or touches Yuzu without consent (or vice versa) they get even closer. Ew. Sexual assault and abuse aren't romantic. Mei and Yuzu are such an unhealthy relationship. This is some Stockholm syndrome shit. Also didn't Yuzu, who is 16, go on a date with Matsuri, who is 13? Um? Also kinda gross.

They could've created a story similar to this without all the incest, sexual assault, etc. They were trying to go the whole 'forbidden love' route when the step-sibling aspect wasn't needed. The fact that they're both girls could've been forbidden love enough. Homophobia still exists. Make them not step-sisters, make the forbidden love aspect the fact that they're gay. And get rid of the weird rape shit. Boom. Fixed it, now it isn't gross. Or hell, if you wanted them to remain sisters, get rid of the romance and focus of their sisterly bonds or some shit. Just not this. We're really sick and tired of all the lesbian romances in anime being some weird, creepy shit.

I haven't been this infuriated with an anime in a long while. Would it kill the authors to write a normal healthy romance between women instead of writing this 'I fell in love with a person only to find out that they're my step sibling' trope??? This is basically Domestic Girlfriend, but worse. At least no one actually takes Domestic Girlfriend seriously, not even the anime itself. Sometimes it was so ridiculous and WRONG that it was just funny. Citrus on the other hand is almost unbearable to watch because it takes itself too seriously even though the premise is fking ridiculous and just BAD.

If ... you wanted to make a steamy step sisters hent@i you should have just done that. Why pose as something you're not? Why pretend to be this mature, emotional and vanilla love drama?? It doesn't help that the Mei girl is so ridiculously unlikable. Sometimes she seems to show character development only to go back to being a b'tch the next moment. I get being introverted and having issues but like... man do you really have to be so cold and rude to others when they're being so nice to you??? Even more than the step-sisters love story, i hated the fact that the Blondie literally has no self respect. Mei treats her like sh*t and she just... accepts it??? Worse yet she keeps coming back to her.

Those were my personal grudges, but this anime is objectively just... not good. Like at all. So many horrible characters simply never face any consequences for their actions, and they seem to suddenly turn into good people in the span of like 1 episode. Examples are the grandpa, the vice president who has an unhealthy obsession with mei, pink haired psycho who's obsessed with yuzu and mei's dad. The worst was pink haired girl. She was vile. Not only is she crazy and obsessive, she literally commits a crime by blackmailing mei and even setting her up for m0lestation. And you're telling me she doesn't face ANY consequences for these actions, and she even turns 'nice' all of a sudden for like no fkin reason?? This anime is beyond stupid. Good characters are good for no other reason than because they're supposed to represent the 'I'm such a nice person because I'm an airhead... haha... even though everyone treats me like trash" trope. The mom was pretty much a generic a$$ anime mom with no personality whatsoever. I don't fking get why she even married a man who literally is NEVER home. Like how do you love a person like that??? WHY do you like a person like that??? He's never there for his family. He's selfish. He cares only about himself. He never even raised his own daughter and left her to a life of misery. And instead of ridiculing him for his actions the anime glorifies him as this amazing model dad figure who was 'nice all along'. Instead of making us not like him by pointing out the obvious flaws in his character, he is shown as this goody two-shoes person the moment he's actually introduced in the anime. I hated how Yuzu even defended this man.
And this is not where the problematic aspects of this anime end, the romance is dogsh*t, it has no flavour and trust me at some point people get bored of the constant back and forth. And WHY do they have to romantize this relationship??? Not only is it pseudo incest but also just... not healthy. Mei constantly acts as if yuzu is the one dying to do stuff to her and she's doing a 'favour' by playing into it. Even though internally she wants it just as much, but God forbid if she voices it. Also why does the anime never address the utterly wrong tradition of engaging young teenage girls to grown a$$ men???? Why was the whole plot point of that male teacher grooming mei brushed off so easily??? Jesus we could be here all day pointing out the many flaws this anime has. But I'm gonna stop now cuz I can't bare to waste a second more thinking of this atrocity. I hope they start making more nice and healthy lesbian anime like Bloom Into You in the future and stop with these weird shows.

So normally when I write a review, I talk about multiple aspects of the anime to give a better image on how I view a anime. But this time, I want to do something different. Citrus is a anime I really don't like, but I have thought about why I don't like Citrus past season. And after a season of thinking and Citrus releasing its final episode, I have come up with the 2 big problems this anime has.

Problem 1: The first impressions you get from this anime is bad
The first four episodes are immediately the worst episodes of ... Citrus. All of those episodes contained incest sexual assaults and awkward pacing. This in a weird contrast to the later eight episodes which are different, but also contain their own problems which I get into later. If you wanted to watch a drama with a lot of emotions, you will get turned of by the first four episodes.

Problem 2: The relationship between Yuzu and Mei constantly gets reset
This needs a bit of explaining. Yuzu and Mei are the main characters of the story and the romance between them is the focus of the plot. ''So what is the plot?'' you may ask, well here it is: Mei or Yuzu get feelings for eachother, they get closer to eachother, Mei or Yuzu decides that this isn't good, distance herselve of the other and their relationship is back to square one. Repeat four times until the end. This excuse of a plot is not only lazy, but also frustrating. It feels like the author of Citrus didn't know how to make one string of building up a relatioship and just decided to build up the relationship four times.

To be honest, this anime is not completely bad. The animation really fluid and the music is also pretty good, but everything else just frustrates me (including those two problems I mentioned). I do not recommend watching Citrus, but if you still want to watch it, then get ready for incest, blackmailing and rape.

I first thought, seeing a lot of screenshots of the anime on Instagram « oh, finally a new one with lesbians ». Then I started watching it. The visual is nice, there nothing to say about that there. But the story... first, and the most important thing, this anime/manga ROMANTICIZE sexual agressions while it is far from acceptable. I’ve watched a lot of anime to know that rape culture is something too common in animes/mangas. And I’m tired of it. Romanticising sexual violence leads to people (and I think about young girls mostly) thinking it’s ok, that if it happens to them it is normal, that it ... is nothing big and that it is fine to agress someone else. Well it is, and the way Mei, Yuzu and the others (even if there’s a part a love or whatsoever) do things without the other’s consent is wrong, and very annoying to watch. Big deception. Second, all this insest thing is quite disturbing but again too common and romanticised in animes etc.
Anyway, that kind of anime’s/mangas, in times like these where there is too much sexual agressions/rape etc in the world, should seriously stop. How can someone even romanticise that when victims are destroyed in real life ? For god’s sake... so irritating

as a person who never really finished Citrus you may not see me as a worthy source of an opinion on the show, but on the baseline, I dropped it due to the sheer amount of incest.
fans often use the debate of "they aren't related by blood" but due to the relationship of their parents, they share parents to a degree, and this makes their weird relationship, even more unusual. Throughout the episodes I saw, Mei was incredibly rude towards Yuzu outside of their "scandalous" relationship* is extremely cold, rude and distant. And during the "intimate" between Yuzu and Mei, Mei is weirdly possessive ... and forceful of Yuzu, which comes off as very weird, especially when you realise that the characters are still in high school, them both being 16, which makes the sexual nature of their relationship illegal in Japan apart from one prefecture.
The bathing scene alone is what made me quit the anime, as it was incredibly gross for people their age, of their relationship, depicting wlw relationships this way; and with the lack of consent from Yuzu which was the part that really through me off

*this depiction of wlw relationships, or any lgbt relationship is extremely harmful to the communities as they depict the relationships as taboo and a dirty little secret isn't as helpful as the people fetishizing them think it is.

This was a huge letdown coming of other Shoujo Ai series such as "Bloom Into You" or "Girlfriends" manga

Story 1: The story was very weird when it came to the main characters and how things happened between them it felt more like it was for the sake of producing fanservice and not actually establishing a relationship between characters and the last episodes... wtf it is so full of cringy and baffling tropes i had to pause multiple times due to overwhelming feelings of cringe radiating throughout my body.

Art 4: Some of the character designs were ok at best with nothing particularly standing out to me.

Sound ... 5: Nothing of note the soundtrack is forgettable and not in a good way where it blends into the background and enhances things its just there i guess.

Character 1: One of the main characters is kinda okay and other than that the entire cast is terrible. None of them feel like they have any reasoning behind what they do other than to just make things happen for the sake of it like a shitty sitcom. The sisters introduced later in the story are just wow... Without spoiling anything would you have known a person for literally a day or 2 and treat them like your most trusted confidant asking them for their blessing or things of that nature? The characters and there decisions are so cringy i wish there was a lower rating to give the characters.

Enjoyment 2: No enjoyment to be had here other than the occasional chuckle of disbelief of what is transpiring on screen.

Overall 2: If you're here for fan service go for it, but there are better shows for it. If you're here for a realistic romance or at least likeable characters go literally anywhere else, there is no substance to be found here.

Review will contain minor spoilers, as I can't really express my thoughts about this show without covering some plot points.

Citrus has a LOT of problems, with the characters, with the writing, etc.... Can it be enjoyable at times? Sure. Are there decent yuri scenes? Sure. Is it a good show? I can see the appeal but in my opinion it's not a good romance and has extremely unrealistic characters and forced plot points.

Story 3/10:
The plot covers mostly the two main characters Yuzu and Mei and how their relationship develops. Their "relationship" abruptly starts with Yuzu being sexually assaulted by Mei in front of their school.... ... Yea sounds like a real great romance already I know. Later Yuzu finds out that Mei is now her step-sister and gets assaulted yet again.

But the amazing thing about Citrus is that the sexual abuse isn't even the worst part. As the show progresses there's not one, not two, but THREE love triangles thrown into the midst. Personally, I loathe love triangles; they're rarely done well and are usually terrible and feel like forced plot points in order to create drama. Citrus is no exception to this, majority of the drama in this show comes from the uncertainty in Yuzu and Mei's relationship and the drama that the numerous love triangles provide. It's almost like the writer had no idea how to progress the relationship between Yuzu and Mei at all and decided to throw in the love triangles in order to progress the relationship and the story. It doesn't feel natural, it feels forced and unrealistic.

So yeah, a romance that revolves around sexual abuse and love triangles is not a good one to me. There are some redeemable moments and a few times where the relationship actually progressed somewhat but those moments were overshadowed by the forced drama.


Art / Sound 6/10:
Animation and sound were average, nothing looked bad and there were even moments where the animation looked pretty solid which is why I'm giving this a slightly above average score.


Character 3/10:
Most of my problems with the story are related to the characters themselves and the decisions that they make for the sake of advancing the story. Hence this gets the same score as the story, I'll cover a little bit more of why I disliked majority of the characters in Citrus. Yuzu and Harumi were probably the only 2 characters I didn't outright dislike in the show.

First let's start out with Mei. Mei is your cold "student council president" type character. Throughout the story she has a problem with expressing her emotions and is both physically and emotionally abusive to Yuzu. She's overly cold and overall a shitty person. Personally I hated her, she was manipulative, abuse, and overly reacted when she didn't get her way.

Next let's cover the three love triangle members, Matsuri, Himeko, and the Tachibana sisters. None of these characters added anything worthwhile and were in the story pretty much for the sole purpose of creating a love triangle in order to progress the story and introduce drama. Matsuri was an evil (Not going to spoil what she does, but it's pretty appalling especially considering her age) middle schooler, Himeko was an uppity brat, and the Tachibana sisters felt like they were there because the writer had no idea how to close Yuzu and Mei's relationship issues.

To summarize my thoughts on the characters: When 3/4 of your supporting characters are there simply for the sake of creating drama with love triangles it's going to be an absolute dumpster fire. None of these characters saw any meaningful development, the story progressed the same for all 3:

Character introduced -> Love triangle causes relationship issues between Yuzu and Mei -> Triangle gets resolved and now said character supports Yuzu and Mei's relationship.

Because of this and Mei being such a loathsome character I'll give the characters a 3/10.


Enjoyment 5/10:
I gave this a higher score because it was actually kind of entertaining. I didn't get bored of the show and while the plot points were pretty bad, I found myself interested in seeing what would happen next and if the show would somehow redeem itself or turn into even more of a dumpster fire.

There were also some decent yuri scenes, and as a fan of the genre I appreciated that.


Overall 4/10:
Citrus is poor as far as romance goes - there's no way a romance based solely off of abuse and love triangles can be good. But at the same time the show remains somewhat entertaining despite being such a bad romance. If you decide to watch this show, don't expect a good romance / drama and you might come out enjoying it so some extent. That being said, I still wouldn't recommend this unless you can find enjoyment in watching trainwrecks or if you like yuri so much that the story doesn't matter at all.