SONO HANABIRA NI KUCHIZUKE WO: ANATA TO KOIBITO TSUNAGI

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ONA ComedySono Hanabira ni Kuchizuke wo: Reo x Mai Diaries

REVIEWS

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  ZNote

  75/100
  Its few scenes and settings paint a surprisingly-amorous depiction of its two characters.

  Every form of media, regardless of what it is, has material that would be considered—to use a word—pornographic. Broadway musicals have Oh! Calcutta!, literature has Marquis de Sade, and Victorian Era England had…well, a lot. Whether the word “pornographic” is used to describe sex or something more obscene in nature will depend on that material. Anime is no exception, and an entire genre called “eroge” or “hentai” is centered around pornographic depictions of sex or sexuality, where the plots are minimal and the clothes come off frequently. Even so, there is a challenge involved here – is there material in this genre that doesn’t come across as off-putting, where it gives the impression that there is more to it than simply characters fornicating?

  A Kiss for the Petals: Joined in Love with You is probably one of the better attempts at depicting this. A single episode OVA released in 2010, it’s a part of the larger A Kiss for the Petals visual novel franchise, which depicts a series of yuri relationships among its many protagonists all attending the same high school. When I first watched this OVA years ago, I didn’t actually know about the overarching context behind the franchise. All I understood at the time was to make sure that my door was locked when I started watching and that my headphones were properly plugged in.

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  After making love in the school nurse’s office, the brusque Kawamura Reo lies sick in her bed with a cold the next day and misses classes. Her girlfriend, the forward Sawaguchi Mai, comes to visit Reo in the hopes of making her feel better. What follows is a series of brief little attempts to both nurse Reo back to health, as well as playful and romantic teasing by Mai until the two proceed to make love again.

  Even though other locations are used in the story, both in present and in flashback, most of the story takes place in Reo’s room, which actually works well for the sake of setting and atmosphere. The room itself is nothing particularly special, as it’s rather barren for the most part except for the large bed in the middle. However, the fact that so much time is spent there plays into the mindset that nothing else in the world matters for these two characters. Simply being with one another in this space is enough. The entire OVA is thus framed more as a singular episode of their larger romantic life, and as part of that one look, it makes sense that the setting is largely reduced to a singular space.

  The two characters that inhabit that space, on the immediate surface anyway, might not appear to be that intriguing. A Kiss for the Petals: Joined in Love with You’s short run means that the opportunity to develop the two romantic leads cannot move beyond some of the rather-standard archetypes one associates with anime romance. Reo is a tsundere who is in love with Mai despite her objections to Mai’s advances, and Mai is the counterbalance to that behavior. Although Mai’s behavior towards Reo could be understood as being coercive or manipulative, that wasn’t the impression that I came away with. Given the little bit of Reo and Mai’s romance that we are privy to seeing, Reo’s initial refusal seems less like a lack of consent and rather as just being a part of her innate sexual behavior moreso than anything else. We have no reason to doubt that Reo does not love Mai, especially given the flashback sequence set against the sakura tree backdrop. We also don’t get the impression that that Mai does not love Reo, so Mai’s actions read as in-line with the very nature of their sexual chemistry. It’s a dominant-submissive relationship rather than something more nefarious.

  Because the OVA uses the little time it has to emphasize both the sexual and the non-sexual moments between Reo and Mai, the episode as a whole is depicted more as a glimpse into their whole manner of being with one another, for which sex is one component, as opposed to a debauched exercise in how much gratuitousness can be packed into less than thirty minutes. I consider it a rather sizable accomplishment that as I watched A Kiss for the Petals: Joined in Love with You, I could bring myself to reasonably believe that these were two characters who were actually in love with one another. I don’t think that it’s the most-underrated romantic gem of the entire medium, or anything superlative like that. But even in the midst of its more sexually-charged moments, the warmth the characters felt for one another was, as a presence, apparent. There is indeed a part of me that wants to see more of these two, so for all I know, perhaps the visual novels are in my immediate future…

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  A Kiss for the Petals: Joined in Love with You has a minimalist plot, but uses its few scenes and settings to paint a surprisingly amorous depiction of its two female characters. The animation may not be anything special even by hentai standards, and its short length means that we do not quite get to see much of their relationship beyond this one single story. But, what we have there is probably as wholesome—if not a little saccharine—as hentai will get. If you are not averse to watching material that is more X-rated, or are looking for one of the more-inoffensive entries in the genre, this is one you might want to consider seeing.

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