Something that has always fascinated me was yuri. People have such a passion for this genre and bring it up all the time. I wanted to know what this genre was capable of. That's why I watched Citrus. A friend recommended me this anime as a way to screw with me. It did. Awful storyline, awful characters and awful first episodes. I was exhausted after watching Citrus, but I knew that there was more to this genre and didn't give up hope. After dabbling in a few other yuri's I came across Sakura Trick, an anime that had a premise of girls kissing each other (which rarely happens in other anime). After finishing the anime, I can definitely say that they got the kissing part at least right. Does it deliver on other fronts?

Let's begin with what you see right away: The animation. The color pallet is very bright and soft, often having a spring vibe. Nothing too interesting or special, but still nice to look at. The animations are okay, the backgrounds are nothing noteworthy and the expressions are what you would expect of a high school anime. It is basic stuff. What is noteworthy are the symbol scenes. Sometimes between scenes there is a brief scene transition animation that shows what is happening. For example: when Yuu gets closer to Haruka a brief animation appears showing Yuu's flower symbol moving closer to Haruka's flower symbol before it cuts to the next scene. These scenes can sometimes help getting a better understanding of what is going on, other times they are just repeating things which already were obvious. It's a neat thing nonetheless.

Great, I was able talk a 140+ words paragraph on how the animation is just average. The same thing goes for the OST. The opening and ending songs are nice to listen to, but aren't noteworthy beyond that. I can't remember much about the other songs in the anime, except the one that plays during in the emotional scenes. That song is cute and surprisingly emotional.

Now we get to what I consider the most important aspects of an anime: The story and the characters. The story begins with Haruka and Yuu on the first day of high school. They are really close friends and love each other dearly, but now they only got 3 years before they go to different colleges, so they both set out to get the most out of their time together. So that's when they decide as a way to cherish this period in their lives to have a kiss. A very passionate kiss at that. Then a few days later they kiss again. Then another few days later they kiss again. And again. And again. And again. Their friendship turns into a full-fledged lesbian relationship. Now it is their job to keep this relationship alive and keep it a secret from others. The story is pretty original for an anime, but is inherently nothing that special and is just kind of dull.

The character cast consists of 7 characters. The two you are going to see the most of are Haruka and Yuu. Haruka is the raging lesbian. Every time she sees Yuu do anything or sees two girls do something gay she gets extremely... happy (to put it lightly). Yuu is the child. She looks like a child and acts like one, but she never struck me as annoying, which are I am very grateful for.

Then there are five other side characters. Shizuku is the quiet one. She doesn't speak up a lot and is kinda shoehorned into the cast. She is in a relationship with Kotone, the big sister (personality wise). She is very responsible and teases Shizuku a lot. I enjoyed their relationship and how it played out, but there was not enough time devoted to them which makes me question why have time devoted to them at all, except for that they then have another lesbian couple and so they can tease the viewers with the third ''lesbian'' couple, Kaede and Yuzu. These two characters have basically the same personality (the friendly bro's). Their only difference are their characters designs and I have to admit I like Yuzu's design with the cute cat ears. The last character is the actual big sister of Yuu, Mitsuki, the closet loser. She very dependable on the outside, but in reality she is very nervous and gets quickly jealous.

Is it complaining time? It is complaining time.

In the first episode Haruka and Yuu meet the rest of cast and decide that they are friends. So now they all are friends because they say they are. Character development? Missed the train. The character development takes longer than usual and it makes the first few episodes frustrating to watch. That is disregarding the fact that first half even without the late character development generally worse is than the second: Less story, less conflict, less excitement. So if you are not immediately invested in the premise from get go your first impressions will not be good.

Another problem I have is that the humor is crap. The anime only got a few chuckles out of me in its 12 episode series. The humor boils down to characters making puns and the music stopping like you are stopping a record player to follow up with a lame punch line. It is hard to express my distaste, but you have to see this for yourself if you what to get a better understanding of what I mean.

So with these two big problems and some other smaller problems (like character similarities and average aesthetics), you have an anime that is nothing special and doesn't succeed in its most crucial moments. Does the anime have any redeeming qualities? Yes it has: The kiss scenes. These scenes play out as simple as the title: The characters just kiss. Even with that, I can't help but really like these scenes. They have tons and tons of passion and are generally really well animated. The buildup is also really good too and it feels you genuinely deserve to watch these scenes after what they went through.

Sakura Trick was an interesting watch. It is mediocre to the core with a boring first half, slightly above average character cast and bad humor, but the kiss scenes are just nice enough for me to enjoy it. I encourage you all to check it out if you just want to have an anime where girls kiss. If you want to watch something that has actually more things going on then just kissing, then go watch Kaguya-sama or something.

(Review originally made in September of 2018)