[DeepL Translation - needs review] Volume 1 Introduction: Lillian Girls' Academy is a private school for purely cultured maidens. In order to carry on the pure and correct school life, a system called "sisters (suru)" exists in the upper school. After the students pledged to become sisters through a ceremony in which they received a rosary, the older sisters would mentor the younger sisters. Yumi, who had not yet had an older sister when she entered the upper secondary school, was suddenly d...
Incredibly fun all the way through! ただの一日じゃないよ！Starting from the play rehearsals, through the cultural festival. I'm a little surprised she didn't make the book a bit longer, but also I'mvery relieved I didn't have to sit through long descriptions of 2 plays. Definite props to the author for that! Yumi is of course our perspective character, so there's lots going on at the festival that we don't necessarily see - but what we see is plenty.
As usual I loved the integration of the Hanadera characters - especially Alice. Alice's interactions with Yumi are great. To nobody's surprise, Kanako doesn't get on well with the Hanadera students - even poor Alice - and we'll get to learn more about why this is. I found Kanako's 男嫌い thing much more believable than Sachiko's (and think it's been better written from the start). Speaking of Sachiko, she's got plenty of moments where she keeps things quite interesting, in her usual 振り回す manner - but it's cool to see how she's grown a bit too.
More importantly, if you're a Yumi x Touko
shipperfangirl like me, there's plenty of moments to squeal over. I have to say I really like the way Touko is written as a tsundere in this series. There's something about it it that's very refreshing. Also it's great to see how much more cunning and clever Yumi has become in dealing with these first years. The rest of the cast do make appearances to various extents of course.It's kinda of amazing to think that a whole in-story year took 18 volumes (and 6 irl years) - they went by so quickly though! On to the next volume :)
PS - there's a play called 若草物語 (aka Little Women) mentioned. If you've read other yuri works, you may have seen this mentioned in them as well. This is not a coincidence. It was a foundational work of Class S culture that マリみて and other works are either drawing from or paying homage to.