AKA: あさがおと加瀬さん。; Asagao to Kase-san

Genre: Yuri Romance

Length: OAV, 58 minutes

Distributor: Currently licensed by Sentai Filmworks; available streaming on HiDive.

Content Rating: TV-14 (Mature situations.)

Related Series: A previous VERY short ONA (Wiki says it ran 5 minutes, Anime Encyclopedia says 7)

Also Recommended: Sweet Blue Flowers

Notes: Based on manga by Hiromi Takashima, published by Shinshokan

Rating:

Kase-san and Morning Glories

Synopsis

Tomoka Kase and Yui Yamada are in a relationship, but with the end of their high school years rapidly approaching, and college on their minds, can the relationship last?

Review

One of these days, I'm going to see the sort of yuri drama I'd really like- one that documents such a relationship from its first stirrings, through its developmental stages, into a mature bond. Probably, Nicole can make some suggestions.

But I haven't seen it yet. Back in the day we had Maria Watches Over Us, which certainly featured the devotion aspect of girl-girl love, but it was completely Platonic- you never got the feeling of desire there, much less of passion. (I always thought that the author realized the tale got rather boring, hence the introduction of the Toko character.) There was Sweet Blue Flowers, which featured two female friends uniting; but one of them falls into a toxic relationship with another girl, gets out of it, and we're led to presume she'd find true love with her old friend- but we never really got that far.

And then there's a segment of the Happy-Go-Lucky Days anthology that features the sensuality largely missing from the others I've mentioned; but that one's a "hook up" kind of thing, and the story also doesn't consider the future of the relationship- though I have to give it credit for the unusual circumstances under which the two women met in the first place.

Kase-san has some of the same weaknesses as the others. It's WAY too short (58 minutes), so we start here with Relationship Already In Progress. Yui is best described as "gushing" emotionally, though she's somewhat inhibited about the physical aspects of her relationship with Kase. Yui is a dedicated member of the Gardening Club, and we're told that, rain or shine, she puts in lots of time and effort on the school's flowerbeds.

Kase, on the other hand, reminds one of Sweet Blue Flowers' Yasuko Sugimoto in SOME ways- she's an athletic, popular girl who's always dealing with some demand on her time from other girls- but she's Yasuko as she SHOULD have been; she does sincerely love Yui, and tries her best to find time to be with her- and when she can't be personally with her, at least have long phone conversations. I really liked Kase's character design- it captures her open and cheerful demeanor well. Despite her outgoing nature, she's still a little awkward with Yui, and the show does have time to present one major tiff between the two girls, arising from intimacy issues, before the final denouement.

Yui has another girl friend, named Mikawa, who seems jealous of Kase's appropriation of Yui's time and interest, though the story is, as always, too spare to tell if Mikawa ALSO has a yuri attraction to Yui, or if she'd just like to be able to spend more time with Yui as her friend.

I was kinda bugged by one thing. I know (first heard this in Aharen-san) that flower varieties, in Japan, can have multiple "meanings", but we're told that Morning Glories can BOTH mean "fleeting love" OR "everlasting bond". I think those two meanings are a bit contradictory.

The original was 5 (or 7) minutes??? As it IS, it's much too short to do justice to the relationship. I liked both girls- though I liked Kase more, I admit- so I'm giving that quite a bit of weight in my rating. — Allen Moody

Recommended Audience: HiDive rates TV-14. A very brief (and oblique) view of a sliver of Kase's right breast, and there is an attempt at intimacy.