Kase-san and Morning Glories: Light Hearted Adorableness

Once again, I seem to be digging into genres that I have almost zero knowledge about. I know that I just posted a review on Blue Drop a couple weeks ago and it’s a year show as well. Still, considering that Blue Drop featured aliens and space battleships firing lasers at each other, that felt more my speed then a slice of life show like this. You know, because I’m kind of a nerd in those regards and have a definitive type of anime or series that I love to watch. So basically, my knowledge of yuri anime as a whole is puddle deep. There is Bloom into You, Blue Drop, Yuri Kuma Arashi, Utena perhaps, and now Kase-san. That’s only a small amount of titles compared to what is out there, but you’ve got to start somewhere right? My puddle of understanding needs to grow somehow.

So yes, Kase-san and Morning Glories is an hour-long Yuri slice of life ova. I suppoe it can almost be called a movie because it’s feature length. It is also incredibly adorable and unusual for a romance anime I think. Why? Because It starts with a relationship in motion instead of characters slowly building one over a long time and then having a kiss in the end. In Kase-san, we know that the softer, flower girl Yui Yamada and tomboy jock Tomoka Kase are dating already. There is a flash back of Kase noticing Yamada while she’s watering flowers and admiring her. That is enough to know the spark of why this relationship happened in the first place. This ova is about maintaining it instead, which is also pretty interesting. I can probably count the number of anime series that I know do that on both of my hands. Maybe my knowledge of romance anime is staggeringly small too.

Kase and Yamada are two people from two different worlds. Tomoka Kase is a tall, high-level jock on her Track and Field team. She’s ran in a lot of races and has won a lot of awards. Because of this fact, she’s popular, has a friend’s group, and even a promising future in the sport itself. Yui Yamada on the other hand is short, unassuming, quiet, and doesn’t have many friends. Her hobbies instead are very lonely in form and require her just being outside and gardening. Yamada is a part of her school’s Greenery Committee after all. It almost seems like a major fluke that the two ever formed a relationship in the first place. Still, they are an adorable couple and the relationship itself just works because of this. It’s kind of boring to be around the same people all the time, which is uniqueness that gives the relationship life.

The first portion of the ova is about the struggles of this relationship to just happen. Kase goes to practice a lot with her team mates while Yamada is left alone by herself and her thoughts a lot. What that means is Kase has to spend a lot of time making it up to Yamada and showing up to Yamada’s house when the parents are away. The two almost make out in that situation which is kind of disappointing to see Yamada’s mom came home before anything serious could happen. Awww. Anyway, there isn’t a lot of worry about homophobia in this ova. Still, it is brought up on some level to bring home some realism to this situation. Just in a little worrying though. Kase-san seems too light and fluffy to dig deeper into that topic and that’s ok.

There is a little more drama in this ova to be explored still. Some of it happens on a school trip to Okinawa and the two seeing each other naked for the first time. Some awkwardness for people like Yamada who haven’t seen their crush naked before while Kase is used to this sort of situation because she’s a jock that changes and showers in a locker room. There is also a little bit of standard school romance drama about Kase automatically going to a University in Tokyo for sports while Yamada isn’t as over achieving and having to go to a local school. The last scene is Yamada finding the motivation to take an exam for a school in Tokyo even if she isn’t ready. Seeing a self-assured Yamada was pretty cool. So yes, I spoiled a lot of things in this post, but I only gave you the skeleton. The rest of it can only be understood through experiencing.

From a visual perspective, this anime is alright. I don’t think I can call it typical movie quality because you can tell there is a lot of ends cut here and there becaue it feels some minimalistic. Especially when it comes to other people and movement. Still, I feel like there is a lot of fun character animation and stuff here. Oh it’s just adorable and full of personality. Kase’s confidence meld down to uncomfortableness around Yama was pretty cute. Same with Yamada’s mental uncomfortableness and then confidence. That’s the main sticking point of the series. The visuals and backgrounds themselves were pretty good though. I didn’t say it looked bad, just that it cut corners.

I think I’m going to count Kase-san as a good on my scale. I was never bored by this ova because I liked watching this couple function. Yamada and Kase are so adorable around each other that I was entertained all the way through. Though, I’m not one for romance like this usually when it’s fluffy and comfortable like this. It was also formatted in vignettes so there wasn’t necessarily a structure to it either. Still, this was a lot of fun, adorable, and just plain fluffy. So fluffy and warm, that it just gave me a smile all the way through even with it because the dramatic moments weren’t really that drama. They were just there to move the story forward in a direction. Otherwise, there was nothing. Still recommended though. Especially for those yuri fans out there and possibly if you aren’t.

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