The anime industry in the US is troubled, since many companies overextended their ventures. In this time, you might think that anime distributors would want to reach out for new, more mainstream audiences. Instead, some are releasing lots more anime about pretty gay men in love — marketed not toward gay men, but teenage girls who like pretty androgynous unthreatening men with long hair. But you can’t be sexist about these things, of course.
So we are about to see the US release of Maria-sama ga Miteru (Mary Is Watching Over Us), an anime about sapphic love among Catholic schoolgirls. With the Virgin Mary in the credits. (Oh, and the show is considered subtle. Yeah huh.)
Did I mention that rosaries are a considerable plot point in this little show about disordered affections? And so is a song about the Immaculate Heart of Mary?
But that wasn’t twisted enough, friends. Throughout the series, the lily, symbol of purity for Catholics, is also used as a reference to yuri, a slang term for lesbian love as well as the Japanese word for “lily”. (Of course, the lily’s use in statues of St. Joseph or St. Anthony of Padua makes this visual metaphor sound really ludicrous.)
Of course, the really really unrealistic thing is the basis of the series — allegedly long-running sisterhoods of students allegedly fostered by administration. Seeing as factionalism and “particular friendships” of any kind were not just against the rules, but were apparently supposed to be hunted down and killed in Catholic girls’ schools of yore, I very much doubt whether international religious orders ran their Catholic schools any differently in Japan. If there was a hint of anything hinky going on in a really traditional Catholic girls’ school, said hinky people would be separated so fast their heads would spin. There would also be lectures and penance and nuns assigning you lots of schoolwork and exhausting extra projects to keep you busy, not flower petals and students eyeing each other soulfully.
And indeed, it turns out that the author of the series really got her ideas on school administration from some Buddhist private school for networking rich girls. *roll eyes* Though I doubt it’s much like that school, either.
And no, I haven’t actually seen the show (except for the credits on YouTube), but I have no reason to believe that information pages about the show (all four seasons of it) are making all this up. I really wish this was just somebody’s fevered fanfic dream, but no. It’s a real shame that these days, nobody is going to make a slice of life anime about Japanese Catholics, or Japanese high school girls for that matter, without including a whole lot of prurient situations to provide “fan service”.
The series is being released by the Right Stuf International, a small anime merchandise and distribution company that specializes in licensing for US release both small charming shows that are fan favorites, and anime porn. Sickeningly fluffy lesbian teenage romance shows are as nothing for them.
You know, I’m really starting to think we shouldn’t have outlawed dueling. Sigh.
In related news, nobody seems to have any plans for any anime about cute gay male students with really, really long hair at an Islamic madrassah, singing cute little songs about waging love jihad while making eyes at each other, as flower petals dance through the air and they’re never in danger of getting hung or beheaded for breaking sharia law.
