What’s it about? After her mother marries into the wealthy Suzunomiya family, Lilisa throws herself into attaining a perfect ladylike image as a transfer student to Oushin Girls’ Academy. Her goal is to attain the title of “Noble Maiden,” which will guarantee her connections and clout as an adult. The only problem is the school’s other idol, Kurogane Otoha…a secret drummer who instantly pegs Lilisa as a former very unladylike guitarist.
Readers, I cannot lie to you—I love a two-faced femme. Characters who’ve had to build up exacting, seemingly pliant facades to protect themselves while hiding their calculation and pain underneath is absolute catnip, whether it’s Anthy, Hime, or Jennifer Tilly. It’s a rich archetype that lends itself to drama, comedy, and commentary, and this show has offered me not one but two different variations. The fact that it’s the first outright excellent title of the Spring season is just icing on the cake.
(Yes, show, I do. Please do not stop)
It’s not just that it looks excellent, though it does. Lilisa’s massive gravity-defying twintails are a little embarrassing from a design perspective, but the animators make such good expressive use of them that I ended up softening. The staff comes from a fascinatingly diffuse set of backgrounds: we’ve got a director from Love Live!, a series composer from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, a CGI director from SSSS.Dynazenon, and an art director from Keijo!!!!!!!!. I wouldn’t quite call the end results camp, not so soon after the breathtaking efforts of Ave Mujica, but it’s a friendly sort of chaos that never got tiresome to watch. The climactic jam session tears the door off the hinges so hard that I can’t even be bothered to care how abrupt it looks when the animation swaps over to its instrument rigging.
Lilisa herself is a little broadly sketched at this point, and to be fair so is the world of Oushin. The levels of High Class are at parodic levels, but the class anxiety and societal sexism manage to punch through at key points. Lilisa might have already won the hearts of her classmates, but the headmistress is quick to knock her down as lacking the “mentality of service and sacrifice” and respect for “social standards” that define the image of the ideal Japanese woman. We might not know explicitly why Lilisa is so dead-set on winning the Noble Maiden title, but the barriers set against her just for being born “common” are crystal clear. Rock music, her greatest love, is also something she gave up not just to assimilate in her new environment but also because it ties her to her dad. We don’t know if the man’s dead or just a deadbeat, but his memory clearly anguishes her mother, and Lilisa has made the decision to completely erase herself out of not just ambition but loyalty.
All that build up is what makes her dynamic with Otoha so electric. Otoha’s façade is so smooth as to almost seem incidental compared to Liliha’s struggles, and the turn in the last few minutes hits so good that I’m not willing to spoil it here. They absolutely crackle with tension, both as rivals and….well, I’m pretty sure future girlfriends? The show’s laying it on awfully thick if this is meant to be class-S rather than overt yuri, though given that this is an ongoing manga I suspect that the One Season Yuri curse will rear its head and bring the curtain down before we see them get together. At least Yen Press almost immediately announced that they’d licensed the manga, so English-language readers won’t be left in anguish for too long.
Whether you’re into band girls, yuri, or rivalries depicted with absurd intensity, I emphatically suggest giving this one a look. I’m already impatient for next week.
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