Mariasama ga miteru Marimite from now onwards by Oyuki Konno captures both critics and praise for some of its themes. The series had unprecedented longevity with a total of 37 light novel volumes impossible to find in English official translation if not through redacted. Reviving Marimite today would be highly outdated due to the incredible length of the series and the relatively new light novel explosion in the Englishspeaking world resulting in a gamble. In this little script I will focus mainly on the influences from both literature and aristocratic behaviour I think the author took I will marginally touch on the Yuri aspect. For the sake of the reader I will briefly quote the plot according to MAL: When Yumi Fukuzawa entered the Lillian Girls Academy a prestigious allgirls Catholic school in Tokyo she never imagined she would catch the eye of beautiful and demure Sachiko Ogasawara one of the schools most popular students. Now Sachiko has offered to be Yumis soeur her sister and guide for all her years at the academy. The whole idea has Yumi completely flusteredafter all they hardly know each other The entire campus is abuzz with rumours about the two of them but Yumi is conflicted about accepting Sachikos offer. While she admires Sachiko being her soeur would also mean constantly being at the centre of the entire schools attention In defining a bit Overly dramatic in his 2004 review Andrew Sheldon has an issue while mentioning that As an example one story involves a character who does something a little bit wrong but then feels terrible about it and redeems herself. She then spends the entire episode thinking through her actions and the past that led her up to them. I was expecting confrontation resolution or perhaps even hostility to Yumi who was innocently in the way. Instead she resolved some issues in her mind decided things were as they should be and moved on with her life. The entire episode occurred within the single mind of a minor character and did not affect anyone else. Its awesome in terms of telling a story with such a charactercentric focus and such a limited scope but its also easy to feel sort of cheated at how small the story ends up being. Its rather weird. Konnos work has given to the Japanese audience a revival of the Class S genre at the beginning of the 20th century which portrayed strong emotional boundaries between upperclassmen or Senpai and their junior the Kohai. This is still extremely evident in modern Japan where the bond and love between the two is predominant. A notable figure of Class S and the first openly lesbian writer was Nobuko Yoshiya who wrote a series of yuri stories among the most famous the novel series Hana Monogatari Flower Stories is widely known for launching the genre of shjo fictionstories are expressly written for girls and young women source Goodreads. One of her most famous tales is Yellow Rose which definitively has been read by Konno As one of the Marimite families in the Student Council is the Yellow Rose. In the Class S stories the female senpais cement the relationship with a small token of love such as a ribbon gifted to the kohai a fan. For example in the Valentines Ark of Marimite Season 1 episodes 7 and 8 the petit soeurs and other students are challenged to find colour cards related to the three families White Yellow and Red. For Yumi Red Rose and Yoshino Yellow Rose this search is a matter of life and death as in a very aristocratic nuance that card represents a token of their bond with the respective Big Sisters Oneesama. Gifts have always been a noble feature in literature. In Lady Murasakis masterpiece Genji Monogatari the Hikari Prince gifted a lover with his fan objectification of elegance. In the more recent Raven of the inner palace the Emperor gifts the Raven Consort with a small carved wooden fish as a promise to not kill her. Famous is the handkerchief left by many ladies to their Minnesnger after a night of passion. This literary experience is much present in Marimite due to Konno being a novelist and not a mangaka so I can assume she has read certain literature. All the above examples clarify why in many aspects the show tends to have an overthetop emotional reaction to trivial things. We need to imagine the Lilian Academy as a small court where nothing really happens and where the courtesans are involved in a deluxe life driven mostly by boredom. An All girls school is then the perfect scenario for an aristocratic plotline. Established mostly during the Meiji Restoration and dismantled in large part after the second world war they were fostering for nobility or highclass ladies. Despite the loss of pure royalty connected to the Gods in the Japanese modern monarchy it is important to remember that former daimyo have still descendants who actually have lost their political power but in many areas still are very highly influential and would not be a surprise. The Tokugawa Clan still is in existence and so do many others. The women of such clans do not tend to go to traditional or open schools but most likely to private and prestigious ones and it is not uncommon for example to use the Seien Girls High School Shizuokaken Seien Joshi Gakuen ChugakkKkgakk. The exclusivity is shown in the first lines of volume 1 of Mariasama ga miteru: Lillian Girls Academy. Founded in Meiji 34 this academy was originally intended for young women of nobility and is now a Catholic academy of prestigious tradition. Placed in downtown Tokyo where you can still see traces of Musashi Fields greenery it is protected by God a garden where maidens can receive tutelage from preschool to university. Highclass ladies indeed educated and guided to learn and use the French language. Before the use of English as a widespoken international lingua franca French was the dominant one. In many European courts including Russia French was used as a distinction of manners. In many of Pushkins works his already complex Russian writing is often mixed with entire passages in French. Though the Meiji Restoration was more influenced by the British Empire Konno thought that for the maidens of Mariasama ga miteru French was the right choice quoting indeed the work of Ryoko Yamaguchi and her iconic: Shiroi heya no futari The couple of the White Room set in a catholic school in France and therefore giving to the overall architecture a refreshing french charme. Thank you for reading