3ET: Sakura Trick

"Hey, wanna make out?"

Studio: Studio DEEN

Director: Ishigura Ken’ichi (Natsu no Arashi S2, Da Capo S3)

Writer: Ishigura Ken’ichi (Da Capo S3)

Main Cast:

Tomatsu Haruka as Takayama Haruka

Iguchi Yuka as Sonoda Yuu

Character Design: Sakai Kyuuta (Sankarea, Pita Ten)

Music: Nakanishi Ryousuke (Kuroko no Basket, Hataraku Maou-sama)

Well, I guess it's time for the token gay anime of the season. In this case, it's girls loving girls as Sakura Trick shows the lives of three lesbian couples in high school. The main couple get the bulk of the screen time in the first three episodes, and it doesn't take long for them to from childhood friends to making out with each other in a deserted classroom. It takes about half of the episode as a matter of fact. I'm all for more gay and lesbian couples in anime, and I like it even more when they're taken seriously.

As I watched this show, I couldn't shake a creeping feeling. It was like I was watching the softcore version of all of the lesbian porn that is made for straight guys, the kind that most lesbians wouldn't be caught dead watching. That feeling comes from how any plot in the show seemed to be little more than setups for Haruka and Yuu to make out. That's when they're not talking about Haruka's large boobs. They do talk about how it would be bad if they got caught, but there isn't any discussion about the difficulties of being a lesbian in Japan or really any indication that this subject was even thought about. It seems more like the one thought that was had was "LESBIANS" and they just went with that.

Ah. I see we found the real plot for this show.

The other thing that bugs me is how many tropes from gay manga are here. I know these tropes because I read a lot of boys-love (BL) manga, and the tropes are the same as in girls-love (GL). First off, there are no boys in this show. The girls don't go to a single-gender school, because boys are visible in the background, they're just never heard or talked about. Also, Haruka and Yuu don't have some sort of coming out moment before they kiss, they just do it because they want to "make a memory". Because, sure, that's totally how it works. And of course, all of the girls are lesbians. I realize what kind of show this is, but given that girls who like girls are about five percent of the population, the odds that all six of the girls in this one class like girls is highly unlikely. Things like this tell me that realism was never taken into account when making this show, only the target audience and what they want.

I realize that this was never meant to be taken seriously, but it is 2014. I thought that anime would be past making shows like this by now. I thought wrong. It's not that the lesbian couples aren't cute, they are, I just demand more at this point. I've seen anime take on lesbian issues better (Sasameki Koto comes to mind immediately), and it's time to stop pandering to the lowest common denominator when making these kinds of shows. So, while I sort of appreciate that shows like this show some sort of acceptance for female homosexuality, I can't support Sakura Trick and I fail it.