At Dahlia Academy, a prestigious boarding school attended by students of two feuding countries—the eastern Nation of Touwa, and the Principality of West—Romio Inuzuka, leader of the dorms’ Touwa first-years, wishes for a romance that can never be. For his ladylove is none other than his arch-enemy, Juliet Persia, leader of the dorms’ West first-years. – ANN
Streaming: Amazon Prime
Episodes: 12
Source: Manga
Episode Summary: The feud between the Principality of the West and the Eastern Nation of Touwa is played out daily in the microcosm that is Dahlia Academy. Romio Inuzuka leads the Touwa Black Doggy Dorm, while Juliet Persia heads the dorm of the Western White Cats, and they truly do feud like cats and dogs; the confrontations between the two groups occasionally erupt into actual violence, with their passionate leaders at the center of the conflict. Romio has a secret, however – he’s been in love with Juliet since the two were children, but he’s never been brave enough to state it out loud (for obvious reasons).
When Juliet finds herself cornered one afternoon Romio manages to save her from attack, though in doing so embarrasses her so much that he believes there’s no salvaging their potential relationship. Later that night he receives a message from Juliet beckoning him to the school’s fountain, more than likely so that they can hash out their “differences.” When she challenges him to a sword duel, Juliet explains that she’s always considered Romio the rival she wants to beat; she works and trains hard so that she can one day have the power to change the world. Romio lays it all on the line and shares the truth of his feelings as their swords clash. They eventually decide to start dating – but it has to be in secret, for the sake of the school and its tenuous harmony.
Impressions: For whatever reason I’ve never been that big a fan of most anime romance series. The pining and the feeble non-movement of many potential romantic couplings in anime generally leaves me pretty bored. There are some exceptions; even though it takes something like 40 episodes for the protagonists to kiss, I will forever love the sweetness and purity of Kimi ni Todoke (seriously, I will fight you over these sweet dumb teenagers). One trend I have really appreciated, though, is the tendency for more modern anime romances to have characters confess early on and then present the couple with various hurdles they need to overcome in order to achieve true happiness – one of my favorites is My Love Story!! which is still pure and wonderful and funny, but the characters actually start dating very early on and the drama develops because they don’t know what the hell they’re doing (I want to hug them). I enjoy this set up much more than the “will-they-or-won’t-they” (of course they will, we don’t have to spend 23.5 episodes pretending that they won’t) dance that’s perpetuated in many famous romance anime.
Boarding School Juliet is one of the latter examples, which ends up making for a pleasant and snappy opening episode. The story almost feels self-contained because the characters’ fountain-side duel serves as a good climax and their dating situation is somewhat resolved to a steady-state by episode’s end. Obviously there’s more ground to be covered because a relationship isn’t something that’s likely to stay a secret for long, no matter the context; the fact that these two characters are leaders of their respective factions doesn’t help the situation. I expect the next several episodes to feature all sorts of mental (and literal) acrobatics to keep nosy students and others in the dark about their juicy secret.
This episode is told primarily through Inuzuka’s point-of-view and I found him to be an interesting character. His is sort of a frustrating position to be in, because as we realize fairly early on he’s pushed to fight for his faction, but he’s not really a willing participant in the conflict. His physicality has become really the only way he knows of to get close to the young lady that’s stolen his heart. I feel like there’s perhaps a good discussion to be had about masculinity’s many limitations buried somewhere within Inuzuka’s internal conflict; there’s definitely a “might makes right” mentality that’s exacerbated by the fact that a proxy war is being fought on the school grounds on an almost daily basis. I don’t know if this is the type of anime series to address this head-on, but it might be worth talking about later on.
This is echoed in Persia’s story – as a young lady of certain noble birth she has a responsibility to uphold her family’s values, but as a girl she cannot become head of the family. Gaining physical strength has become her imperfect agent of change, because in her world becoming a leader and having power means to perform masculinity and to somehow do it better than all the men. But ultimately something greater will have to change in order for her to achieve the leadership that she seeks. I like the amount of subtlety and complexity of character motivation that was achieved in this short amount of time. I think Persia would have been a much less effective heroine if she were simply a tomboyish girl picking fights for no reason – in a shounen romance series like this, it would have likely set her up to be conquered and cowed rather than treated as an equal. Because there’s some reason to her behavior I feel marginally more confident that, should the relationship work out in the end, it might be somewhat more equitable for Juliet than it could have been otherwise.
The one major hiccup in this episode occurs about halfway through, where some Black Doggy upstarts decide to attack the White Cats where it’ll hurt the most – by humiliating their leader. Three boys corner Juliet as she walks back to her dorm and attempt to sexually assault her; Inuzuka swoops in to stop them in the nick of time, of course. I’ve said this many times, but I continue to find it frustrating when sexual assault is tossed around as a short hand way to demean and humiliate “upstart” female characters as well as to identify certain male characters as particularly evil. In this case, a simple mugging or even a 3-on-1 fight would be enough to get the point across in this scene; as good a duelist as Juliet is, she’d probably be unable to hold out against 3 attackers, and this would still create the correct situation for Inuzuka to save the day and set up the end of the episode. Especially nowadays it should be crystal clear to almost everyone that sexual assault isn’t just a momentary inconvenience, it’s a trauma that has long-lasting consequences for survivors. This was really the only major pitfall of this episode, but to me it’s a pretty formidable one, and one that might prevent some viewers from enjoying it.
Ultimately, what I appreciate about Boarding School Juliet is that it gets to the point. The central couple may not be in an ideal situation, they may not have the nuances of their feelings figured out just yet, and really, judging by the Shakespeare play upon which this is loosely-based, they may not ultimately have a happy ending ahead of them. But I like the fact that the drama will likely revolve around how their relationship develops and whether it can actually work, and not predicate itself on whether one of them can summon the courage to say those 3 words. This was a surprisingly fun episode and something I definitely didn’t expect to like so much going in, but anime seasons almost always have a few gems and this might be one of them.
Pros: Both of the protagonists are admirable characters. There’s no waffling about the relationship – confessions happen in episode 1.
Cons: There’s an unfortunate near-sexual-assault that occurs partway through the episode.
Grade: B-