AnimeVision

2 - The Awkward Piano Duet
Yumi's the centre of attention once word gets out that she's turned down Sachiko's offer of becoming her soeur - nothing quite like a bit of pressure to focus the mind on a decision, ne? They're spending quite a bit of time together though, all things considered - mainly because until Yumi makes up her mind about accepting Sachiko's rosary, there are two potential leads for the school play, and Sachiko wants to make sure she still has a chance of getting out of the gig. And so Yumi finds herself getting more & more involved with Sachiko and the Yamayurikai - a turn of events she finds a bit overwhelming...

3 - The Moon and the Rosary
The Fates seem to have acting in mind as a career for poor Yumi - either that or the Yamayurikai just like to toy with her. If she decides not to accept Sachiko's rosary (thus avoiding being Cinderella in the play), she'll be given the part of one of the evil sisters instead. Damned either way... Yumi also gets her first meeting with Cinderella's Prince - someone Sachiko seems determined to avoid. Dress rehearsals put paid to that idea, however...

4 - Yellow Rose Revolution
Yumi's doing her best to be the model soeur, although in her own mind she's far from it. Meanwhile, one of the other soeur pairings is getting a lot of attention - Rei and Yoshino have been voted "best soeur", giving the newspaper crew reason to be interested in them. Before they get anywhere, though, the 'perfect soeurs' split up following an argument...

5 - The Battling Maidens
Yoshino's returning of Rei's rosary has started a trend - now other girls are returning their rosaries in the same way, often without having any real reason to. Meanwhile, Yoshino's in hospital, and calls Yumi over for a talk, giving Yumi a chance to find out what really happened between Yoshino & Rei...

Lots of French in here, which confused me greatly. I speak less French than I do Japanese ^^; The mentoring thing I am familiar with, though, as the boarding school I went to when I was a kid had the same sort of thing, just with different names (Prefects & skivvies instead of Yamayurikai & soeur - and in the unlikely event anyone from Marondera High or Eaglesvale School in Zimbabwe is reading this, hi!), so there's a certain connection with the setting that may bias me a bit. :)

Anyway. This is a shoujo series, which means more talk & plot, less action than most series. The main criticism that can be had is that it's quite slow, with the story seeming to go in multi-episode arcs, rather than having things tied up in one episode then moving on. That said, there's a good range of characters here & the way they play off against each other is fascinating in its own right, even without plot concerns. And let's not forget the yuri / shoujo ai undertones between certain characters, which always adds a certain amount of spice to proceedings...

I liked this a lot more than I thought I would. I've been pretty much shoujo'd-out of late & wasn't really looking forward to delving into another series full of female intrigue - so I was more than a little surprised at how well MariMite caught my attention, and I don't think it's entirely down to high-school nostalgia on my part. Too early yet to see if I can give the show a whole-hearted recommendation, but against my initial expectations, it's not being consigned to the bin. I'll be watching some more of this...