Review of Maria Watches Over Us

This review covers all four seasons. In this catholic school GL romance, girls in the higher years each 'adopt' a girl from a lower year as their soeur, their sister. The greatest prestige comes from being made the little sister of a member of the student council, since that's seen as a fast-track to membership in the council and grants access to the mansion on school grounds that acts as the student council room. There are a lot of strong personalities on the council when Yumi starts as a first year, and she soon gets caught up in a whirlwind of conflicting agendas and jealousy whenSachiko, one of the student council members, offers to be her big sister on the day they meet.

This show came from the tail end of the Class S era of GL, when it often wasn't made explicit whether the feelings the girls have for each other are sisterly affection or romantic love. It sways back and forth on that line, leaning more in one direction or the other for the various trios of sisters the show focuses on. Yes, I said trios, and that's the main source of conflict in this series. Given that there are three years in Japanese high school, that makes a chain of three sisters in most cases. As a first year, Yumi is thrown in the deep end of this situation, and has to figure out the dynamics at play between Sachiko and herself, between Sachiko and her big sister, and between all the other council members. Combine this with the fact that council members are variously referred to by their first or last name by different people, their titles (based on types of roses), or the French names for those roses, and you have a recipe for confusion until you get a handle for who all these girls are and who is whose sister.

That last point is what made me bounce off the show after a couple of episodes the first time I tried it, but I recently started it again and I'm glad I persisted. The first season can be quite messy with how many characters it throws at the viewer, but it finds its feet more as it progresses. The show's four seasons cover Yumi's first two years at high school. The first three of those split their time between all the girls on the student council, but with a particular emphasis on Yumi growing closer to Sachiko as her little sister. The final season shows Yumi starting to mature as a second year, as she begins to look for a little sister of her own. Interestingly, the more Yumi matures the more the show locks us out of her internal monologue, making her a closed book and shifting the emphasis to the girl who is the prime candidate to be her little sister. Perhaps the idea here is that the maturity of the big sisters (who are still high schoolers themselves) is something of an illusion that can only be maintained when viewed from the outside.

It's an enjoyable show once you get past that first hurdle of remembering who everyone is, and only gets better as it goes along. Those looking for explicitly stated romance or a sense of how these girls' lives will progress after high school may be a little frustrated though, since the focus here is on Yumi first learning what it means to be a little sister, and then slowly maturing into a big sister herself, even if there are many times when it seems that there's something else between her and Sachiko.

Season 1: 7/10
Season 2: 7/10
Season 3: 8/10
Season 4: 8/10