Yumi, and thus us viewers, gets to know the junior pair of the Rosa Foetida (yellow rose) family, Rei and Yoshino. They have just been voted Best Soeur in the Lilian newspaper but all is not as it seems. By the end of the episode, Yoshino has dissolved the soeur relationship by returning Rei’s rosary and the student body is in turmoil as copycat breakups occur.
Before the OP, there’s a hilarous intro (to highlight Yoshino’s absence due to another bout of illness) in which Yumi is late for the morning meeting, gets told off by Sachiko, gets made fun of Sei who then discovers the rosary. Yumi is then caught between obeying her direct superior soeur in not talking about the circumstances of her acceptance and obeying her grand soeur to spill the beans. A pretty tough bind but her growling stomach gets her out of it.
Yoshino and Yumi also form a bond. The latter is disarmingly honest about conveying her impression of Yoshino as being very girly, calm and gentle which Yoshino denies is the case. She also displays her ‘old couples’ credentials by confiding in Yumi that because of their long history together (as cousins and neighbours), the forming of their soeur bond lacked excitement. Arriving after this, Rei contrasts their relationship with Sachiko and Yumi’s new and clingy relationship - Yumi had been worried that Sachiko was already disappointed in her but Rei helpfully points out that Sachiko’s exaggerated scolding, unnecessary ribbon re-tying and offering sweets showed how Sachiko was enjoying the soeur relationship in her ojousama sort of way.
With Yokho’s pose like that, it’s not surprisingly that a parody fusion with Evangelion was spawned. Though every time I think about the Red / Yellow / White Rose families, I just think of the Five New York Families and Chicago Family and the opening score for Mario Puzo / Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather starts playing in my head - pretty timely as well, given with this recent EA release. It’ll be really funny to see the Yamayuri-gumi (Hana no Asuka-gumi meets The Godfather?) members all decked out in fedoras, trenchcoats, sharp suits, shiny shoes, cigars and tommyguns. We follow Yumi’s adventures as she initiated, quite by chance, as a “made sister” into the Rosa Chinesis family. The gumi strives to maintain internal coherence amidst the Yellow Rose Revolution and the Forest of Thorns incident as they battle for underworld supremacy against the Rosa Canina family, the Hanedara Dockside Gang and other pretenders.
The immediate cause of the breakup was whether Rei should follow Yoshino for her daytime medical appointment. Rei wants to be there for Yoshino but Yoshino wants to exert her independence as well as reduce her sense of being a burden, long pentup frustrations boil over and Rei is devastated, revealing her true self as being the more emotionally fragile of the pair. As my primary conflict management style is avoidance, I find Rei and Yoshino-centered screen time to be excruciating so while I don’t dislike them as characters, I just find their relationship to be wearying viewing. Not my favourite arc of the series. It’s also pretty funny how dramatic the school newspaper makes it out to be, how seriously everyone takes it and how this is something that can provide drama and entertainment over two episodes.
While the episodes certainly have their moments, I find (in the anime at least) the yellow rose family orientated stories (in both this season and Haru) to be the weaker episodes of the series. I know they have fans, but Rei and Yoshino always come across as rather dull characters to me. Perhaps this is because they are simply overshadowed by the rest of the cast though.
Yoshino doesn’t become fun till after this storyarc ends and she starts rioting.
Fencedude, I still didn’t like Yoshino and Rei’s interactions even all the way into Haru. Something about them just bugs me.