Mei deserves the hardest slap.

Glad that Citrus is ending. Biggest twist would be Saburo Uta trolls her fans. Remember, Mei and Yuzu are still sisters. XD

last edited at Jul 19, 2018 12:44PM

Woah!!! The final move is on baby... Oh yeah, this is getting interesting... XD

is there no one in this manga know how to communicate ? Mei is still at the same school , yuzu. drag her somewhere and ask her , not run in her home as illegal immigrant. I cant even finish this chapter . It looks pathetic.

The biggest revelation of this series is that Matsuri was right all along about everything.

I only wish Mei was half the person Matsuri is; they were both neglected and resentful kids but while Matsuri started at an arguably much worse point with her sociopathic tendencies, she progressed in the series and ended up showing she loves Yuzu for real (even if no longer romantic) in a way that Mei never did and never will.

Meanwhile, Mei from beginning to end only acts out of negative feelings like jealousy and possessiveness, never caring about others or showing generosity. The fact that she decided to hurry up the wedding upon seeing Yuzu happy again after 8 months of clearly knowing she was depressed was the last drop for me. People can say, "oh that's because she is broken" but in reality that's not the issue here. The issue is that the way we REACT to the bad things that happen to us, is what shows who we truly are. Yuzu also has reasons for grief, she lost her father as a child, her mom is always working and they were seemingly not well-off. All the other wealthy girls also seem to be in arranged marriages that they don't want to be in. So what gives? They all act caring and generous, and even if they made mistakes they all improve as people along the way. Except Mei!

And I say this as someone who thought Mei was developing and she was my favourite character before. But through this arc, I realized she isn't a good person. In my opinion the "bittersweetness" of this story is that yes Yuzu will get who she wants in the end after all this fight, but who she wants is not who she deserves.

last edited at Jul 19, 2018 12:09PM

Wtf this is ending next chapter ?? I heard that there was gonna be 52 chapters in total , why is it suddenly ending in 41? Can someone explain? And did Saburo Uta confirm anything?

The biggest revelation of this series is that Matsuri was right all along about everything.

(...)

^ It really is crazy how much development a side character like Matsuri has gotten yet Mei simply hasn't changed at all. Sure we know how she feels about Yuzu, but she still continues making really dumb decisions. After everything that's happened and everyone she's met you would think she would understand that doing what she wants for once is okay, yet she continues to inflict pain on herself for... her pride? I just don't understand what she's resisting for anymore - and I'm not sure I really care anymore. At this point, Mei just really frustrates me more than I expected.

It would be nice if the announcement meant that Yuzu and Mei's story is coming to an end, but maybe we'll get a spin-off. I would really like to see more focus on Harumin and Matsuri. There's so much potential there, and I find myself enjoying chapters more when they get more screentime.

There’s always a split between reading a character as a hypothetical real human being and as an authorial construction (that’s one of the fun things about reading fiction), but in this case and at this point it seems to me that critiques of Mei’s actions, personality, and motivations are really beside the point.

Readers aren’t supposed to despise Mei one chapter from the end and think that she and Yuzu don’t belong together. And the fact that readers have good reason to feel that way is the author’s fault.

Theoretically, that anti-Mei attitude could be a function of cultural differences, and Japanese audiences might have considerably more tolerance and sympathy for Mei’s self-sacrifice and commitment to duty than Western audiences do.

But one of the main points of interest in Mei as a character all along was the way she was opening up emotionally and developing in relation to Yuzu. By removing her from the plot for such an extended period and basically putting her character back to square one (engaged to be married for the sake of the family), Saburouta has essentially made the story be entirely about Yuzu and her feelings rather than about the relationship between the two.

This latest chapter has made me think that this whole series has been much more old-fashioned and superficial than I once thought it was going be. That is, by devoting the next-to-last chapter to depicting a tag-team of helpers enabling Yuzu to star in an episode of “Rescue the Princess,” the series aligns itself more with 101 Dalmatians or Scooby Doo than with even comedic manga that are still interested in developing their characters.

So rather than seeing Mei as a bad person who will end up with Yuzu despite being unworthy of her, I see a fictional character who was thrown under the bus by an author who was uninterested in developing the themes, plot points, and ideas raised by the rest of the series.

The fundamental problem with Mei, and one she still hasn't been able to break out of, is an excessively deeply ingrained and self-sacrificing sense of duty. You can pretty much pin the blame for that shit on her grandfather, who as a dyed-in-the-wool Traditional Asian Parent didn't take the hint that there might be something fundamentally wrong with how he does things from his own son fucking cracking under the pressure and quite literally running away.

Pretty much the whole cast by now has to one degree of another trying to wean her from that garbage for a while but hey, deep-rooted psychological issues. Guessing the basic idea in the finale - however clumsy the actual narrative execution now may be - is Yuzu forcing her to make the choice over how she intends to live her life face to face, without the detachement of distance. A form of shock therapy you might say; force her to confront the topic head on with no room for evasions and all the usual self-deceptions people now engage in to justify courses of action they're uncomfortable with.

It's a lot harder to make momentous and painful decisions involving another person when they're looking you straight in the eye than when you can insulate the issue into an abstraction in solitude, after all.

This latest chapter has made me think that this whole series has been much more old-fashioned and superficial than I once thought it was going be. That is, by devoting the next-to-last chapter to depicting a tag-team of helpers enabling Yuzu to star in an episode of “Rescue the Princess,” the series aligns itself more with 101 Dalmatians or Scooby Doo than with even comedic manga that are still interested in developing their characters.

So rather than seeing Mei as a bad person who will end up with Yuzu despite being unworthy of her, I see a fictional character who was thrown under the bus by an author who was uninterested in developing the themes, plot points, and ideas raised by the rest of the series.

Agree completely. If read as a real human being, Mei is at this point unworthy of Yuzu. In my opinion not because of her sense of duty, which could even be seen as commendable in principle, but because of her lack of empathy about what Yuzu might be feeling, and her reaction of always trying to hurt/punish Yuzu when she feels Yuzu is "moving on" (as made clear in multiple arcs -- Matsuri's, the twins', and now in this).

If read purely as an author construct, ever since they had started dating, Mei was definitely shown to evolve but that only misled the readers completely. The entire story also, as far as I knew, was about Yuzu AND Mei, not only about Yuzu. That Sabu would throw everything up the air, ghost someone who was assumed to be by many (most?) readers to be the co-lead and show her in such a negative light is bizarre. Even if Mei comes around in the end, it feels so forced.

last edited at Jul 19, 2018 2:04PM

I had kind of read Mei’s moving up the marriage date as more of a “throw herself on the pyre and get it over with” move than a “punish Yuzu” one. And I’ve tried to steer clear of predictive lamenting (that is, speculating about what may happen next and then complaining about it, even though it hasn’t actually happened), but with only one episode left I’m giving myself permisssion:

The only possible happy resolution to the plot is for Mei to change her mind about the marriage. (There are probably plenty of possible compromises about the school/inheritance issue—not necessarily plausible ones in real life, but of the pulled-out-of-the-author’s-ass type.)

So what would be the grounds on which she would do this? Your reading suggests the possibility of a “But when I saw you laughing with your friends I thought you no longer cared! What a fool I’ve been!” approach.

Which would be ridiculous for any number of reasons, but then, so would anything else I can think of, since Mei has been angsting through a life-changing decision for the last six chapters and now must do a complete turnaround in maybe 4 pages (if we’re lucky).

So let me announce this right now—if Saburouta can somehow resolve this story in some way that doesn’t violate, gloss over, or completely ignore its own previous major premises about the characters and about the way the story’s world works, and can craft a happy ending that doesn’t make Mei look like a unstable narcissist and Yuzu look like a willful and delusional child, I will gladly take back all my criticism and admit that author-sensei is a highest-level master practitioner of the art of manga.

(And no, “Shou suddenly intervenes yadda yadda yadda all is well!” would not be what I’m looking for.)

Maybe she wants us to figure out by ourselves that Mei is an unstable narcissist and Yuzu is delusional. This has been portrayed as a love story but doesn't mean it's a healthy one that we are supposed to be cheering for. It certainly seems that way, when all the other girls were basically asking Yuzu the whole time "are you sure you want to go for this girl?" as though they themselves don't think this is a good idea. None of them were like "hell yeah, let's save Mei!!!". They helped only because they care about Yuzu.

last edited at Jul 19, 2018 3:49PM

The delusions are real.

Starting out, everything is decided for Mei. Her school, her future and even what happens to her body. Her father abandonds her leaving all the demnds of his life on her shoulders. Her "best friend" and fience are shown sexually assaulting her and when Mei may have found a new family, her step-sister is lusting after her.

Nope, Mei decided it all herself. She decided to stay with her grandpa over her father. She wasnt abandoned. She chose to be engaged to the teacher just like how she chose to get engaged to the manager. Yuzu wouldnt be lusting for her if Mei didnt choose to force herself on her on their first night together.

Mei isnt a victim. Everything she has ever done was the result of her own choices and actions.

"She decided to stay with her grandpa over her father. She wasn't abandoned."
Mei had always lived with her father and continued to live in his apartment after he left while her grandfather financially supported her. When her father left, Mei was only ten years old. And at such a young age, she decided to work for her family not because she felt she had a choice in the matter, but because she thought it was the only way to get her dad back. When we do see Mei's father, he openly admits that he left Mei knowing that she needed him, but he left anyway believing Mei, at only 10 years old, was able to take care of herself within a severly strict and demanding family.

"Yuzu wouldnt be lusting for her if Mei didnt choose to force herself on her on their first night together."
This comment implies that abuse leads to sexual attraction which is dangerous to say. The first night, Yuzu was making fun of the time Mei was being assaulted by her fiance. She kissed Yuzu to shut her up which isn't a response I condone, but Yuzu was being really inappropriate which really defines actions on both sides. Neither knows better, Mei does it for one reason and Yuzu does it for another and none of it was healthy. However, when both start to understand what these things mean, Mei retreats while Yuzu remains aggressive. The scene on the trip would have been rape had Yuzu not been interrupted which leads to the biggest issue with this manga, it implies abuse is okay so long as there is love. And that is another dangerous thing to say.

My frustration with the story is that neither Yuzu nor Mei are horrible people, just two teens that don't know any better yet while Yuzu is treated as an absolute angel, Mei is thrown under the bus by both readers and the author. Both characters are also used in a story where abusive behaviors are acceptable, easily forgiven or ignored. And then when the story can make anything out of itself, it becomes a story all about Yuzu and we see none of the development desperately needed from Mei beyond her looking depressed because this isn't what she wants -- only doing so because she feels she has no other choice, she doesn't know how to ask for help, and the writer decided to skip her development and rush an ending. @Blastaar makes some strong points on the last part there.

"Yuzu wouldnt be lusting for her if Mei didnt choose to force herself on her on their first night together."
This comment implies that abuse leads to sexual attraction which is dangerous to say. The first night, Yuzu was making fun of the time Mei was being assaulted by her fiance. She kissed Yuzu to shut her up which isn't a response I condone, but Yuzu was being really inappropriate which really defines actions on both sides. Neither knows better, Mei does it for one reason and Yuzu does it for another and none of it was healthy. However, when both start to understand what these things mean, Mei retreats while Yuzu remains aggressive. The scene on the trip would have been rape had Yuzu not been interrupted which leads to the biggest issue with this manga, it implies abuse is okay so long as there is love. And that is another dangerous thing to say.

No matter how you look at it, what Mei did at that moment and others in the series is sexual harassment, and Yuzu started lusting after her because of the forced contact. The anime makes it even clearer the violent intention of the scene. Yet Yuzu making fun of her due to clearly assuming the kiss with the teacher was consensual doesn't warrant being force-kissed in retribution. Even if she had known the kiss with the teacher was forced, sexually harassing someone because of a verbal aggression is kinda crazy no?

In any case, this is such a common trope in romance manga; I honestly think it's just cultural differences. For example you interpret Yuzu tackling Mei for sex and Mei putting in some resistance as a rape attempt, but actually I know for a fact women in Japan are supposed to show some reluctance in those moments. Why I don't know. But again, cultural differences. I suspect the Japanese think Mei is a totally normal person and only westerners are baffled.

Jesus I cant Harumi's sis is so hot.

Re: Endless, Cyclical Confusion (and again, why there's never been any point in personal speculation about the superfluous/typical soap-aspects everyone here loves so much):

A) Stated earlier {366645} (with later, added emphasis): "...in the case of Mei, you have the war of extremist personal service/duty (a fundamental aspect of Mei's type) versus acknowledged, charged, life-upheaving, mixed-bag rationalizations for "love"; this sort of situation produces hardcore emotional skeptics, hence the reader frustration and author confusion with Mei: how does one get a young skeptic to believe in the truth of young love? Without more insight, i.e., development, you "hammer" on them until they change/break." There is only so much that can be ascribed to Tropes when you're only given crumbs within a culturally clichéd context.

B) This tunnel-vision MO/impetus on top of extended, narrative presentation where "...so much (is) being seen through a rose-tinted/biased-as-hell lens" {362586} ... that's "...all coming from a highly neurotic, adult-creator POV that most identifies with Yuzu." {365218}

C) There really shouldn't be such outrage over messages regarding abuse because 1) this is uberniche (and Japanese niches have a huge tolerance/allowance for all flavors of violence and perversion). And 2) this is the fault of someone choosing a cross-genre where the deeper comprehension of Drama lags far behind skill with Comedy; without much any comedy, Saburouta wasted a lot of energy flailing about in what just might be a polluted, shallow/kiddie pool instead of actual dark waters. (The wasted sex-blackmail sitch is now an annoying setup; an idea cherry-picked for its intrinsic, high-Drama/adult-like? value, not because she had any real comprehension of the emotional mess that it would have entailed; cheaply used and discarded.) In comparison to other yuri publications that I've come across, Citrus has been hilarious for a good part of the run, which (again) undercuts a lot of what might be deemed serious, dramatic material. I was willing to overlook at lot as long as it continued to be funny, but alas, what may had started off seeming like she wouldn't squander potential {361909} has become just that... and it's due (IMO) to point E (below).

D) There is zero historical, commercially published proof that Saburouta is even "capable of writing a better ending than this", and also no evidence of the author truly "phoning it in", as a few would like to believe with recouched ideas. Saburouta has already announced that she's been exhausted {370179}: the delayed releases have been proof.

E) She's had enormous creative problems handling the feedback for Ch 36: the WTF chapters post-36 have been in direct response to this, i.e., lots of emo-dithering (and true to her sense and use of emo-logic {362063}), with reliance on surrounding family/friends to bounce around feckless or overly redundant ideas that give no real insight into much anything since it follows Yuzu around, i.e., all that Saburouta truly comprehends in full. When emo-logic really only applies to Yuzu, you can't have friends/others taking on the burden that would destroy the "purity" and drive of Yuzu's emotions. Mei's true (painfully predictable) reasoning for the letter/break-off took forever and a day for a quiet reveal, but via a third party, and was still executed indirectly since it had be described/paired with Yuzu's face in the frame. The very tedium of this MO (see also pts A and B) while trying to keep things "light", for the hybrid genre-- why do folks keep forgetting this?, is near impossible without venturing into more mature, darker territory. This is nothing but blatant examples of intellectual floundering in an exploratory work that's covered (skillfully) with the high degree of visual art, i.e., if Saburouta's unsure, there's intentional, uber-precise use of ambiguous character expressions and layouts in hopes of covering her ass; it's the only way of saving some face in a losing battle.

F) Now, with this penultimate release in the aftermath of YET another announcement--but one of complete and utter Exhaustion, i.e., only enough steam left for one more chapter, it's nothing BUT in-your-face Proof that the creative well has run dry (for this particular IP).

Work long enough with different types of artists, and these trends crop up ad nauseam...

Saburouta is valiantly, sincerely persevering to the series' end--partly as a cultural thing, partly due to the media-based attention--without completely shitting over the rest, so I'm guessing there's going to be continuation of "meh" comedy for the finale. (It's where she used to shine, and really, what else can be expected for a forced Happy Ending even if there's a high probability the skill level of featured "funny" will be Basic/Easy/Default? If you've ever witnessed out-of-shape, casual joggers, and seen the part of their run where they look like they're about to faceplant, but "persevere" anyway--in exceptionally bad or questionable athletic form--for the sake of finishing the workout... that's where Saburouta appears to be, on multiple levels, from a creator-perspective.)

If for whatever reason there's a dramatically-skewed conclusion with next to no comedy, so be it--the work's finality speaks for itself and the true mangaka mindset, so I definitely won't be interested in her later endeavors, but it's clear for the time being that she's forgone trying to explain the hell out of Mei. It seems beyond her to consider much beyond her status as a cultural trope.

I have no clue what you just said but I agree because it's 800+ words

I usually translate what AozTkM says lol

They said: Saburouta's real trolling in Citrus is that Mei was never meant to be a character we care for as a story co-lead; instead, she was always meant to be a trope, used and discarded to move the plot forward, only important character here was Yuzu and Yuzu's feelings. The other possibility is that she did have better intentions for Mei but got tired and now doesn't give a shit anymore. She has given up on this story and so should we :D

last edited at Jul 19, 2018 11:52PM

I usually translate what AozTkM says lol

They said: Saburouta's real trolling in Citrus is that Mei was never meant to be a character we care for as a story co-lead; instead, she was always meant to be a trope, used and discarded to move the plot forward, only important character here was Yuzu and Yuzu's feelings. The other possibility is that she did have better intentions for Mei but got tired and now doesn't give a shit anymore. She has given up on this story and so should we :D

It’s amazing what can be accomplished when you actually decide what the subject and the main verb of your sentence ought to be.

Nope, Mei is just a horrible person. She was written to be a horrible person and a large portion of the audience just sees it for what it is. Mei isnt a victim of any kind. Everything bad that has happened in this manga was purely due to Meis personal decisions and actions. She chose to get engaged to the teacher, she chose the school over her own father, she chose to assault Yuzu several times, she chose to officially start dating Yuzu, and then she chose to get engaged again just to further her own career.

She cant even have the "muh family!" excuse when the majority of her family doesnt want her to do the things she is doing.

I definitely agree that her character is terribly written (speaking from a Western audience perspective) and has caused unnecessary drama for like at least 30 of these chapters, but looking at her as a teenage girl, she probably felt like she had no other choice but to bend to her grandfather's every will, especially at the beginning of the story. Sure, she technically could've said "No" at anytime, but also keep in mind that her grandfather was the one who raised her throughout part of her childhood when her father decided to peace it. When she was younger, Mei was also the type that wanted to be praised and recognized for her efforts, so when her father left and dumped all of his responsibilities as the next heir onto her, she probably accepted it without a second thought so she could appease both her father and her grandfather. This is something believable to me since she's like, freshly 16 or something, and this was all she had ever known.

I can overlook the incident of her being engaged to the teacher, her wanting to take over the academy against her "will" (I say "will" because she's never communicated to her grandfather that she didn't want to do it, LOL thanks Mei), and the current arc. I think it's quite reasonable from someone who has been sheltered for their entire life.

Yeah, idk about the other things she's done though, LOL. What made her think it was a good idea to kiss Matsuri? Why did she assault her own sister on day one?? Why did she continue to assault her sister??? Why did she think it was a good idea to prank Yuzu and date Sara for like, 4 hours???? Why was she so secretive for 40 chapters????? Wait, how did Yuzu even come to like someone that assaulted her?????? I'm so confused, LOL.

Holy shit ! Holy fuck ! Tears are falling from my eyes because of fear and joy ! Looking foward ? OFCOURSE !!!! I can't wait !! Gash they met each other wait no ... Just saw but whatever ! I just really am so happy seeing citrus again for it has been weeks since the last time I checked Dynasty Reader

Funny how a girl that is top of her class, can run a school by herself, and was considered old enough to be engaged can somehow not know better. Of course she knows better, she just doesnt care. If she knew Yuzu would do it Mei would marry the guy, be his baby maker and keep Yuzu as a mistress.

let's make this clear, intelligence does NOT equate emotional maturity, so that argument is invalid.

and to me it seemed like you could see yuzu was attracted to mei from the very beginning. mei just sped it up by the forced contact. maybe for the better, can you imagine how many chapters yuzu's am i am i not torture could be stretched out? ugh.

Mei didn't do anything wrong it is Saburouta's fault for turning her into a drama fuel. Citrus was a little bit good when they started dating but of course author had to ruin it with another meaningless drama.

I usually translate what AozTkM says lol

They said: Saburouta's real trolling in Citrus...

That's a great deal lost in translation. A better summary would be:

• First note the genre of the work.
• Understand the mangaka's creative process within the said genre.
• Then note the vehicle that's used to convey the genre.
• Understand the mangaka's historical strengths and weaknesses, revealed objectively.
• Understand her use of Yuzu as a placeholder for herself.
• Understand what Mei is in direct relation to Yuzu, and the mangaka's objective for herself/Yuzu in the endgame.
• Have some comprehension how reliance on social media for "support" can fuck up anyone's creative process--especially if sensitive. Especially when there's enormous backlash.
• Imagine trying to appease audiences for issues on end after being psychologically traumatized/berated and in a state of unending amped up confusion/frustration.
• Understand what it's like to follow through on a promise even when ideas have been painted into a corner alongside mental and physical exhaustion.
• Give deeper thought to your position as a consumer of media in relation to all of the above.

Better summary indeed. However, I don't think readers should be to blame for their reactions when the way the story is handled makes us all confused and that might very well be on purpose. Except for overt reactions (I heard some readers even threatened her over Twitter), I think Sabu has received a lot of both praise and criticism which is par for the course if you are developing a story people are engaged in on a massive level. I never in my life saw people reacting this way to a yuri series (though maybe I just haven't seen it all). Heck, for myself I can say I'm a long-time manga reader and I never before bothered to give my opinion on forums. That's because I usually either am fully satisfied and engaged or fully disengaged and unsatisfied with the stories I read; it's rare that I would be both engaged AND unsatisfied as is the case with Citrus.

There are multiple forums in various languages, plus a Reddit channel and Discord servers where all people do is throw tomatoes at each other due to their different views over who Mei is, HaruYuzu exists or not, HaruMatsu or riot, etc LOL To affect people so much, isn't it the dream of every mangaka? And if this is all largely because of Mei, why throw the main focus of this story under the bus and silence her for 5 of the 6 final chapters as though only Yuzu ever mattered? It's a terrible choice IMO. From the amount of page-time in these final chapters, one would think this was a story about Yuzu, Harumin and Matsuri's friendship all along and not a love story about Yuzu and Mei. If Sabu is unable to write this story without role-playing as Yuzu, ok; then she could have created a situation where Mei has to get engaged, writes the letter but then Yuzu spends the next 5 chapters interacting with her to convince her to come back at least, so that we could understand better who Mei is and see Mei develop during the period.

last edited at Jul 20, 2018 8:01AM

Bend to her grandfathers will despite telling her own father 'no' when she was 10 years old? Nope, has nothing to do with her grandfather. He has a plan and she is completely complicit with it. At no point did her force her to do anything. This marriage is probably not even a requirement, probably something she thinks she ought to do in order to be more successful.

Evidently she isn't doing any of these things because she wants to, and I said that she herself probably feels like she must accept the responsibilities as an Aihara family member since her father left. In a way, sure, she's completely complicit with it in that she's doing everything without really complaining about it or voicing her concerns, but it looks to me like she's only doing it because this is the only world that she knows - these are the expectations she grew up with. As dumb as it may sound, she probably thought she had no other options anyway, and it's made more convenient because she herself wouldn't even know what she would want to do even if she objected to inheriting the school. When Yuzu came along, she essentially taught Mei to make her own decisions and to just do the things that she wants to do.

Or of course, tried to. We can clearly see how well that lesson stuck with Mei.

Again, her father asked to come with him and she said no. Nothing was ever shown that she was pressured into staying. The responsibility wasnt forced on her. She chose to accept it all on her own despite her father giving her an easy way out of she ever wanted it.

I'd just chalk it up to self-imposed expectations. We don't see enough of gramps to know just how much he wants from Mei though. Perhaps she accepted everything because she didn't want to disappoint anyone, and again, she probably didn't have anything else she wanted to do anyway--- Actually, thinking about it now, we don't really see much of Mei's thoughts, so who knows what that girl is thinking.

Except she isnt sheltered. She lived by herself since she was a child, she is smart, has a lot of friends, everyone as school adores her, is able to run the school by herself, was engaged and making out with her teacher behind the school, groping Yuzu in front of everyone, making out with her the next day, and easily outplays Matsuri. She is smarter and more experienced than most people in their late 20s.

I don't see how living by herself makes her less sheltered. She seems like the type that just goes to school, buys what she needs, comes home, studies - rinse and repeat for several years. She is academically intelligent (=/= socially intelligence), her "friends" seem to be just girls that follow her around because she's admirable (cool beauty, smart, daughter of the chairman) so I'm not so sure if they're her actual friends, her making out with the teacher was probably just her doormat personality slipping through again, I have zero excuses for her assaulting Yuzu x4 times or outplaying Matsuri. Although, none of those qualities make her more experienced than people in their late 20s, lol.

Honestly, that aside, I don't think Mei's a well-written character, nor do I think Citrus is a well-written story. I'm not trying to argue that Mei is a good character, but I don't think her struggles (such as feeling pressured by trying to live up to other peoples' expectations, wanting to be praised by other people, and feeling like there isn't anything else that she wants to do in particular) are unrealistic for a girl at this age--- save for the part where she assaults her step-sister.

She is a pretty questionable character though, because OoOoOo DraMa, and she could've saved us like 30 chapters had she just communicated with Yuzu... about like... anything... Why Yuzu likes Mei is way beyond me.

Why Yuzu likes Mei is way beyond me.

Yuzu would have to speak for herself for a precise answer, but I can say for a fact that for some people, at least at a certain stage of their lives, “hot, smart, and troubled” can be absolute catnip.

But I’ve said too much . . .

The only redeeming factor of Mei is that she makes Yuzu happy. Otherwise, she's a total doormat and pretty uninteresting