Japanese yuri manga series written and illustrated by Takako Shimura
 is a Japanese yuri manga series written and illustrated by Takako Shimura. It was serialized between November 2004 and July 2013 in Ohta Publishing's manga magazine "Manga Erotics F", with its chapters collected in eight "tankōbon" volumes. The story focuses on Fumi Manjōme, a lesbian high school girl, and her close childhood friend Akira Okudaira, who tries to keep her friends happy through difficult times.
An 11-episode anime television series produced by J.C.Staff and directed by Ken'ichi Kasai aired between July and September 2009 on Fuji TV. An Internet radio show to promote the anime was produced between June and October 2009 on HiBiKi Radio Station hosted by Ai Takabe and Yūko Gibu, who voiced Fumi and Akira in the anime, respectively. The manga was licensed in North America by Viz Media. The anime was licensed by Right Stuf Inc.
Plot.
At the start of "Sweet Blue Flowers", Akira Okudaira, who is an entering high school student into Fujigaya Girls Academy, becomes reacquainted with her childhood friend Fumi Manjōme whom she has not seen for ten years. Fumi is attending Matsuoka Girl's High School where she quickly becomes friends with a handsome third-year student named Yasuko Sugimoto. Akira joins her school's drama club with her friend and classmate Kyōko Ikumi, who is in love with Yasuko, though Yasuko turns her down. Akira meets Kyōko's fiancé (in name only) Kō Sawanoi. Yasuko and Fumi become a couple, and Fumi comes out to Akira who is at first unsure on how to act, but still tries to support Fumi's new relationship.
Akira's drama club does an adaptation of "Wuthering Heights" for a drama festival; Fumi helps out with her friends Yōko Honatsugi, Misako Yasuda, and Miwa Motegi. Yasuko breaks up with Fumi, who learns that Yasuko's older sister Kazusa is marrying a teacher at Fujigaya named Masanori Kagami whom Yasuko had fallen in love with. Time passes after the wedding, and Yasuko decides to study abroad in London after graduating. Miwa and Akira's older brother Shinobu start going out, and Fumi tells Akira that she was her first love, much to Akira's embarrassment.
When Akira and her friends enter their second year of high school, an energetic first-year student named Haruka Ōno joins the Fujigaya drama club. Akira and Kyōko are split into different classrooms, and Akira meets a tall girl in her new class named Ryōko Ueda. The high school division of Fujigaya does the play "Rokumeikan" with Akira, Kyōko and Ryōko playing lead roles, though Ryōko only agrees to act because Akira also agrees to act alongside her. Fumi and Haruka become friends, and Haruka confides in Fumi that she suspects her older sister Orie may like women. Not knowing how to respond, Fumi seeks advice from Akira, but ends up confessing her love for her instead. Kyōko does not want Kō to break off the engagement, but he ends up finally breaking up with her. The play goes well and everyone praises the actress' performances. Over summer vacation, Akira suggests to Fumi that they go out together after thinking deeply about it.
Voiced by: Ai Takabe
Fumi is a first-year student at Matsuoka Girl's High School, and is a tall, shy girl prone to crying. Fumi comes back to the town she grew up in and she meets, without realizing it, her childhood friend Akira Okudaira. When they were much younger, Akira had been Fumi's bodyguard, keeping her out of harm and consoling her when she cried. Fumi is a lesbian and had her first romantic relationship with her older female cousin Chizu Hanashiro, with whom she had sex. Soon after Fumi moves back to Kamakura, she finds out Chizu will soon marry a man she has never met. Not long after meeting Yasuko Sugimoto in the literature club, Fumi develops a crush on Yasuko, who later asks her out.
Voiced by: Yuko Gibu
Akira, nicknamed "Ah" by some of her friends, is an innocent and cheerful girl in her first-year at Fujigaya Girls Academy. She was Fumi's best friend in elementary school and rekindles that relationship upon meeting her again 10 years later. She acts as a main source of advice for Fumi. Akira joins the drama club because her friend Kyōko Ikumi is a member of it. She often talks about food and gives advice, and dislikes scary stories or things that test her courage. Unexpectedly and unintentionally, Akira usually spills secrets about her friends to other people when they ask her questions about them. Her intentions are pure, and only discusses them to help her friends out. However, this sometimes causes problems for them instead.
Voiced by: Yui Horie
Kyōko is a reckless girl who has eyes only for Yasuko. She is in the same class as Akira and is a member of the drama club. She has been dubbed as Princess for her charm, and is also skilled in sewing, art, tennis and acting. Many students look up to Kyōko in the same way Kyōko looks up to Yasuko. Kyōko is engaged (in name only) to Kō Sawanoi, a college student. This engagement was pushed for by Kyōko's mother while Kyōko and Kō were still young, and not all of Kō's relatives are happy about it.
Voiced by: Ryōko Ono
Ayako is a third-year student when Akira joins Fujigaya. She is a member of the drama club and plays Catherine opposite Yasuko's Heathcliffe in the Drama Festival production of "Wuthering Heights". After graduation, she goes to study abroad in England.
Voiced by: Tomoko Nakamura
Kaori is a senior and the president of the drama club in Akira's first year. She regularly scolds the club's absent advisor, Masanori Kagami, for not showing a deeper interest in the club.
Haruka is a girl who joins Fujigaya as a student one year below Akira and becomes a new member of the drama club. She has an endearing personality that makes it easy for her to become friendly with anyone, though she is prone to making silly mistakes. Many students, especially Kyōko, remark on how similar Haruka is to how Akira was when she first came to Fujigaya. Haruka has an older sister, Orie, who is in a romantic relationship with Hinako Yamashina, a science teacher at Fujigaya. Haruka's family owns an old hot springs inn.
Ryōko is a tall girl who sits beside Akira in class in their second year. She has a gentle, quiet personality and enjoys reading; she's a library aide at Fujigaya. Her acting talents are noticed while she's reading aloud (to herself) "Deer Cry Pavilion", a play that the Drama Club intends to put on that year. She ends up playing one of the leads. She says Akira is so small and cute that she wants to put Akira in her pocket.
Voiced by: Chiemi Ishimatsu
Yasuko is a popular third-year senior at Matsuoka Girl's High School. She is a cool upperclassman and the captain of the basketball team, though Fumi mistakes her for being in the literature club when they first meet. After visiting Fujigaya Girls Academy and rejecting Kyōko's confession, she asks out Fumi, who accepts. Yasuko developed romantic feelings for a teacher, Masanori Kagami, when she was attending Fujigaya. After his rejection, she switched schools and changed focus from drama to basketball. Yasuko has three older sisters who all attended Fujigaya: Shinako, Kazusa, and Kuri.
Voiced by: Sayuri Yahagi
"Pon" is a member of Fumi's first-year class and the first person to approach her. With her middle school friends Mogii and Yassan, she wants to form a drama club at Matsuoka. She tries to get Fumi to join, but Fumi isn't interested. Pon has a bright, frank personality and wears her hair in a shoulder-length bob cut. She is a bit on the clumsy side and has a hard time competing against Kyōko in tennis. She later turns out to be a talented script writer, which impresses Fumi.
Voiced by: Aki Toyosaki
"Mogii" is a member of the Matsuoka Drama Club with her friends Pon and Yassan. She has a gentle personality and wears her hair in a shoulder-length wavy style. She is the only one of her friends to be put into a separate class in their second year. Miwa becomes interested in Akira's brother Shinobu and the two start dating around the end of her first year of high school. Akira finds this awkward, but she and Mogii remain friends.
Voiced by: Yuka Iguchi
"Yassan" is president of the 3-person drama club at Matsuoka. She has thick eyebrows and boyish-short, frizzy hair. She likes to test people's courage or scaring them by either participating in a game of "test of courage" or telling ghost stories. Despite this, she gets emotional very easily when it comes to things she cares about, like her friends or the drama club.
Voiced by: Kanae Oki
Kaori is a classmate and friend of Yasuko. She's in the literature club with Fumi. Kaori and Yasuko's friendship is the reason Yasuko hangs out in the Literature Club room, and therefore the reason Yasuko and Fumi met.
Production.
Manga.
When Takako Shimura was writing her manga "Dōnika Naru Hibi", she became interested in a story between girls, leading her to create "Sweet Blue Flowers". While she felt that the story focus should be on girls for yuri works, Shimura also wanted to introduce some males since she thought it would add an interesting aspect to the series. Shimura felt it difficult to balance the need for some males, but also not wanting to add too many. When depicting the characters, she did not want to write about them going through puberty. When starting to write "Sweet Blue Flowers", Shimura noticed that, in her opinion, she felt like a person depicting sexual perversion for writing about yuri relationships.
Before starting to write "Sweet Blue Flowers", Shimura went with her editor to Kamakura, Kanagawa with the main objective of visiting the Kamakura Museum of Literature. Shimura took many pictures during their trip, and thought Kamakura felt like a great place to set the story. With a guide book of Kamakura in hand, Shimura thought of various locations that would later appear in "Sweet Blue Flowers", such as the café that the characters frequent. Many of the pictures taken turned out unusable, though there were some she used as references for the setting, such as modeling the exterior of Fujigaya after the Kamakura Museum of Literature. Shimura also used the Komaba Park estate in Meguro, Tokyo for the interior of Fujigaya, such as with the staircase featured in chapter eleven. A large Japanese-style house on the same property as the Kamakura Museum of Literature was used as a model for the Sugimoto residence. The Enoshima Electric Railway is also featured in the series.
Anime.
In 2005, anime producer Yūji Matsukura of J.C.Staff was meeting at Ohta Publishing for an unrelated anime project and told the editor-in-chief of "Manga Erotics F", "U-mura", that he liked the "Sweet Blue Flowers" manga and would like to produce it into an anime in the future. Shortly after the first manga volume was released in December 2005, Matsukura went to a Media Factory producer, who also agreed to collaborating on a "Sweet Blue Flowers" anime. Matsukura went on to say that J.C.Staff is not the type of company to usually go out and make suggestions for anime projects and it was only because he liked "Sweet Blue Flowers" and later met U-mura by chance that an anime eventually became possible. Matsukura was in charge of choosing much of the staff. Ken'ichi Kasai was chosen as the director, because of his intuitiveness to make good-feeling anime according to Matsukura. For the series composition, Matsukura thought it would appear unexpected to pick Fumihiko Takayama, though he was asked to participate, because he likes shōjo manga. Takayama, who has experience as an animation director, would often make suggestions during the production of the animation, enough for Matsukura to joke that Takayama should have been staffed as the director instead, though Takayama flatly refused. Neither Kasai nor Takayama initially knew of the manga, but were approached by Matsukura, because he thought they would enjoy working on the project. This was the same case for the character designer and chief animation director Masayuki Onji.
Takayama initially suggested not to produce an anime, because of the difficulty in maintaining the feeling of the original work, and wanted to let someone else deal with