Maria-sama ga Miteru

Mary Watches Over Us/Maria-sama ga Miteru, 1998-2012 (light novel), 2004-2009 (anime), there are somehow even more spin-offs but I'm not listing them here - I tried finding streams of the anime, only to find that, in the years since I've been absent from anime/manga, RightStuf folded, the DVD/Blu-rays were sold at firesale prices, and all the rights have expired?! I wound up picking up pirating a bunch of the anime episodes and rereading the translated volumes of the light novel and will probably pick up the Blu-rays on eBay later, too.

It's hard to state just how influential Mara-sama ga Miteru (also called Marimite by fans) is in the world of yuri anime and manga. The most enduring impact is the reintroduction of Class S to the contemporary anime scene, popularizing a new strain of yuri with the otaku crowd, and laying the groundwork for the subsequent growth of explicitly queer yuri series in the years that followed. To this day, I can't help but see pigtailed protagonists and long-haired, classic beauty love interests who scold and reprimand their love interests and think, "I know what you are… I know what you've seen…"

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