Citrus: Lesbian Love as Ontological Sisterhood "when you grow to be someones sister if you can overcome the barriers you might find yourselves to be sharing an incredible power if you can light up each other thats the necessary secret if you really do need it you can have your own hidden world together [...] when my mind is overwhelmed when my body won’t move you’ve been a shield over me i want to be a shield over you when my mind shuts down in the most unbelievable pain you’ve been a shield over me i just want the strength to do the same" - Girls Rituals, "Shield"   Citrus is a one season anime about lesbian step-cest and, I think, a profoundly beautiful story about the multidimensionality of love. It gets at an examination of the truth of love by constructing what I will call "ontological sisterhood" as a erotic-spiritual category unrelated to legal or biological sisterhood. While the main characters, Yuzu and Mei, become step-sisters at the start of the show, the competing love interests all have a more or less explicit [incestuous] sisterly dimension as well. Furthermore, the "logic" of why Mei and Yuzu end up together is a surprisingly consistent set of contrasts between the relations of the other characters that examines the question, "What is a sister?" In this essay I will break down Citrus's category of ontological sisterhood and examine what it says about the nature of lesbian love. Being a sister in Citrus is at once all of, and a passing between, a neighbor, a mother, and a lover. "And who is my neighbor?" - Luke 10:29   The first attribute of ontological sisterhood is that of being a "neighbor". What does this mean? Firstly, it's a matter of pure contingency. In the same way that to be born as biological sisters is pure chance, ontological sisterhood has an element of chance as well. For Yuzu and Mei, this is not only the fact of their parents' marriage, but also that they're in the same class, in the same grade, at the same school. The other interests share in this element of contingency. Himeko was Mei's childhood friend, and Matsuri was Yuzu's literal neighbor. For Sara, this goes even further, as she bumps into Mei initially by chance, and then Yuzu also by chance, and then ends up staying at the same hotel.   This leads into a second element of sisterly neighbor-hood, that there's something painful about this contingent closeness. "This many coincidences is downright creepy," Sara says. The psychoanalytic philosopher Slavoj Zizek at various points has said, speaking of the Christian ethical concept of the neighbor, that their defining feature is "that they're always too close." This too-closeness, of course, is a staple of the appeal of incestuous romance. There is something both erotic and horrifying about the loss of personal space in being forced to share a bedroom, of ending every day in the same home, of inextricably intertwined destinies. It's a stuck-ness that you can't reject, that sticks on you like a wound. This is also a point where it touches lesbian love in general. The sharing of womanhood is the sharing of a same world which always seems smaller than it should be; it's a knowing co-performance under the same gaze, an almost blackmail-esque knowledge of shared subtle complexes/complexities and insecurities. Thus, this stuck-ness goes beyond the physical; it's also psychological. Himeko and Matsuri, even once they know that they've "lost", even despite having more space away from Mei and Yuzu, cannot help themselves; their love interests intrude their thoughts, actions, and sense of purpose and stability in the world. This element is critical, which is highlighted by the contrast of Harumi, who is totally unsisterly.   Harumi is Yuzu's best friend, and shares being an outsider and classmate with Yuzu, and they are hanging out together constantly throughout the show. Yet, Yuzu is able to retain a comfortable emotional distance from her. In fact, Harumi constantly finds herself confused by Yuzu's reticence about her internal world, and throughout the show Yuzu almost never concerns herself with Harumi's feelings. With Mei, no matter where she is and what she's doing Yuzu cannot help but concern herself with what is on Mei's mind. This same contrast plays out in the erotic as well. The show places a lot of emphasis on how Yuzu and Harumi are constantly touching each other, sometimes even in erogenous zones, but it never has any erotic weight to it, and neither of them think anything of it. Yet, with Mei and Yuzu every single instance of touch, physical proximity, or even inference of proximity, is a world shattering event. This contrast is most directly shown where Yuzu gets the idea to do an "indirect kiss" through food sharing with Mei only after Himeko points out the erotic implication of Yuzu doing the same thing thoughtlessly with Harumi. (In an incredibly charming moment, when Yuzu offers Mei a bite of her parfait on their first date in an attempt at an indirect kiss, Mei cheekily accepts the offer and then proceeds to reach out her hand and take some ice cream directly off of Yuzus face and eat that instead, leaving Yuzu incredibly flustered.) The too-closeness of Mei is such that Yuzu can't even conceive of the eroticism of something without it becoming about Mei, nor conceive of something with Mei without it becoming erotic (at first!).   There is also an additional turn within the too-closeness as well. Standing in the too-close light of another is blinding. The sister's mind is plagued with questions. “What does she really want?” “What am I really to her?” In this sense there is an element of service to sisterhood, to make yourself available to give them what they need, if for no other reason than to escape from the endless spiraling of your own thoughts about them. But the fact of acting itself reveals another dimension here, that the true question these bely is actually, "What/who am I to myself?", which is the passage to the ontological sister as "mother". "Love is Law freed from mediation by sin." - Slavoj Zizek, "The Monstrosity of Christ" "I'm doing this because I wanted to, end of story!" - Yuzu to Mei in Episode 6   In Lacanian psychoanalysis, there's a concept of the Name-of-the-Father, which is the primordial/infantile origin of our sense of structures of meaning that compel or prohibit action. The idea is that the original parental invocation of authority of "because I said so", "hooks you in” to a chain of command where you eventually realize that your parent is "part of something bigger," be it the project of the family, of society, or of God, etc., which you then are subject to in a like manner. Thus we are always acting "in the name of" something. The French phrase is "le nom du père", which Lacan plays on as "les non-dupes errent," those who are not duped err; one way to read this idea is that trying to act in your own pure self interest or believing you grasp "reality" outside of external symbolic structures of meaning actually makes you more deceived than by being a "part" of something, as there's something Other that always lurks at the heart of simple self motivated desire (obviously this is severely oversimplifying). The ethical imperative of psychoanalysis is then to generate a symbol or "word that works [to change who/what you are/do]" (Master Signifier) birthed from “listening to” (analysis) your confusing actions that disrupt your life and sense of stability (symptoms) to empower you to act "in the name of" a “nothing” specific to you.   What does this have to do with anime girl incest? While the neighbor-hood of ontological sisterhood is the other sister's contingent imposition of herself onto you, its maternal dimension is your willful imposition onto her through the creation of a “third thing”. The ideal of this is that of being able to self-generate a notion of your shared sisterhood for which you can act “in the name of”, both freely and insistently, even above and against resistance. This is another point where ontological sisterhood touches lesbian love in general. Unlike heterosexual relations, there are no set “rules,” no set categories (“How do you know when sex is over??”). Lesbians are infamous for their paradoxical combination of intense emotional intimacy and constant confusion/cluelessness (which is arguably a result of them having a more direct and honest grasp of social relations, whose confusion and radical undecidability tends to be ideologically obscured by the heterosexual dynamic). To love a woman as a woman involves a reckoning with free choice from nowhere.   Generating this pure thing between and above the two of you to act in the name of is no simple task however, and can easily be corrupted either in the direction of shallow selfishness or shallow selflessness, which unintentionally become containers for something external. There is an obvious point on the side of selfishness, unsurprisingly explicit within the show, about how love requires you to go out of yourself and see the good of your other. However, I think Citrus also manages to show a point that is more subtle and more radical, which ties into the previously mentioned “les non-dupes errent”. Matsuri exemplifies this on the side of selfishness. She thinks she is cleverly acting for herself in her malicious bid to be Yuzu’s “little sister” (Matsuri’s words!) as she works to isolate Yuzu and attempts to blackmail Mei into sleeping with an older man. Her acts, however, are not only immature, wanton, and self defeating, they are, in truth, actualized forms of the seemingly inessential rationalizations she gives for her actions, which are nothing more than the social and narrative “reasons” why Yuzu and Mei shouldn’t be together (e.g. Mei mistreats Yuzu and cannot be with her on account of their legal sisterhood). She’s quite literally a story agent working to keep them apart. Even further, her actions bring Yuzu and Mei closer together in the end (“Are you telling me I played right into her hands in spite of all that planning?!”). Himeko's attempts at sabotage also fail on the side of selfish one-sidedness. Although she's obviously less stubborn and less maniacal than Matsuri, what truly saves Himeko’s actions from blowing up as spectacularly is her shared attachment with Mei to the project of the student council.   It isn’t a simple matter of not acting selfishly either though. The “reason” why Sara doesn’t get together with Mei is actually that she isn’t selfish enough. She willingly accepts the dictates of universal “fate,” which gives her space to be another agent of external necessity. Sara is “worthy” in a moral sense, and easily likable as demonstrated by her friendship with Yuzu. Furthermore, the heartbroken, lonely Mei is willing and ready to give herself to someone who needs her. Mei asks Sara, “Do you need me?” to which Sara replies “Of course!” Yet, Sara doesn’t put up any sort of fight once she fully understands the situation with Yuzu and gives Mei up readily. Nina comes close to acting in the name of pure sisterly necessity for Sara, but she lacks the pure force of will.   Yuzu, on the other hand, confronts the symbolic sororal question head on from the very beginning, and relentlessly insists against all resistance in its name. The primary question on her mind is “how to be a good sister”. By the midpoint of the show, she finds a path towards acting in the name of her sisterhood that is at once both for herself, for Mei, and for them both, doing “what needs to be done” according to the call of the moment, even when it’s counter intuitive or potentially self destructive. They have a dialog about this in episode six while Yuzu is furiously biking them to the train station after risking expulsion (for like the fourth time) to hijack the loud speakers to call Mei to come with her to say goodbye to Mei’s father, taking a first step to breaking the painful cycle of missed encounters of their father-daughter relationship:   “Yuzu, why do you always make these dramatic decisions without thinking?”   “I am thinking, Mei! I thought a lot about how I can make you happy, and this is what I came up with!”   “That doesn’t really answer my question though…”   “Fine, there is no right answer! I’m doing this because I wanted to, end of story!”   Up to this point in the show Yuzu had been in doubt about whether or not she actually “loved” Mei in a romantic way that went beyond physical attraction and familial obligation. This is the moment of truth that proves Yuzu’s love structurally in the show, exemplified in the beautiful swell of the music, Yuzu’s fully confident words with no internal monologue (which is constant throughout most of the show), and Mei’s stunned gaze as the sincerity of Yuzu’s words breaks through her thick fog of self hatred. This further driven home during the denouement of the episode by Yuzu’s tears of relief from nowhere (“I’m sorry.. this is your big moment and I’m the one who’s a mess..”) after getting back home and hearing that Mei was able to have a true moment of connection with her father. Yuzu’s vulnerability draws Mei in, as it had previously, but something is different this time. They stop and gasp at each other’s gaze when they first find each other face to face, and then they sit aside from each other in stunned silence after the kiss is over. After a half season of misrecognition (and preceding a half season more of it), things are finally firing on all cylinders: they want each other, can admit that to themselves, accept the reality of the other’s desire, and are willing to let them have it. The moment of truth of love from nowhere passes into the moment of the erotic mutual recognition: the ontological sister is at last lover. "We are surrounded by innumerable living and conscious beings[...] But rather than knowing that they really exist and that they are as much alive as we ourselves, it nevertheless appears to us that they have a less real existence and that they are less living than we ourselves[...] Now, to feel something as real in the measure of its full reality is to love. It is a love which awakens us to the reality of ourselves, to the reality of others, to the reality of the world and to the reality of God [...] In the beginning there was only one love and its source was one, since its principle was one. All forms of love (charity, friendship, paternal love, maternal love, filial love, brotherly love) derive from the same unique primordial root of the couple Adam-Eve" - Valentin Tomberg, "Meditations on the Tarot", "Letter VI, The Lover"   In “The Second Sex”, Simone de Beauvoir analyzes man/woman relations in terms of relations between subject/object and transcendent self/immanent other, identifying this as the ideal/ideological supplement of material patriarchy as well as the source of the painful failures and contradictions plaguing heterosexual intimacy. “Man” is situated as human living for himself, overcoming himself (and acculturated to own his alienated self as well in the form of the phallus), and “woman” is cast opposite this as inessential, immanent (i.e. tied down to that which is cyclical and does not “go beyond”), and a mysterious and contradictory Other. For de Beauvoir, a truly erotic encounter (and a truly satisfying relationship) involves a dialectical/dialogic passing for each partner between both of these moments, both owning your desire and full presence in the moment, and also giving yourself over as a object of physical and structural (i.e. playing the role in their fantasy) desire. The critical idea here is that there is a more radical point beyond the common wisdom that you must be able to see your lover as an equal. In truth, you must be able to see them both as the "thing" of your desire and as an independent desiring-subject, as personhood (including yours!) is always[-already] a contradiction and movement between these moments.   This dialectic is the fulfillment of ontological sister as neighbor and mother, and is the meaning of ontological sister as lover. It is also the core of the back and forth between Yuzu and Mei that forms the backbone of the show. Their relation begins with a contingent, too close encounter when Mei gropes Yuzu to confiscate her phone at the entrance to the school. Mei is unphased and retains her sovereignty here, seeing Yuzu only as an object of/to discipline. For Yuzu, however, this encounter is an erotic rupture. Previously, she’s always been in calm control of her objective side through her love of fashion and her ability to keep men at arm’s length and at the level of abstract fantasy. What’s truly traumatic about Mei’s intrusion is how it isn’t even “objectifying” in the usual sense; Yuzu’s body is not a thing of beauty or desire or intrigue. Even in incredibly compromising closeness, Yuzu, her body, and the tension of the moment are no-thing to Mei.   This dynamic is immediately reversed when Yuzu witnesses Mei being sexually assaulted by her finance (who is a professor at the school!). While, of course, the moment is violating and objectifying for Mei in and of itself, she has poised herself to own it. She has already accepted the loveless engagement as a career move, and she has a deep well of suppressed erotic longings (though it isn't manga canon, multiple framing and dialog choices in the show seem to imply that she was a previous victim as well, perhaps at the hand of her father, and this primed her to be the way she is), so she gives herself to it. Yuzu’s intrusion, the fact of her gaze, changes the dynamic of the situation totally, Mei is forced to reckon with herself as object beyond her own interests. Yuzu’s gaze retroactively changes the nature of their morning encounter as well; on Yuzu’s side this becomes explicit physical attraction, and it’s implied that Mei senses this shift as well. This is further driven home later after they’re in their bedroom together. Yuzu, attempting to regain a bit of power over Mei (as well as reckon with her own confusing attraction), teases Mei about what she saw, speculating wistfully about how it felt, not recognizing the non consensual element, and belying own her objectification of Mei (i.e. Yuzu was so busy gawking over Mei in the moment that she missed the truth of the situation!). In the show’s most controversial moment, Mei then wordlessly walks over and sexually assaults Yuzu, holding her down and kissing her. Critically, during the teasing, Mei’s face is facing away from the camera, and when she stands up and speaks after (“It felt like that. Magical enough for you?”) her face is obscured by the ceiling light, only being revealed, sad and resigned, in a brief closeup as leaves the room after speaking.   For as violent (and “problematic”) as it is, their entire relationship hinges on this moment. Of course, for Yuzu this moment is a trauma in the traditional sense. It disrupts her sense of safety and identity, destructively pulls her out of her normal world into dissociative replays of the moment, and makes her anhedonic (“Not long ago that would have made my day…”). But this is complicated further in her by the fact that it creates more physical desire in her. Additionally, she is confused as she spectulates on the parallel ways that even a seemingly non-violent event of love is known to have violent internal effects. None of this makes it okay, obviously (and these can be part of assaults that have absolutely no mitigating factors and don't become forgiven and healed from). The arc of the show answers the first question of “was this first violent rupture love?” with a “No… but.” What makes the “but” possible is in the distinction between what happens at the entrance to their school and what happens in the bedroom. In the first instance, Mei is fully in herself in her strength and independence. In the second, Mei is actually at her weakest. She’s been humiliated and degraded, and she lashes out because it’s the only thing she knows. It’s a move of desperation, dragging Yuzu down with her. It meant something; it revealed something. And Yuzu knows this, and this nagging core of recognition of everything revealed in Mei’s face as she turned away is what becomes real love and real eroticism.