Bloom Into You
やがて君になる
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A girl who cannot fall in love and the girl who falls for exactly that.
Yuu Koito, a first-year at Toomi Higashi High School, has never felt that anyone was special to her, and a confession from a boy she knew in middle school leaves her cold. Helping out at the student council, she watches Touko Nanami, the admired second-year expected to become president, turn down a boy and say she has no intention of going out with anyone. Yuu thinks she has found someone like herself. Then Touko tells her that she has fallen in love with her.
Touko asks only to be allowed to love Yuu without being loved back, and Yuu, who finds it hard to refuse anyone, agrees. She becomes Touko's campaign manager and joins the council when Touko wins the election. In private Touko kisses her more than once, and Yuu, feeling nothing she can name, lets her. Maki, a fellow council member who prefers watching other people's romances, sees them and keeps quiet, but hints that Yuu may feel more than she admits.
Touko wants to revive the council's play for the school festival, abandoned seven years earlier. Yuu learns why. The president seven years ago was Touko's older sister, Mio, who died in a traffic accident before she could stage it, and Touko, once a timid girl hiding behind her sister, has been living as Mio's copy ever since. Sayaka Saeki, the vice-president, has loved Touko silently since their first year; a girl she dated in middle school ended it by calling it a phase, and Sayaka finds unexpected understanding from Miyako, a café owner who lives with their teacher, Riko Hakozaki.
Yuu's classmate Koyomi writes the script: an amnesiac girl must choose whose version of her is true, and chooses her lover's. At the council's rehearsal camp an actor who knew Mio tells Touko that her sister was nothing like the person she has been imitating, and Touko is shaken. Yuu, aware now that she has begun to feel something herself, asks Koyomi to rewrite the ending so that the girl chooses to be herself. The series ends before the play is staged: after a day at an aquarium, Yuu rehearses a scene with Touko and tells her, through the play, that she does not have to become someone else. The manga, which ended in 2019, goes on to the performance and to the two of them becoming a couple.
Starring
Yuki Takadaas Yuu Koito
A first-year who has never felt anyone was special to her, and who agrees to let Touko love her without loving back.
Yuu Koito’s story
A boy's confession leaves Yuu cold, and she thinks she has found someone like herself in Touko, until Touko tells her she has fallen for her. Unable to refuse, Yuu accepts Touko's terms, runs her election campaign and joins the student council. She lets Touko kiss her, and when Maki sees them she insists she feels nothing; he suggests otherwise. Learning that Touko is living as her dead sister, Yuu tries to talk her out of the play, is refused, and promises to stay at her side anyway. By sports day she is aware of something stirring in herself, and keeps it to herself because of her promise. She has Koyomi rewrite the play's ending, and in rehearsal, after a day at the aquarium, tells Touko through the script that she does not have to become someone else.
Minako Kotobukias Touko Nanami
The admired student council president, secretly living as a copy of her dead sister, who falls for Yuu.
Touko Nanami’s story
Touko was a timid girl hiding behind her sister, Mio, the student council president, until Mio died in a traffic accident before she could stage the council's play. Since then Touko has lived as Mio's copy, disliking both the copy and the girl beneath it. She lets only Yuu, who cannot fall for anyone, see her weakness, and falls for her, asking never to be loved back. She wins the presidency, kisses Yuu when they are alone, and sets out to stage Mio's play, refusing Yuu's plea to stop, for fear that if Yuu changed she would be alone again. At rehearsal camp one of Mio's classmates tells her that her sister was nothing like the person she has copied. Shaken, she confides in Yuu, who tells her, through the play, that she need not become someone else.
Ai Kayanoas Sayaka Saeki
The vice-president and Touko's closest friend, who has loved her in silence since their first year.
Sayaka Saeki’s story
Sayaka once dated an older girl at her girls' middle school who never took it seriously, and she chose a co-educational high school to shut that side of herself away. Then Touko gave the new students' speech, and Sayaka fell for her at first sight. She has stayed beside Touko ever since, as friend and vice-president, saying nothing, because Touko falls for no one. Yuu unsettles her: Sayaka resents Yuu's place in the campaign but helps her, and points her to the council president of seven years ago. At a café she realises that the owner, Miyako, and their teacher Riko are a couple, and to Miyako she confides her love for Touko. Meeting her ex-girlfriend, she says her piece. The anime leaves her with her love unspoken, at Touko's side, asking what Touko really knew of Mio.
Taichi Ichikawaas Seiji Maki
A first-year council member who feels no romance himself and likes to watch other people's, from a distance.
Konomi Koharaas Koyomi Kanou
Yuu's friend, an aspiring novelist who writes the council's play and rewrites its ending at Yuu's request.
Nanako Morias Miyako Kodama
The owner of the café the council frequents, who lives with the teacher Riko and gives Sayaka someone to confide in.
Why it matters
Nio Nakatani's story begins with a girl who cannot feel what everyone around her seems to feel, and for thirteen episodes it lets that stand without treating her as broken. Many English-language critics read Yuu as aromantic or asexual; the anime, which stops before the manga has her fall fully in love, spread that reading, and some of those viewers felt let down by where the story went. Its other subject is Touko, who has turned herself into her dead sister, dislikes both the copy and the girl beneath it, and asks to be loved on condition that she is never loved back. Critics argued, too, over Touko's insistent kisses, which some saw as a harmful yuri trope. The series answers partly through its adults: a café owner and a teacher living quietly together, proof to Sayaka that none of this is a phase.