is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Nio Nakatani. The manga began serialization in the Japanese monthly shōnen manga magazine Dengeki Daioh on April 27, 2015, and ended on September 27, 2019. The story follows two female high school students, Yuu Koito and Touko Nanami, and the relationship that develops between them as they learn more about themselves through their experiences together.
Prior to creating Bloom Into You, Nakatani self-published various works which featured girl-girl pairings of Touhou characters. Although she had not intended these works to be of the genre, they were received as such by readers. This led her to be interested in producing a romance story featuring an unambiguous love between girls. A Dengeki Daioh editor approached Nakatani at a convention, proposing that she draw a yuri series for the magazine, an offer which she accepted.
The manga was collected in eight volumes that were first published in Japan between October 2015 and November 2019 by ASCII Media Works under the Dengeki Comics NEXT label. The volumes were later licensed for English release in North America by Seven Seas Entertainment, and were released between January 2017 and August 2020. An anime television series adaptation produced by Troyca and covering the first five volumes of the manga aired between October and December 2018. The anime is licensed in North America by Sentai Filmworks.
Plot First-year high school student Yuu Koito unexpectedly receives a confession from a middle school classmate. Feeling that she does not understand love, she turns him down. She later sees second-year student council member Touko Nanami turning down a confession, and becomes convinced that Touko feels similarly about romance. She approaches Touko and the two begin to bond, before Touko suddenly confesses feelings for Yuu, surprising her. Although Yuu does not feel capable of reciprocating, Touko is not bothered by this and says she would be very happy if Yuu were to not return her feelings.
Touko runs for the position of student council president and asks Yuu to be her campaign manager. To the dismay of Touko's best friend Sayaka Saeki, Yuu accepts the role. Touko expresses that she feels emotionally reliant on Yuu, as she is the only one to whom Touko can be vulnerable. Yuu decides to join the student council to support Touko, who ultimately wins the election.
As president, Touko plans to revive the student council play, which has not been performed in seven years. Yuu is against the idea, and chooses not to suggest her novelist friend Koyomi Kanou when the other members ask who could write it. Sayaka tells Yuu to solicit Koyomi's involvement and to look into the student council president of seven years ago. Yuu learns that Touko's older sister Mio was the student council president at that time and had been producing a play, but was killed in a traffic accident before its premiere. Yuu realizes that Touko is emulating her sister and wants to produce the play in her place. She tries to convince Touko that this is unnecessary, but Touko coldly refuses.
Koyomi finishes the first draft of the play. The narrative follows an amnesiac girl who must choose which person's view of her is her true self, with the original ending involving the girl choosing her lover's view. When the student council holds a study camp to practice for the play, actor Tomoyuki Ichigaya, a former classmate of Mio's, is brought in to help. From him, Touko learns that Mio was a very different person than who she is now, leaving her conflicted. Concerned, Yuu has Koyomi change the ending to have the protagonist choose to be herself instead of conforming to a specific person's view, believing that this will help Touko come to terms with herself. When the play is performed at the cultural festival, its narrative and Touko's performance are acclaimed by the audience, and the manager of a local theater troupe approaches Touko, asking her to join them and become an actress. She initially declines, but eventually reconsiders and accepts.
Touko thanks Yuu for her support and reiterates her wish for Yuu to stay with her as she is. However, Yuu has developed feelings for Touko, and abruptly confesses her love. She misinterprets Touko's shocked response as rejection and runs away. Touko realizes that her ultimatum that Yuu not fall in love with her has caused Yuu to repress herself. Meanwhile, Sayaka speaks with café owner Miyako Kodama, in whom she confides her own romantic feelings for Touko. When the second-years take a class trip to Kyoto, Sayaka formally confesses to Touko. Touko turns Sayaka down and acknowledges her love for Yuu. Although dejected, Sayaka accepts this. Elsewhere, Yuu realizes that she is running away from her problems. The two reconcile and Yuu finally openly reciprocates Touko's feelings.
Over time, Yuu and Touko become more emotionally and physically intimate with each other. This culminates when they go bowling together, with the agreement that whoever wins gets to make a request of the other. Yuu wins and asks to sleep over at Touko's house. Touko agrees, confessing she had wanted to arrange that as well. They spend the evening at Touko's parents' apartment, where they have sex for the first time.
Three years later, Yuu and Touko have enrolled in university and are now wearing rings on their fingers. They reunite with the former student council members to attend the cultural festival at their old high school. As Yuu and Touko reminisce about how their relationship started and reflect on their new lives as adults, they walk off into the night.
Characters
Voiced by: Hisako Kanemoto (manga PV), Yūki Takada (anime) (Japanese); Tia Ballard (English) Yuu is a 15-year-old high school girl at Toomi Higashi High School who has trouble experiencing feelings of love. She finds it hard to refuse any requests asked upon her.
Voiced by: Minako Kotobuki (manga PV, anime) (Japanese); Luci Christian (English) Touko is a 16-year-old high school girl and the student council president. She had trouble experiencing feelings of love until she met Yuu. While on the outside she seems dependable and unshakable, she has hidden her fears and desires, especially when it comes to everyone else comparing her to her deceased sister. Yuu and Sayaka have deduced this, while only Yuu has seen her vulnerable side.
Voiced by: Ai Kayano (Japanese); Shanae'a Moore (English) Sayaka is Touko's best friend since their first year of high school, and feels she knows Touko best. She is a second-year high school girl and the student council vice president. She is secretly in love with Touko, but keeps this to herself, unwilling to jeopardize their existing relationship. She decided that she was fine simply supporting her friend however she could.
Voiced by: Taichi Ichikawa (Japanese); Clint Bickham (English) Seiji is a first-year high school boy and a member of the student council. He grew up surrounded by two older sisters and a younger sister, so he finds it easy to talk with girls.
Voiced by: Shō Nogami (Japanese); Greg Cote (English) Doujima is a first-year high school boy and a member of the student council.
Voiced by: Konomi Kohara (Japanese); Brittney Karbowski (English) Koyomi is Yuu's classmate and friend from middle school. She wants to become a writer.
Voiced by: Yuka Terasaki (Japanese); Amber Lee Connors (English) Akari is Yuu's classmate and friend from middle school. She is a member of the basketball club.
Voiced by: Mai Nakahara (Japanese); Patricia Duran (English) Hakozaki is a literature teacher and the student council's staff advisor.
Voiced by: Nanako Mori (Japanese); Samantha Stevens (English) Miyako is the manager of a café that the student council members frequent. She is in a relationship with Riko Hakozaki and the two of them live in an apartment together.
Voiced by: Mikako Komatsu (Japanese); Marissa Lenti (English) Rei is Yuu's older sister who attends university. She has a boyfriend, Hiro, who visits the family regularly. She likes to bake. She also seems to realize there is something between Yuu and Touko.
Voiced by: Kazuyuki Okitsu (Japanese); Blake Shepard (English) Tomoyuki is a professional actor who was a classmate of Mio Nanami seven years ago.
Voiced by: Sayaka Senbongi (Japanese) Sayaka's ex-girlfriend and senpai from middle school, who initially confesses to and forms a relationship with her which she later breaks off, saying that it was "just a phase" and that they cannot have a relationship as two girls. In the manga and anime, Chie is not named and only referred to as "senpai" by Sayaka, but is named in the Regarding Saeki Sayaka novels.
Production Background
Prior to creating the series, Nio Nakatani was mainly known for her work on , especially those based on the Touhou Project series. Because her works were primarily about relationships between girls (which Nakatani attributed to the Touhou series' almost entirely female cast), she gained a reputation as an author of manga. This surprised Nakatani, as she had not intentionally set out to write yuri nor considered her works as such, and she said that she had primarily sought to depict complex human relationships that interested her. However, as she nonetheless was interested in the genre, she became interested in drawing an unambiguous love story between girls.
When Tatsuya Kusunoki, an editor of the manga magazine Dengeki Daioh (in which Nakatani had professionally debuted with her previously self-published short story Farewell to My Alter) approached Nakatani at a convention, asking if she wanted to draw a yuri series for the magazine, Nakatani accepted the offer. Kusunoki stated that he had always enjoyed yuri manga and had wanted to produce one. He said that as Dengeki Daioh had not previously featured a similar girls' love story, it was uncertain whether such a proposal would be accepted. The editor-in-chief ultimately approved of the idea, which Kusunoki attributed to the publication's "open-minded" culture and the magazine's financial resources.
Regarding her approach to the genre, Nakatani stated that while she liked romance stories, she was disappointed with narratives that painted a relationship as necessary to complete oneself emotionally, as it made her feel as if "something was wrong with me." Nakatani felt that same-sex romances often avoided this dichotomy, and that as she struggled to write a convincing heterosexual romance, she was more drawn towards creating manga about same-sex couples. While Nakatani had also drawn boys' love manga previously, she found more interesting, since she wanted to draw cute girls. In one interview, she said that was difficult to define, but that "once the reader thinks it is , then at that moment it becomes ." In a conversation with Riddle Story of Devil creators Yun Kōga and Sunao Minakata, she concurred with Kōga's statement that is about "girls getting involved with other girls," adding the qualification that it is "feelings between girls." She also cited the anime adaptation of Sound! Euphonium as an influence, saying it showed "everything I want to do in ."
Early development