This post got a bit longer than I intended it to be, so I'm going to add a tl;dr here.

Tl;dr - I watched the anime all the way through for the first time in 17 years, and found it so beautiful. It felt like it finally allowed me to step back and recognize how much I have grown and matured in who I am.

I would consider myself a veteran anime lover. I have always tended to gravitate towards yaoi and for most of my life I didn't know why. I have, over time, realized that it has a lot to do with my gender identity and sexuality. I'm an AFAB person under the trans umbrella. I'm also on the aroace spectrums! But for most of my teenage years I stayed away from yuri (and that is a story for another time).

There was one anime, however, that intrigued me enough to watch a couple episodes when I was a teen, and that was Strawberry Panic. I remember feeling like I liked it, but also being a bit uncomfortable with / unused to the yuri because I like to see myself in the characters, and I didn't like seeing myself as a young woman (it was an upsetting reminder to me about my gender dysphoria). So I watched those 2 or 3 episode and then put it down.

It's been about 17 years since then, and I have certainly grown and matured. I have even experienced falling in love, despite my aromantic tendencies. And the person I love more than anything in this world is also AFAB. We had a falling out and I was certain I would never be in their life again, but fate (or whatever) has brought us together again. While I still have lots of dysphoria about my body, and plenty of uncertainty about my gender identity, I can say solidly that I have battled so much of my shame and internalized phobias, and I am no longer so hesitant about enjoying sapphic content and yuri anime.

I think I saw a tiktok that mentioned Strawberry Panic, and it reminded me that I never watched it all the way through. So this past weekend, I started to watch it again for the first time in nearly 2 decades. And I couldn't stop. It was just so beautiful and full of complex emotions.

I realized that it doesn't matter what your gender or sexual orientation is - this show is about love and loss and navigating emotional pain. And that is something that resonated with me so deeply. As I watched the last episode, I couldn't help but liken it to the complicated relationship I experienced; my person pushed me away, and I was forced to try to put myself back together and move forward despite knowing that we BOTH still loved each other very much. And the moment Shizuma opens that door to stop the ceremony and profess her love to Nagisa - that reminded me of how my person and I reunited. But even if I hadn't had these experiences, I still would have found the anime beautiful and meaningful.

Watching it again, this time all the way through and with an open heart, feels like I have turned the page on this long chapter of my life. Like I have reconciled my demons and righted the wrongs of my past. I know it sounds weird but it really feels like I faced some fear or completed a circuit. And I'm so proud that I did. And grateful too! Because it was such a beautiful thing to watch. And I have been crying so much with these last few episodes. I really don't know what I was expecting, but it sure wasn't how moving and exciting this anime is.

I doubt I'll be able to get my partner to watch it though ahaha. We'll see!

Look how pretty my wife is🤍

How can 1 Silver-ish White Haired Girl Be this Goddamn Attractive to Me? I mean, she's giving Me Vibes that Feel a BIT Similar to "Vergil" from the "Devil May Cry" Franchise if Vergil was a Female and had LONG ASS Hair like My Older Brother irl (True Fact, my Older Bro's Hair Reaches PAST HIS SHOULDERS)! So Seriously, how is Shizuma-Sama this F*=KING ATTRACTIVE?!?!?! I Feel like I'm Staring at an Angel that I've Been Searching for ALL MY LIFE!!!

Shizuma-Sama is Life. Shizuma-Sama is Love. Shizuma-Sama is a Bae. And Shizuma-Sama is ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL AND SHOCKINGLY SE*****Y~~~~~💗🤍💗

Hi nice people of reddit i show a small nagisa i made.

I hope in a future make more draws!

Please don't burn me

https://preview.redd.it/mdzgsus2wlpd1.jpg?width=1626&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=104f9bddbe25716848eaf2159401d7832d9e0ee3

Any German fans of Strawberry Panic?

I was 14 (around 2016) when I first watched Strawberry Panic and I found it on this On Demand channel called Toku. It was the first Yuri anime I had ever watched and I didn’t fully understand what it was about until I found it again like 5 years later. And I didn’t know what Yuri was back then so I just called it “lesbian anime”. I remember watching only a few episodes and thinking the show was adorable since it was about romance between young schoolgirls, and the only character I remembered at the time was Nagisa because of her iconic red hair. Then I kinda forgot her name and when remembering the show years later, I googled “lesbian anime series about catholic school girls”. That’s when I became a fan of the show again and I bought one of the mangas.

For now, they have it officially streaming with subtitles over at animeonegai Fingers crossed for an official English dub after all these years! (Run the image through google translate if needed)

https://preview.redd.it/36fuaucsdu3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=af2de47b5dac613654331b4f3bb9783e0786bc5a

Please, I need the internet to discuss this with me chapter by chapter, volume by volume. xD

Anybody have any artwork they made that was inspired by the show? I’m not an artist myself so I had my talented tattoo artist do the work for me🙏

Be creative.

I was wondering if there was an English dub of this series somewhere. It’s a fairly popular anime, so there might be?

Was she the only heterosexual in the series?

Hi all,

I just rewatched SP for the first time in years and am feeling a little empty now that I finished. Like a lot of people here, SP was there for me when I needed it, back when I was a closeted bi.

I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions on similar shows/anime to watch. Specifically ones that have the same vibe of coziness, friendship, and community while coming of age. Also the pretty backdrop of Astraea Hill; it's gorgeous.

Hello everyone! It's been ages since i watched this anime, and i hope somebody can help me. Years ago there was an amazing AMV of Strawberry panic, and it had the song More and More by Dj Hixxy. But it's been taken down few years ago im assuming, basically what i want is, if somebody has or knows the song version that was played in the video as it's not the original song. I would really appreciate if anyone can help me, I've been desperate for months now and still can't find that song version 😣

Hey,

Since watching the anime, I've wanted to find out what was left of the original short stories published in Dengeki G's Magazine from 2003 to 2005. So far, the best I have found is a series of scans uploaded on two image boards.

http://lthnadml.minitokyo.net/gallery?index=3&tid=1411&page=3https://www.zerochan.net/user/moonelf313/Strawberry+Panic%21

Neither of these are complete however, and in some cases the user uploading them has cut out some of the japanese text from the scans in order to fit two pages together (the scans were clearly uploaded more to show off the images than the text).

The descriptions on all the scans in the first link say 'Strawberry Panic Complete Anthology . . . It is a complete anthology of official Strawberry Panic! scans', as well as the user saying they got the scans from a place called 'hongfire' and attributing the source to 'bt'.

This description makes it seem like at one point there was a complete, comprehensive collection of all the Strawberry Panic short stories, and while many of them have been collected on these sites, it clearly isn't all of them and like I said some have been cropped. Both users haven't been online since 2011 so asking them about it is out of the question. The 'hongfire' website in question doesn't appear to be around anymore (and it was apparently popularly used for torrenting hentai which makes researching it not very pleasant lol), and I have no idea who 'bt' could be, so I'm pretty stuck.

Obviously this is unlikely, but if anyone here knows anything about these scans, or if the contents of 'hongfire' have been backed up somewhere out there on the internet, I would be incredibly grateful for any help or information.

I have volumes one and two but I haven't been able to find the volume three and at the end of volume two it says continued in volume three any information would be helpful thank you in advance

Hi you all... I just rewatched the series and I think you can imagine how I feel. There's just something so sad about knowing that a story that makes you feel so much in so little time will never be continued and just keep losing presence and popularity until it's forgotten.

I wonder if Sakurako Kimino ever thinks about SP, and if she knows how much has affected to a lot of us.

I don't know you all but for me it was the first yuri I ever saw, and it came to me when I needed it the most because at that time I was still in the closet, but seeing something like this, made with such love and talking about same sex love changed me so much.

Anyway sorry to bother you, I needed to let it all out.

Hope you have an amazing day.

PS: Also I cannot get over how amazing and touching the OST is. Just wanted to add that.