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Run Away With Me, Girl (2018) by Battan, scanlation by Sexy Akiba Detectives

Citrus is founded in it’s characters being chained to roles in various ways.

You have Mei who ties her worth to taking over and managing the school her father abandoned, seeing it as the only way to save her families legacy—something she alone can bear. She sacrifices her own individuality to fulfill what other’s wishes for her are. Harumi does the same, hiding the individualistic side of herself from her strict older sister to to avoid getting in trouble, distinctly referring to herself as “a gyaru in disguise”. She’s not quite as sacrifice as Mei, but still suppresses certain aspects of herself and only lets her true self shine when not under the pressure of her sister or the school.

Then you have Yuzu, an outspoken, brash gyaru. An Individual to her core—someone completely unable to be contained by the boundaries of the school. She’s disliked vastly and threatened expulsion repeatedly, yet regardless she pushes through idealistically. She blazes her own trail.

I believe this ties into the gyaru subculture, unmistakably a massive part of Citrus’s identity as a series. The gyaru movement began because Japanese girls felt so much pressure from social norms, rules, and expectations that this was a form of rebellion. A complete flip of what was typically expected of a Japanese girl’s appearance and attitude, it is a vulgar, in your face form of self-expression—one that takes the will of someone completely willing to face judgment and disdain head on, and as seems to be a recurring line in Citrus, blaze their own trail.