Synopsis
Rintaro is used to being misunderstood. With his bleached hair, tall stature, and piercings, people see him as a high school thug looking for a fight. This isn’t helped by the fact that he goes to an all-boys high school known for being bottom-tier.
The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity anime, adapted from Saka Mikami’s manga by the studio CloverWorks, is a story of love in unlikely places. While working at his family’s patisserie, Rintaro meets a girl eating multiple people’s worth of cake with the happiest expression. The girl is Kaoruko, a student from the all-girls school right next door to Rintaro’s. This school is known for its rich and refined students, who are not afraid to show their disdain for Rintaro and his classmates. These assumptions cause all sorts of misunderstandings between the two schools.
After meeting Kaoruko, though, Rintaro’s world begins to open. Now his friends and family aren’t the only ones who see his good side. Kaoruko does too. Perhaps the rift between Rintaro and Kaoruko’s schools might be mended by their unconventional friendship–and perhaps romance.
The Good
The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity is airing the same season as CloverWorks’s second season of My Dress-Up Darling. While it doesn’t get quite the star animation and direction treatment as the latter, The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity still looks really good in anime form. Kaoruko’s tiny size is emphasized even more in the anime compared to Rintaro, which adds to how cute they look together.
Having read the first three volumes of the manga, the first episode keeps a good pace and ends where Rintaro protects Kaoruko from some thugs that appeared earlier in the episode. Here Rintaro and Kaoruko have their first heart-to-heart, and it does a lot to challenge Rintaro’s assumption that everything is always his fault.
Where this story shines is definitely its cast of characters. Rintaro’s family and friends love him because they know he’s actually a very sweet person. Their solid foundation allows Rintaro to continue to be himself. But I’m excited to see how Kaoruko might change it up so that more people know how great Rintaro is, one cake eating date at a time.
The dub is solid, and Rintarou’s raspy English voice is a good blend of tough and sweet. His voice actor conveys both his introspective and tough-looking sides that cause so many people who don’t bother to look past his exterior to misunderstand him.
The Bad
The anime relies on manga devices like reused comic-like frames to convey emotions and beats, when it should instead lean into its own medium. Still, I’m looking forward to how the anime can expand on the manga’s premise, and I can’t deny that the anime looks really good.
The dubbed screener that was provided did not subtitle onscreen text. This was most notable in the scene when Rintarou receives a message on a messaging app from his mother about working after school, complete with a cute sticker. In another scene, Rintaro’s mother is shown in the background commenting on Rintaro talking loudly with Kaoruko, but the visible text of her comment is not shown in English. Providing translations for this text would have helped us better understand the characters. This may be corrected in the final release, but its absence here is an oversight in dubbed anime.
The Verdict
The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity adaptation is shaping up to be something beautiful and sweet. I can’t wait for more people to meet the rest of the cast, and see how they all grow together thanks to Kaoruko and Rintaro’s efforts. The assumptions and misunderstandings between them won’t go away any time soon. But the seeds of Rintaro and Kaoruko’s romance are well-planted in this adaptation.
The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity airs on Netflix starting September 7, 2025.
Credits
Original Work by Saka Mikami
Direction by Miyuki Kuroki
Series Composition by Rino Yamazaki
Character Design/Chief Animation Direction by Kouhei Tokuoka
Music by Moeki Harada
Animated by CloverWorks
Dubbed by Dubbing Brothers – Burbank – USA
Dubbing Director Joe Fria
Adapter Galia A Prate
Recordist Jeff Miley
Mixer David Cobb
Project Manager Nicholas D. Fluhr
Rintaro Tsumugi English Dub Voice by Robbie Daymond
Kaoruko Waguri English Dub Voice by Bijou Middlebrooks
A special thank you to 33 USA Inc. for allowing us the opportunity to preview the series in advance. Receiving access to this anime series has in no way altered the opinions expressed in this article.
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