Mitsuki x Hime

Mitsuki x Hime is the femslash ship between Mitsuki Yani and Hime Shiraki from the Yuri is My Job fandom.

Canon
Hime and Mitsuki meet each other at school. The two form a close friendship in fifth grade when Hime agrees to accompany Mitsuki during a piano recital. Each wants to treat the other well, but it isn’t long before their different communication styles come into conflict. Mitsuki centers all of their hang-outs around practicing piano, passionate about being able to share her hobby with someone who understands. While Hime, for her part, respects Mitsuki's dedication and enjoys spending time with her. But it isn’t long before their classmates interpret it as Mitsuki forcing Hime to practice and try to “help.”

When all these rumors start, Hime’s focus isn’t on whether hanging out with Mitsuki makes her look bad. Instead, she calibrates her responses to try and protect Mitsuki's reputation. She even calls her classmates on the phone and makes up an excuse to break plans with them so she can spend time with Mitsuki instead. She tries her best to show Mitsuki that she “always tells lies” in hopes that Mitsuki won’t be hurt by things she might overhear in class. But when Hime goes so far as to drop out of the recital to protect Mitsuki from bullying (without, crucially, telling Mitsuki) the other girl lashes out and ends up getting Hime branded as a liar for the rest of elementary school.

Years later, both girls end up working in a Class-S-themed café. The café has a dynamic where all the waitstaff pretend to be students of the elite Liebe Girls Academy. Hime gets there filling in for an injured employee. Mitsuki, on the other hand, troubled by her tendency to hurt others accidentally, works there by choice. Hime maintains a constant facade of the sweet and beloved princess. Inside the café, Mitsuki acts as Hime’s “onee-sama”, holding her close and praising her to the delight of Liebe’s patrons. However, she is terse and often angry with Hime, unable to move beyond a misunderstanding in their shared past and her insecurities about Hime’s true feelings.

Quotes
"Then we were reunited at Liebe. The feelings inside me were rekindled. Hime was a wonderful girl, just like she always had been. Even knowing it was me, she was kind. That made me happy. I ended up assuming that these feelings from back then could come back to life... That we could pick up the way things once were. It got harder and harder to suppress those feelings. I grew jealous. I was afraid I would ruin things... And so I couldn't show her my true feelings. And yet, Hime... She rescued me once more. I love Hime. I can't run or hide from that anymore. I don't want to. I got a do-over. The crush that was born that day... and has been in a slumber ever since... got a chance."

- Mitsuki makes a recapitulation of her history with Hime.

Fanon
is the most popular ship within the Yuri Is My Job! fandom, being the main couple of the series. Fans have been rooting for their relationship since the beginning of the series, knowing full-well that they will end up together. But due to the fact that the series is a slow-burn, fans had to still root for them over the course of the series. However, some fans of the ship started getting frustrated with this, often fearing the series would've been queer-bait, which ended up being not the case.

This has led many fans to realize the meta commentary this series has of yuri dynamics in general. LGBTQ+ anime fans can no doubt relate to Hime’s agonized uncertainty. So much of the legitimization of queer relationships in media is bound up in language, such that anything communicated non-verbally is defacto treated as potentially illegitimate. “The love that dare not speak its name” was historically rendered as coding or unspoken subtext, because saying the magic words meant being relegated to a punchline, pathology, or a quick death. Class-S (and western equivalents) treat queerness between girls in particular as transitory and not worth taking seriously. Even today, there is no shortage of anime that have used some variation on “I like you” between two same-gender characters only for some viewers (and sometimes even sequel series) to continue to treat that closeness as ambiguous.

Fandom
FAN ART