Anime Review: Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk

The Spring 2026 season had one of those weird, likely unintentional synergies. Much as when, a few years ago, we had the first season of MF Ghost and Overtake airing at the same time, that season had the start of Drops of God alongside a yuri romance anime that was also about booze called Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk. For the sake of manageability, I’m just going to refer to the anime by the character’s first name, and the character by her first name.

The show starts off with some explainer anime energy. Botan is a college student who is now old enough to drink, who is living in an off-campus dorm with several other girls. She’s a little restrained in her interactions until she comes across her dorm “mother” (technically still a classmate) Ibuki drinking by herself, because she has hiccups when she drinks and she’s self conscious. Botan doesn’t object to her hiccups, and decides she’ll have what she’s having (drink wide). This leads to Botan opening up to Ibuki (and eventually a romance), developing an interest in alcohol, and also getting to know her dorm mates better, some of whom end up with satellite romances of their own.

Botan Kamiina is, frankly, gorgeous. It was weird seeing this show, through traditional, 2D animation, make the pouring and movement of alcohol in a glass look more fluid and natural than Drops of God – the anime adaptation of the manga that changed the world of wine and which received 3 live action adaptations before this. There’s just so much attention to detail on every aspect – the liquid in glasses, the bottles, the rooms where the booze is drunk, whether it’s a bar or a dorm room or a hot spring hotel. Most of these generally feel grounded, though some locations later in the series feel a little more outlandish – there’s a bar that feels too big and a store with an incredibly long escalator with mannequins hanging from the ceiling (among a few other places) which makes them feel like we’re entering the territory of Revolutionary Girl Utena, with environments that try to evoke both the mood of the scene while also having a loose sense of place.

This fits with the flow of the narrative. Early in in the series, it’s all about getting to know the dorm-mates and their interests, and consequently we get into detail on their rooms and their hobbies, as well as the booze of the episode. By the latter part of the series, we know the characters so now we’re getting into the emotions of those characters. Those emotions are romantic, and sexual, and are thus big, so the environments reflect that. They don’t need to be realistic because to these people, even though they’re out of the tempestuous hormones of adolescence, they’re still in a place where they’re figuring things out, and they’re messy and complicated.

It’s a very well done show. Not every relationship ends in a satisfying way, but it’s an unsatisfying way that feels natural. It’s not a situation where I feel like I need to read the manga to get the rest of the ending – it’s a situation where there are multiple directions those relationships can go, and some of them leave things hanging, because that’s the one thing High School and College relationships have in common – sometimes relationships end in a kind of messy manner.

You can find where you can stream Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk through JustWatch.