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There more backstory is revealed the more depressing this show is getting because its going to take a Aside from that theres a ton of loaded imagery in the episode, the most blatant being the allusions to religion and how it can be used to twist people into hating others. At the same time, it shows that being physically strong like Ginko doesn't mean that they cant be prayed on when they are emotionally fragile, which is exactly what happens to miss tomboy. Ginko's words about the weak being bullied, while true, contrasts with the invisible storm which is targeting people strong enough to resist it. About Ginko's pendant This is going to be the make of break moment for when the poo poo starts hitting the fan. Yuriika has been maneuvering around this for a while now and in this episode the direction put it at the forefront while at the same time hiding it just enough that you cant be sure Reia is using it anymore post writing the book (and therefor Kureha already forgetting about Ginko). If Ginko had already crossed over the wall again then it would have been impossible for her to have killed Reia even if whoever is pulling the strings wants us to believe that Also since were talking about how the judges were initially going to be women but with mens voices. In this episode we had a "male" looking bear that still had a womans voice. Which is funny given that the only reason you could tell is because of the clothing it had. PS sound track keeps owning, when is it coming out?
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Feb 16, 2015 22:07
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They basically can't do a tragic ending with the story and themes they've set up. This show is a critical look at the classic yuri genre and all the baggage it inherited from Class S, which includes the notion that lesbian relationships are inherently transient - either you grow out of them or you're forced apart by death or some other separation. Pretty much the only way they can challenge that is with a happy, stable, and permanent lesbian relationship - otherwise, they're just recycling what they've been trying to criticise.
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Feb 17, 2015 01:06
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Darth Walrus posted:They basically can't do a tragic ending with the story and themes they've set up. This show is a critical look at the classic yuri genre and all the baggage it inherited from Class S, which includes the notion that lesbian relationships are inherently transient - either you grow out of them or you're forced apart by death or some other separation. Pretty much the only way they can challenge that is with a happy, stable, and permanent lesbian relationship - otherwise, they're just recycling what they've been trying to criticise.
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Feb 17, 2015 01:29
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Darth Walrus posted:They basically can't do a tragic ending with the story and themes they've set up. This show is a critical look at the classic yuri genre and all the baggage it inherited from Class S, which includes the notion that lesbian relationships are inherently transient - either you grow out of them or you're forced apart by death or some other separation. Pretty much the only way they can challenge that is with a happy, stable, and permanent lesbian relationship - otherwise, they're just recycling what they've been trying to criticise. While this would be nice I have no faith that this show isn't going to go for an ironic tragic end because I guess that's the best way to point out how stupid the classic tragic ends are?
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Feb 17, 2015 02:31
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I'm just hoping that whoever it is pulling the strings in the back its yuriika I mean it was her loving office gets her comeuppance. Every other character seems to be getting theirs already and it would be such a dick move to not have it happen to her.
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Feb 17, 2015 02:37
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Sakurazuka posted:While this would be nice I have no faith that this show isn't going to go for an ironic tragic end because I guess that's the best way to point out how stupid the classic tragic ends are? On the one hand, that seems like an ideal target for some Ikuhara black comedy, but on the other, there were literal newspaper-run poetry competitions to see who could best mock lesbian suicides in Meiji Japan, so that would be way inappropriate given the thematic subject matter. Basically, yuri and its cultural/genre predecessors have been linked to so much horrible poo poo and so many weird assumptions over the years that it severely narrows the ways you can critique them.
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Feb 17, 2015 02:41
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I'm sad Harishima died so soon. It's a shame, because I actually liked her as a villain. Ah well.
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Feb 17, 2015 02:43
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 A bear company in the great bear yuri war.  22nd Transport Companies emblem, based on Wojtek, the polish bear warrior.  Notice the picture on the wall  Its an image of the famous "Bear Storm" that occurred in japan.
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Feb 17, 2015 17:03
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WTF is up with that bear? That's not a bear, that's a loving elephant. Holy poo poo, do they really get that big?
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Feb 17, 2015 18:26
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Sakurazuka posted:While this would be nice I have no faith that this show isn't going to go for an ironic tragic end because I guess that's the best way to point out how stupid the classic tragic ends are? An ironic lovely ending is still a lovely ending.
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Feb 17, 2015 18:30
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A combination of huge loving bear and tiny early 20th century Japanese people. 'When standing fully upright on its hind legs, a large male could reach a height of 3 m (10 ft).' in reference to Kodiak bears which are only slightly larger than the Ussuri in that picture. Space Flower posted:An ironic lovely ending is still a lovely ending. Yes, that was my point.
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Feb 17, 2015 18:32
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Are you all referring to an episode that hasn't aired in the US yet, because I don't recognize half the plot developments you're referring to. It's going to make me feel very  if I missed this much of an episode I supposedly watched.(Either way this is a real interesting show to pair with watching Dear Brother for the ADTRW challenge month.)
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Feb 17, 2015 18:34
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I saw it yesterday in the US.
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Feb 17, 2015 18:35
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If you've watched up to the end of episode 7 you've watched all there is so far.Rangpur posted:(Either way this is a real interesting show to pair with watching Dear Brother for the ADTRW challenge month.) If you like it enough, try and read the manga after you've seen the anime, it's fairly short (only three volumes), and the anime makes a huge change that completely alters the tone of the final act and it's very interesting to see the contrast. Sakurazuka fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Feb 17, 2015 |
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Feb 17, 2015 18:36
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The manga is already finished?
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Feb 17, 2015 18:56
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Er, I meant the manga for Brother, Dear Brother.
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Feb 17, 2015 18:59
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Ah, ok.
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Feb 17, 2015 19:19
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This show deserves to win awards in most categories.
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Feb 17, 2015 19:40
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So I am an episode behind, then. I'll catch up later. Nice to see the show's actually going somewhere though, and not where I'd have predicted either. Thing is, the first three episodes collectively don't amount to much. You can give the first one a pass because, well, it's the first episode and it provides the context and setting for future developments. But the next two really should have been one episode even if that meant writing Kanae out of the story--there's too much padding between them and it delays the part of the show where they actually start adding shades of emotional depth to the cast.
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Feb 17, 2015 19:49
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Sakurazuka posted:Yes, that was my point. But why relinquish the inherent quality of the show to make a statement when the show is currently doing a fine job of balancing the two?
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Feb 17, 2015 20:06
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Because when it comes to this show at the moment I'd rather be pessimistic in the hopes of being pleasantly surprised than the opposite.
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Feb 17, 2015 20:41
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It's Ekens and Creamer time again. One important thing to note - 'Kumalia' is a mistranslation. It's actually 'Kumaria' - as in, the Virgin Mary. Now, this has some really obvious tie-ins with Class S and classic yuri, which was often set in Catholic girls' schools. As I mentioned earlier, Class S was one of Meiji Japan's repurposings of Western culture to better serve the rising empire. In this case, it was an adaptation of the literary concept of 'romantic friendship', promoting close, pseudo-romantic ties between girls as training for marriage so they'd become good little baby-factories for the Emperor's armies. Another thing the Meiji Restoration did was allow freedom of religion after hundreds of years of anti-Christian persecution under the Shogunate, resulting in a great big influx of Christians to Japan. The Catholic Church got in on this like Elvis on a pound of bacon, and started opening up schools and orphanages there. Historically, Japanese state education favoured male students, which meant that while the Church merely did OK at setting up boys' schools, it rapidly cornered the market on girls' schools, offering an unprecedented level of funding and education quality. Girls' schools were, of course, where Class S was aimed at, so a majority of Japanese girls went to Western schools where they were taught a system of conduct based on Western literature, all for the purposes of a Japanese patriarchy - the Virgin Mary was a suitably pure, sexless female ideal to ensure that the girls didn't get too carried away with their romantic play-acting before they could be shuffled to baby-making duty. As a result, 'Catholic schoolgirl' rapidly became Japanese shorthand for 'lesbian', and Catholic girls' schools became the iconic setting for Class S and yuri fiction. Perhaps the most famous modern example is Maria-sama ga Miteru, a 1997 light novel series about Catholic schoolgirls not quite being lesbians with each other which led the twenty-first-century Class S revival. Now let's look at how this all applies to YKA. The setting owes a lot to Japanese Christianity. Stormhigh School is an archetypal yuri version of a Catholic girls' school, complete with the modest, pastel-coloured uniforms, Western architecture, and hidden lesbian passion amongst the immaculate flowerbeds. Ginko, meanwhile, went to one of the schools' sister institutions, an orphanage, complete with a very Christian church service. The governing body of all of this is Lady (Ku)Maria, and she ain't a positively-depicted figure. She's a hybrid of the two main symbols of oppression in the show, birds and bears, preaching separation, exclusion, and mutual predation. It was her influence, after all, that started the war in the first place. A really telling line in this episode is that she is 'the one who approves all living things', the supreme judge of the world and arbiter of what is and is not acceptable. Happy, stable lesbian relationships? Yeah, no, ain't happening. The Virgin Mary, who watched over the creation of Class S in Japan, is a tyrannical, unreachable, and unhealthily sexless female ideal. Nope, no subtext here. One thing I'm wondering about - is Yuriika (c'mon, I don't have to spoiler this) a manifestation of Kumaria? She's the head of the Stormhigh system, she's constantly followed around by bird imagery, and she's a bear in disguise. This might have interesting implications for how she's treated as a villain. All of the antagonists so far have had an element of tragedy to them - they're parts of a system so cruel and unfair that even their enthusiastic participation in it won't save them. Yuriika/Kumaria, on the other hand, seems to be at the top of the chain, and that grants her a degree of freedom that the others lack. That leaves three options - she's redeemable, letting the system be salvaged from the inside, she's pure, irredeemable evil, an embodiment of all that's wrong with the world who can only be destroyed or fled from, or she, too, is tied down in some regard. Remember that Mary was a figurehead, a useful tool for Japan's male government to shape the lives of their nation's girls. It may well turn out that she, too, is a tool for someone else, and it wouldn't surprise me if it's the only recurring guys in the show, the Court of Severance. Darth Walrus fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Feb 18, 2015 |
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Feb 18, 2015 02:55
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Maybe they'll kill god with the strength of their love.
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Feb 18, 2015 02:59
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Darth Walrus posted:One important thing to note - 'Kumalia' is a mistranslation. It's actually 'Kumaria' - as in, the Virgin Mary. TBF both of these are pretty good puns
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Feb 18, 2015 04:23
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I'm really not going pass judgement on the court/Kumaria (effectively they are the same things, we've even seen how the court seems to have fallen off the more Kumaria we've seen) yet because they aren't really evil unless they do the whole "We only let you climb up the mountain so we could see you could fall from higher" thing so far they've been actively helping the cast despite the apparent restrictions. The court is a man/bear made construct while Kumaria seems to be a natural one and they both serve the same function, warn people when they are about to take potentially difficult paths but then later providing the means for them to actually embark on it if its ultimately what they want. I'm assuming they represent manmade and natural biases against the unions and when they go "Is your love the real thing" they are basically asking if the two's love can overcome these biases. Its interesting how these two contrast with the invisible storm. On one part we always see the bears/girls asking the courts and Kumaria for permission or intervention to allow them to do something but in regards to the storm they always have negative views on them (except when the storm is tricking them). They could eventually turn the story into "gently caress you dad/mom!" in regards to the courts and Kumaria but I'm guessing its going to take the more realist path and acknowledge that they exist and will continue to exist but as long people have love it wont matter.
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Feb 18, 2015 13:09
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Cao Ni Ma posted:I'm really not going pass judgement on the court/Kumaria (effectively they are the same things, we've even seen how the court seems to have fallen off the more Kumaria we've seen) yet because they aren't really evil unless they do the whole "We only let you climb up the mountain so we could see you could fall from higher" thing so far they've been actively helping the cast despite the apparent restrictions. Kumaria is a fairly obvious antagonistic force. She started the war between bears and humans, getting a shitload of people killed, and calls any interaction between the two sides blasphemy. She turned Ginko from a victim into a victimiser - her orphanage system is designed to turn outcast bears into human-killing soldiers enforcing the divide between the two worlds, and holy poo poo this is not a healthy attitude for a child to have. If she's Yuriika, then she's also spouting Class S propaganda, poisoning Kureha's mind by framing Ginko for her own crimes, and committing statutory rapemurder on her own students for funsies. Also, every character, girl or bear, who devotedly follows her rules ends up dead or in mortal peril. She's not exactly the avatar of an acceptable system, and the only options our protagonists have are to flee or destroy her.
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Feb 18, 2015 14:09
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No, a person claiming to be doing her will did that. Which can be seen as people using religion or  to justify negative actions. Might I remind you, the show starts off by telling you Kumaria blew up and the bears started attacking people after that.As I said, the court and the kumaria in the story are effectively the same thing. Despite them going "Well thats sin" they have a big but that follows that allows them to do it. An evil, oppressive system wouldn't even let them have the chance, much less provide the means to actually go about it (the court turning the bears into girls and kumaria giving the girls the ladder). I doubt the show is going to go into an idealistic scenario where all forms of prejudice cease to exist and everything is happy and rainbows because that is ultimately unrealistic and escapist.
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Feb 18, 2015 15:27
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I'm starting to get really suspicious about the Promise Kiss, though. It's been shown so far to be the only acceptable form of love approved by the system, and the quests for it so far have not been shown to be especially healthy (particularly Ginko's, where she's trying to possess Kureha without really paying attention to her target's own desires). It's also represented by the star motif, which is also the symbol of the oppressive bear religion and triggered the apocalyptic Day of Severance. The system so far has been so hideously hosed up that I automatically mistrust whatever it's OK with. Do also remember that this is a 2015 show about yuri. It's not just about real-world homosexuality, it's about a genre that continues to cling to obsolete, ossified traditions like Class S (a relic of the 1920s) in a way that prevents it from showing genuine, lasting lesbian romance. That makes an idealistic, 'gently caress the system' ending more likely - it'd be telling yuri writers 'see, you can show girls falling in passionate, sexual love without getting punished for it, and it won't be the end of the world'. Yes, real-world oppression exists, but not every fictional character has to be cursed to unhappiness because of it. Note the very self-conscious, theatrical framing and resolute lack of realism. These are fictional characters in a fictional world, and that gives them a freedom that is severely underexplored.
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Feb 18, 2015 15:50
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But, like how much of a thing is class-s stuff now? Just grabbing a sample of yuri from the past few years* they end with exchanging rings, or the idea that even if Japan doesn't allow same-sex marriage other places do, sometimes there's sex, sometimes not, but in all the cases they are actually for-real in romantic love with each other. Yuri, at least in manga has already moved past the chaste and or doomed stylings of its beginnings. I'm actually having a hard time thinking of anything modern that dooms the couple or punishes them in any way. Sometimes the characters encounter actual homophobia, but i think that's a different idea than the narrative somehow condemning it. There's still a huge disconnect between actual queer identity and yuri a lot (maybe most?) of the time, but they're not as far aparts as...oh i dunno Marimite. In no particular order: Sasameki Koto, Girl Friends, Kisses Sighs and Cherryblossom Pink, Chatting at the Amber Teahouse, Octave, Aoi Hana. More that i'm forgetting.
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Feb 19, 2015 02:38
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a kitten posted:But, like how much of a thing is class-s stuff now? Just grabbing a sample of yuri from the past few years* they end with exchanging rings, or the idea that even if Japan doesn't allow same-sex marriage other places do, sometimes there's sex, sometimes not, but in all the cases they are actually for-real in romantic love with each other. Yuri, at least in manga has already moved past the chaste and or doomed stylings of its beginnings. I'm actually having a hard time thinking of anything modern that dooms the couple or punishes them in any way. Sometimes the characters encounter actual homophobia, but i think that's a different idea than the narrative somehow condemning it. There's still a huge disconnect between actual queer identity and yuri a lot (maybe most?) of the time, but they're not as far aparts as...oh i dunno Marimite. One example that immediately springs to mind is one of the most iconic and popular yuri shows of the last few years, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which has a shitload of subtext but condemns its couples to tragic separation without ever giving them a shot at physical, romantic affection. There's the naked space hug in the finale, but that's it. PMMM's spawned a lot of imitators, and most of them follow a similar pattern of not-quite-but-almost-explicit and often tragic lesbian love. Class S is still out there, and still popular. While it's overt yuri rather than Class S, there's also Kannazuki no Miko, which aired a decade ago, but remains enormously popular, iconic, and influential despite its downright weird and unhealthy central relationship, which ticks off most of the familiar old tropes of the genre.
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Feb 19, 2015 02:54
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^^ e: Holy poo poo, Kannazuki no Miko. ^^ a kitten posted:But, like how much of a thing is class-s stuff now? Just grabbing a sample of yuri from the past few years* they end with exchanging rings, or the idea that even if Japan doesn't allow same-sex marriage other places do, sometimes there's sex, sometimes not, but in all the cases they are actually for-real in romantic love with each other. Yuri, at least in manga has already moved past the chaste and or doomed stylings of its beginnings. I'm actually having a hard time thinking of anything modern that dooms the couple or punishes them in any way. Sometimes the characters encounter actual homophobia, but i think that's a different idea than the narrative somehow condemning it. There's still a huge disconnect between actual queer identity and yuri a lot (maybe most?) of the time, but they're not as far aparts as...oh i dunno Marimite. While I've read Sasameki Koto and Aoi Hana and I can only be objective regarding those two (they are good), I want to think that these other works you mentioned are also somewhere in the same spectrum of quality, so I'm thinking along the lines of them being honorable exceptions rather than the rule when it comes to Yuri/Class-S and such. Also, Ikuhara is probably playing it from old memory or somesuch. Wark Say fucked around with this message at 02:57 on Feb 19, 2015 |
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Feb 19, 2015 02:55
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Eh, I wouldn't call Madoka a yuri series, while I agree there's subtext (or text!) it's far from the focus of the story it's telling. No one's tentative romances straight or gay are likely to end well in a story of a faustian bargain involving child soldiers. I never got the impression that the narrative is somehow punishing anyone for falling in love with their own gender. In any case it's not that class s and tragic chaste romances aren't worth taking a critical look at even now; i think it's mostly me thinking that Ikuhara busting in a going "see, you can show girls falling in passionate, sexual love without getting punished for it, and it won't be the end of the world'."  and a bunch of yuri writers and fans all going "we know!"
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Feb 19, 2015 03:23
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a kitten posted:Eh, I wouldn't call Madoka a yuri series, while I agree there's subtext (or text!) it's far from the focus of the story it's telling. No one's tentative romances straight or gay are likely to end well in a story of a faustian bargain involving child soldiers. I never got the impression that the narrative is somehow punishing anyone for falling in love with their own gender. Can you do it mainstream, though? Because I know those shows have excellent reputations, but are they popular? I guess one thing to remember is that Morishima, who is herself a prolific yuri author, apparently has a fair amount of creative input in the anime as well as her own manga, so this is presumably a problem that she, an industry insider, also feels the need to address.
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Feb 19, 2015 03:29
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a kitten posted:But, like how much of a thing is class-s stuff now? Just grabbing a sample of yuri from the past few years* they end with exchanging rings, or the idea that even if Japan doesn't allow same-sex marriage other places do, sometimes there's sex, sometimes not, but in all the cases they are actually for-real in romantic love with each other. Yuri, at least in manga has already moved past the chaste and or doomed stylings of its beginnings. I'm actually having a hard time thinking of anything modern that dooms the couple or punishes them in any way. Sometimes the characters encounter actual homophobia, but i think that's a different idea than the narrative somehow condemning it. There's still a huge disconnect between actual queer identity and yuri a lot (maybe most?) of the time, but they're not as far aparts as...oh i dunno Marimite. Actually Yuri as a genre is just defined in Japan as "female homoerotic content", so the narrative can be whatever really.
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Feb 19, 2015 03:43
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really this entire argument is about nothing because yuri is a nebulous concept that encompasses a lot of things and the definition is vague and blurry at best
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Feb 19, 2015 03:50
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Just wait til I get home from work, I'm gonna serious post about that bad Madoka opinion so fuckin hard.
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Feb 19, 2015 06:50
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I care about yuri.
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Feb 19, 2015 09:29
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Same.
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Feb 19, 2015 09:57
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a kitten posted:Eh, I wouldn't call Madoka a yuri series, while I agree there's subtext (or text!) it's far from the focus of the story it's telling. In the first place it really seemed like Madoka was a broad-minded series. Everyone who watches it takes something different from the experience, and multiple rewatches will do the same thing to a single viewer. So one person might not even notice the yuri elements while they might be the core theme to someone else.
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Feb 19, 2015 23:35
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Whoooaaa what an episode and that was one hell of a cliffhanger. e-Ok on rewatch here some of the things I've noticed. The person at the start of the episode this is one of the few times in the show where a person has referred to himself with male pronouns as well as others doing the same to him. He is completely androgynous though, in how he looks, dresses and even his voice. How he looks and talks like aren't really important because like most side characters they are mostly there to provide motivations for more important characters, in this case Yurika. But whats actually important is what he says about sullying and boxes. Boxes are a common metaphor for Ikuhara, he's mentioned how people wall themselves in boxes to prevent others from coming in. In this case he's applying it differently, the idea being that another keeps someone else in a box to stop them from coming out. Both have the same result, the person in the box cannot have real happiness. Yurika everyone knew she was a bear, whats interesting was her backstory. Like most of the characters in the story, she was looking for some form of validation for her existence, which she eventually fills albeit momentarily with Reia's love. Where she once had Reia's love for validation, now she find happiness acting as the box that torments the rest of the cast. Sort of reminds me of Gankutsuou's interpretation of the count of monte cristo, living entirely for revenge. Reia While the rest of the cast seeks love in their own way, Reia seems to be one of the few that willingly gives it regardless of who it is. She's the ideal representation of love according to Ikuhara, similar to Momoka in penguindrum but without having the drive or means to wipe out anyone that would harm others from this face of reality The courts and Kumaria The courts instruments of Kumaria's will. Which explains why their actions are so similar to hers. They mention how they are whats in between the humans and bears, which is the wall. Lulu even mentions how Kumaria is the goddess of the wall. Again, they seem entirely impartial to the actions taken by everyone else and only provide the stage for the confrontations to take place. Their motivation seems to be to just observe who's love is the real thing. Not giving up on love EP5s fairy tale was pretty self explanatory and this episode played on the imagery built up on it. Ginko's actions to go to the rooftop are basically a metaphor for standing in front of the mirror and breaking it. She knew what was going to happen, that she'll probably be hurt, but she didnt care. She'll probably do care if things happen the way they are shaping up to be. [/spoiler[ Lulu [spoiler] She knew what she was doing. She knew how Kureha would react since she mentioned it just a few moments before. She also will not give up on love. So if anyone is going to eat a bullet next episode its going to be her. Thematically it would make the most sense, since it would sort of match her brothers death. Both dying because they wouldn't back down on love, before receiving their kisses. It will also have Kureha cause direct anguish to Ginko, so we can see how she'd react to something like this. We've already seen how that ugly bear, Yurika and Kureha have handled these things. So much happened in this episode, you'd think it was the climax. But there are still 3 episodes left. Cao Ni Ma fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Feb 23, 2015 |
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Feb 23, 2015 17:16
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