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I have minimal experience with Ikuhara -- watching Sailor Moon dubs as a child, and this, basically -- but I've really been struggling with Yuri Kuma Arashi. I take it he's one of those writers whose work makes far more sense in retrospect, rather than in piecemeal? So even if I'm not enjoying the show even at this stage, things are likely to turn out if I persevere? I'm having a great deal of difficulty caring about any of the characters, beyond the two friendly bears, the plot's confusing, and the sheer lack of fucks given about most of the events by the cast is kind of aggravating. I've having difficulty determining the context and significance of everyone's actions, particularly the phone calls from the Bear Court (why does anyone give a poo poo about these when it's repeatedly been proven that listening to these puts you in grave danger?). There's been a great deal of anti-climax, and it's been quite repetitive at times. Basically, I can't understand the motivations for the cast at any given moment, beyond what they're doing in general. (Though Kureha seems to purely be reacting to everything, and doesn't seem to have much in the way of an objective beyond 'Continue the Grieving Process'). Are these, strictly speaking, problems with the show? Or am I approaching it with the wrong mindset? Should I try rewatching it?
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Mar 14, 2015 13:20
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 05:10 |
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Several thoughts, not all of them fully considered. * I enjoyed that more than I thought I would, and I'm glad I stuck with it until the end. I found the final few episodes fairly rewarding, even if there are some side issues concerning the show that I'm not fond of (the buzzing wasp; the tribunal). * The cyborg bear was, I guess, a self-hating queer woman who was co-opted into the cause? I found that material far more touching and moving than I thought I would, I was surprised. * They're not dead. Even within the body of the work, they're clearly not dead -- the door out of there opens moments just before they're shot, and that one girl later recalls them escaping under the cover of gunfire. The best way I can think of describing what happened is as some kind of ascension -- they're certainly not hanging out with the other dead characters at the end of the piece. * Which, if you think about it, is a repudiation of all that Class S dead queer girl syndrome. Queer women, who truly commit to each other, never die, but are whisked away to another, better place by the patron saint of idealised love, Kumaria. * On the other hand, yeah, it's also a repudiation of the idealised love. Their utopia is impossible to get to by normal means, and striving for it has led to an awful lot of death. It's a place defined by myths and fairy tales even beyond the world in which they live (which is pretty extreme in this case -- the entire setting is swimming in borrowed ideas and images, that are meant to stand in for other, broader ideas), and is so even less real than anything else going on here. Kureha and Lulu end up transcending the symbolic order and reaching into the imaginary, in rejection of Class S neutralisation, but the problem of abject bodies still continues to exist. * Which is, I think, what I primarily take away from this. It's okay to have escapism and we should strive to tell stories that prescribe positive outcomes for minority characters -- particularly when those are taboo. But, simultaneously, it becomes easy to think of ourselves as living in a post-homophobic world if we do that, and that's not the case. Pure escapism is just as false and pure nihilism: the good world exists, and it's something we should strive for, but we're nowhere near that yet. * But there's still hope.
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Mar 31, 2015 15:13
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Gyre posted:I can see it as a closeted/out thing. Kureha wanted Ginko to be closeted so they could be together, like a lesbian couple hiding themselves as "friends". Kureha was the first closeted person in this world to say "no, screw this, if we can't be together as ourselves then what's the point?" and came out. Them getting shot at are the girls freaking out that there's an out lesbian couple right there who aren't caring what everyone says. When Kureha and Ginko ascend, it's basically them going "gently caress getting poo poo on for being ourselves, we reject the system totally". Laser girl starts rejecting the system right after, because even though the school sees "scaring" Kureha and Ginko away as a shaky victory she knows the truth. That makes a lot of sense, actually, or at least that's a version that works for my brain. I think the fact that Ginko and especially Lulu were murderers makes everything pretty murky though. It's difficult to read that ending as happy given that one of the two idealised lovers is a remorseless killer.
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Apr 1, 2015 01:09
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