Yurikuma Arashi

Episode 8

After so many episodes of remarkably cohesive theming, Yurikuma has hit its first real flaw of inconsistency! I call it The Problem of Men, and it breaks down as follows.

I don't think that Kunihiko Ikuhara wanted to include men in this show, or at least he never wanted to portray them onscreen. As it stands, the only men allowed to appear are the Judgmens and Lulu's brother, Mirun. The Judgmens make sense, because they're not actually humanized characters, but rather a non-corporeal representation of the patriarchy. Even then, the Judgemens were originally designed to appear as women with male voices. Mirun is “innocent” in that he's untouched by adult maleness. He hasn't had the opportunity to consciously victimize anyone, much less in any gendered way, so his maleness is limited to his sister's hatred of the threat he represents to her life. Yurikuma hits a mild stumbling block by not wanting to show male oppression as caused by individual men, but it can't manage to completely excise them from the story world either, and this created a confusing problem in episode 8.

This episode introduces two flesh-and-blood adult "men." The first is Yuriika's father, “Him,” who appears as a woman in masculine garb. His design is a reference to Takarazuka theater, an all-female revue where actresses play both male and female parts, but he's definitely a man, since the Japanese dialogue goes out of its way to refer to him with masculine pronouns. My guess as to why he's presented like this is that the creative team couldn't figure out how to avoid showing a human figure in this scene, but they still didn't want to straight-up show a human male. So they compromised with a Takarazuka-esque design. This might have meant more in the first draft, where the Judgmens were also men in women's bodies; it could have been a commentary on how certain ostensibly female figures and institutions are also mouthpieces for the patriarchy, and that "men" are not an enemy to "women" on an individual level, but part of something that runs deeper throughout culture. On its own, however, it's a bit confusing. (Yuriika's "father" also wears red slippers for a transparent Wizard of Oz reference. They're used to signal Yuriika retreating home to her psychological safe space, where everything is partitioned into boxes. But more on that in a moment.)

The second man is Kureha's father, who only exists as an implication. My guess is that Reia was pressured into a marriage of convenience soon after high school. Kureha's father is never shown because he's irrelevant to the story's focus on relationships between women. I'm not sure how I feel about the decision to render him as an unmentioned but unavoidable presence. It would've been better for there to be some overt allusion: maybe a shot to a faceless picture, or a line of dialogue saying that he left when Kureha was young. As it stands, it almost seems like Reia produces Kureha via parthenogenesis or something. The meaning comes across, but barely. Ikuhara is indulging in the fantasy of a world without men, but there are limits to what he can depict when masculine influence is still important to the story. It's inconvenient for allegory, but men impact women as individuals as well as in the abstract, even in this story. A father's existence would influence Kureha's life in at least some capacity, and Yurikuma doesn't even try to excuse his absence. This is made even more confusing by the fact that Yuriika's father is allowed to appear onscreen several minutes before, albeit in a feminized form. Right now, the show is breaking rules that it only half-established in the first place, and the effect is disorienting. Fortunately, this mishap isn't remotely enough to unravel the show's thematic and narrative focus. It's just a loose thread that speaks to an interesting compromise amongst the creative staff.

Speaking of Yuriika, we know what her deal is now, and it wasn't that far off from my guesses! She is a bear, and Arashigaoka Academy is her private hunting ground, but I didn't expect for Yuriika to be Ginko's dark mirror. Both are forsaken bears who were saved by a Tsubaki – Reia loved Yuriika and Kureha loved Ginko – but then fell under the misconception that love is unilateral and possessive. With Yuriika, this ended disastrously. She was a foundling bear raised by a human who taught her that things are only precious when they're “pure” and maintained in that state, even at the expense of their well-being as living things. Yuriika herself was one of her father's “pure” objects, his “bride-in-a-box.” Reia freed Yuriika from this repression by showing her love beyond the constraints of sexual repression and gender essentialism. However, she could not free Yuriika from the greater psychology of boxes – that precious things should not change, can never be shared, and must be isolated to prevent their decay. When Reia shared her love (in the form of Yuriika's gifted pendant) with a vulnerable Ginko, Yuriika interpreted that as abandonment. She killed and ate her love, filling herself with Reia, like an "empty box." Since then, Yuriika has become a monster who preys on vulnerable girls in order to mollify her pain. In choosing boxes over love, she chose to be closeted. She abandoned the possibility of happiness via emotional intimacy, because it carries the possibility of pain. She also plans to eat Kureha, who “contains Reia's love.” Yuriika represents the darkest extreme of what Ginko could become – someone whose misguided desire to possess what she loves could destroy Kureha. In the best case scenario, Ginko will end up liberating Kureha from Yuriika's trap.

It's become apparent at this point that Funimation's subtitles made a significant goof in transliterating “Kumaria” as “Kumalia.” Kumaria is a pun on Maria, the Japanese name for The Virgin Mary, and points to another big part of the show's message. That's right – Yurikuma is going after the Church! As tangential as this connection might seem for Japan, a country where less than 1% of the population is Christian, the development of Class S is deeply tied to Western exoticism, much of which came to Japan through the importation of Christianity. Many early Class S, yuri, and shoujo works take place in European or pseudo-European settings. Christian imagery brought over from Western colonialism was used to further the ideology of “Good Wife, Wise Mother,” which posits the ideal woman as a married homemaker. This ideology was furthered at Westernized girls' schools. That's why so many works influenced by Class S – the novels of Nobuko Yoshiya, Shiroi Heya no Futari, Ryoko Ikeda's Dear, Brother, and even revivals like Maria Watches Over Us – take place in these settings. As Christianity's revered image of womanhood, Mary is chaste, maternal, and important because of her relationship with a man. To my Western perspective, it's easy to see how Mary might have been used to further Japan's particular flavor of male supremacy. For Western viewers, this conflation of Christian imagery with homophobia might also carry special resonance, since religious communities are often perceived as regressive in their treatment of women and queer people. After last episode's look into the psychology of zealotry, it's not much of a stretch for Yurikuma to go after an actual religious institution.

The Kumaria/Maria relationship became apparent a few episodes ago, when “Kumaria” was revealed to be the name of the bears' goddess. Ginko was manipulated by and almost died for the false promise of Kumaria's unconditional love. The criticism gets really specific to Christian dogma in this episode, when Yuriika says that it's better for her students to die young and pure than grow up and risk corruption. Replace “corruption” with “sin” and you've got a clear picture of how horribly religious fundamentalism can perceive women. You're better off dead than having sex for pleasure, or remaining unmarried, or childless, etc. The only way this institution knows how to deal with queer women is through separation and eradication.

Twice this episode, Kureha embraces her relationship with Ginko only to be pushed away again. The first time is when she discovers her mother's pendant on Ginko. In order to deflect suspicion, Yuriika has convinced Kureha that the pendant must be in the possession of Reia's murderer. This leads to Kureha almost shooting Ginko during the episode's climax, another Judgmens-led “love trial” on the roof. Kureha loves Ginko enough to trust her about Reia, but everything breaks down when Lulu reopens a fresher wound: the death of Sumika. We don't learn exactly what Ginko did to Sumika. (Curse that sound cut! Cliffhangers like these should be made illegal.) Whatever it was, it was enough to get Kureha to shoot. What did Ginko do? Kill Sumika? Let her die? Tell Yurizono about her relationship with Kureha? That must be the real test – it's easier to trust that someone didn't do something than forgive them for something you know they did do. Can Kureha's love stand up to this?

Grade: A

Yuri Kuma Arashi is currently streaming on Funimation.

Gabriella Ekens studies film and literature at a US university. Follow her on twitter.