@appstore

No? I reply like normal, maybe I use words that have a more harsh reading for a native english speaker

It's probably more of an issue with the format. Tone, unable to be physically heard, becomes contextual and the constant arguments (beyond this back and forth) in this thread have created conditions that imply certain tones, irrespective of what you meant.

Which is to say it's not your fault :)

I now I sound stupid with this but I do not understand what you mean by this, and I am being genuine.

You don't sound stupid! And I meant pretty much along the lines of what you described, just reformulated.

For instance, I was labeling this:

I only used creators but I also mean fans, fans are also creators, yuri was born from doujinshi too, it’s a constant feedback.

As an extension of market economics. There's a supply/demand relationship here. Though obviously it extends outside the range of commerce, it could hardly be argued that the economic factor isn't important when we're considering the budgets animation studios need to work on for a series!

As for persistent cultural formations:

[...] Yuri is a genre with conventions, Sayonara Lala fits perfectly into them.
[...] But If I had to say something, I am saying “Some people started really liking this because it was something they only could find there”
That was what I was aiming for mostly, if you like tsunderes and they are only on harem, you will watch them and will become a fan of harem

This is not outside what I was getting at. It's a bit confusing, but "culture" as a term is very encompassing. From wikipedia:

Culture (/ˈkʌltʃər/ KUL-chər or /ˈkʊltʃər/ KUUL-chər) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, attitudes, and habits of the individuals in these groups.[1] Culture often originates from or is attributed to a specific region or location.

So, essentially, persistent patterns of human social behavior and thought, often originating from or attributed to a particular locale. Which decidedly includes what you've described.

In short, when I said this:

This is more evidence we're not on the same page here. I'm not sure why you feel the need explain how market economics and persistent cultural formations can reinforce stereotypes and tropes.

I was quite literally paraphrasing what you were describing, just with $3 words, which was admittedly unnecessary, my bad.

I never said explicity is oppresive, that’s all.

Ah, well the quotes around the word "oppressive" were clearly a poor choice on my point. I wasn't being very clear about why I emphasized that, was I? It didn't actually have to do with whether or not you said that, but instead I was anticipating an implied counterargument.

What I mean by that is that people (and certainly I thought your message implied this) have a tendency to dismiss indirect forms of oppression. I was over-eagerly trying to get ahead of that kind of argument, and was trying to reaffirm my loyalty to the functional results of a pattern of behavior over its particular appearance or content. This isn't something you disagree with necessarily, though, so it just ended up strawmanning you... I apologize.

Rather my point was moreso that...

My only point is that Yuri is a genre with conventions, Sayonara Lala fits perfectly into them.
Your point is to question the genre conventions (for what I got, sorry If I am wrong) which was not part of my argument

In a sense! Here let me summarize my thoughts:

.1. The series, irrespective of its yuri categorization, poorly handled the sapphic relationship in a way that was narratively unsatisfying and places it within a historical tendency to treat sapphic relations poorly, in this way. Especially and particularly in the history of Japan, this happens. Which makes it disapointingly predictable (despite many fans hoping otherwise).

Notice how I never used the term "Yuri" within my original critique! No instead I used "lesbian". I had meant to be specific. So why, you may ask, did I respond to your post that used the term "yuri"?

.2. The term/category Yuri (as something I kind of hinted at only indirectly or implied offhandedly!) has been coopted; that is, it's been applied in a utilitarian manner for precisely its vagueness.

This was, historically, both born out of good and ill due to the particular treatment of both sapphic and close girls' relationships (see point about all-girls' schools and the video essay I originally linked). Good, in the sense it allowed people to explore homoerotic concepts without being suppressed. Ill, in the sense it allowed producers to dangle a carrot in front of lesbian populations without having to take the reputation hit for committing to the relationship's consistent and blatant thematic throughlines.

Its wide-reaching tendencies includes the behavior I was getting at in my original critique. Heck, it's chock full of it! "Yuri" as a catch-all, becomes something that's useful to observe in the context of how sapphic relationships have and continue to be treated. So yes in a sense my point was "to question the genre conventions" as you said, but that's not entirely it either.

Rather the main portion of my critique was about the framing or approach to this topic you chose to begin with!

.3. The framing of approaching this from a more shallow, self-perpetuating social circumstances perspective (that fans want this, that authors like to make this, etc.) is itself, without even neccesarily intending to be, dismissive of this very strong causal basis for how lesbian couples in media are treated in Japan and around the world. As such I'm not a fan of it.

In other words, rather than merely having a different framing, I am outright rejecting and criticizing a framing that intentionally or unintentionally ignores or minimizes the historical and cultural mistreatment of lesbian couples that serve as context for how this show ended. Or, the fact that there's a perspective attempting to limit or not look at this factor is itself something I have a critical view of!

If someone had their knees smashed inwards earlier in life, would you ignore that fact when they later fall down the stairs? Of course not. But it seems when it comes to the analysis of stories, there's a tendency among people to equivocate "perspectives" as having identical utility. But this is not so! Just like the initial conditions of a interaction of bodies in physics, social context informs why and how a story is made the way it is.

So why, then, ignore authorial intent? Why, because it's rather unknowable, of course. And at times disingenuous. Larger sociocultural factors are a much more concrete thing to study, a much more productive thing to draw conclusions from!

It may now be obvious, then, why I spent so long deconstructing authorial intent. In short my framing is that of how the entire industry of both yuri and lesbian media representation in Japan came to be. And as such the mistreatment and poor characterization, doomed narrative throughlines, are treated as inescapable components of how the current tradition came to be and how it continues to act. Because today's present is a product of yesterday's past. The historical trajactory of Yuri, the movement of its history, came from a place of deep repression and abuse. It has not yet thrown off its shackles and every now and again continues to infuriatingly pantomime and mimick its past in shallow ways!

This yields to the conclusion that there is an imperative for authors to treat this story qualitatively differently, as to finally move away from this pattern of behavior! That is my point :)

It is a rather sprawling thing, admittedly!

last edited at Sep 23, 2026 9:20PM

Now, perhaps I am still being unclear, since you've made it clear to me you're mostly concerned with the semantic issues of people saying that the series "is not yuri" or so on.

There's understandable confusion over the term. Mostly since "yuri" itself is a conglomeration of thematic components that include all of explicit lesbianism, subtext, and merely close relationships between women. Which is why is "yuribait" is still accurate as a term, because yuri has subgengres, and those can be misleadingly advertised over one another using the catchall "yuri" or portions of its larger thematic components! Hence it is baiting one type of "yuri" for another. So when people are claiming that the show "baited yuri", even if it seems incoherent, what they're really saying is that the authors had baited readers for one subgenre of yuri only to supplant it with another. And in that sense they're actually quite accurate!

But you've said as much yourself, from what I can tell.

Still, far from just being a general issue with how media is advertised at large, the tendency of yuri to play out in this way is actually very unique to its nature, as its history is at least partly born out of the Class S social practice particular to Japan. And the new developments we've had, if nothing else, make it much easier to bait people in this way since there becomes a very real chance of it being one or the other type: explicit lesbian relationship, vague in-the-air situationship, subtext, etc so on. (It's also important to note that the term "yuri" was also particularly associated with explicit lesbianism, in its earliest usages, from what I can tell!)

While it's true that its Class-S aspects sell well, and there's demonstrably some kind of subgroup of people who consistently pay for such things, and ostensibly some large portion of that is well-aware they're just going to milk it ad infinitum, it's ultimately what I would consider largely a distraction to the real issues that people are trying to get at when they (somewhat misguidedly) say it's "not yuri".

This is, of course, part and parcel of the historical trajectory I have hammered out in earlier points: it is a defining component of the tendencies of yuri as a genre in Japan. Separating out this tendency, for analysis, actually in fact weakens the analysis. So we must always center: Where did this tendency and practice originally come from? For a series to lean into a romantic direction and then swerve abruptly? And the historically-accurate answer is, of course, the consistent oppression and belittlement of sapphic relationships in Japan.

Perhaps in some ways you could describe this as an extension to the historical practice where lesbian depictions could be "allowed" in the mainstream by hiding them within Class S stories (though with no real hopes of going beyond vague implications). You could go so far as to consider "yuri" and "lesbian" as something almost mutually exclusive, with yuri at most teetering on the edge of a "real" relationship between the characters. There are many such examples of this, with authors who were closeted lesbians using a Class S storyline as a way to publicly express themselves.

In Goodbye, Lara, the audience was clearly baited into thinking that it would be an explicit sapphic relationship, because it had made the most narrative sense given how the story played out, and how it was advertised! And yet that's not the subgenre of yuri they were provided. Even with the oppressive conditions specific to the Class S social behavior now ostensibly removed, this pattern still continues to hold! You even gave a more extreme example of this with Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury. But rather than paint Mercury as a meaningful distinct instance, I would argue this and Goodbye, Lara are actually cut of the same cloth. They just come about it from different directions!

Much of the issues talked about here become significantly less confusing if you just specify "lesbian relationship" instead of yuri, which is what I had done so for my first post. This is true. But the critique is not any less valid even if somebody is using the thematic catchall of yuri to talk about it!

Because in a sense, when people are saying that it "didn't actually end up being yuri", or something along those lines, they're also making an actual statement about what they think yuri should be: which is something with a much more explicit tie to its lesbian roots. A far cry from both the historical and contemporary situation, where the will-they-won't-they is milked forever, or the story otherwise fizzles out with many questions left unanswered, or it abruptly swerves out of the realm of a romantic entanglement, or other such patterns are commonplace.

Rather than view it as inaccuracy, I think it's more pertinent to see it as a competing cultural trend fighting to redefine what "yuri" means as a term.

And, instead of painting this in a neutral light, I think given the historical trajectory of how lesbians have been treated in media, internationally, and in Japan, that they're right. I actually think yuri as a genre should be redefined to be more explicitly tied to lesbianism rather than continuing to perpetuate its past habits.

At the very least, if the authors wanted a Class S type story, they should advertise it as such! Anything else, in my mind, is either intentionally disingenuous, or grossly and self-beneficially negligent. Because it is quite trivial to understand that people will "misinterpret" the intentions regardless. And as a result, enrich the producer of the media. How convenient, for them!

In this way, I find the tendency to focus on the semantics of that "well Goodbye, Lara still fits under yuri" to be, at best, missing the point. You are certainly right that it fits the historical application of the genre. But as I asked before (and I hope my intention is clearer now), whatever is the point of the distinction? Of that perspective?

At the end of the day, the basic results of the circumstance, the treatment of lesbian relationships, remains the same. Subsequently I find it to be unproductive for analysis. The people saying it's "not yuri" are not actually trying to claim that it doesn't come from the root definitions of the term. Hardly! They actively and openly despise its relation to the Class S history!

And with the context of the story as it was told, and the history of how these relationships are treated, who can blame them?

last edited at Sep 23, 2026 7:30PM

They show lots of physical intimacy in the new sequel manga.

CPK sequel manga? Tell me more.

Here: https://bibibi-comic.com/series/41de76fc8df5f

超かぐやメシ！or Chou Kaguya Meshi! (literally Cosmic Food Kaguya) Releases monthly, two chapters out so far. You can find chapter 0 scanlated on mangadex: https://mangadex.org/title/cd3aba15-ccba-4ef4-b9c9-28f48aa5ffe1/chou-kaguya-meshi

It is allegedly about android Kaguya trying out all kinds of food after Iroha implements the taste function but it's really about Iroha and Kaguya flirting and cuddling with food in the background.

An important thing to remember is that most yuri manga and LNs are published in yuri magazines, meaning that the people reading them are actively looking for them. Anime that is broadcasted on TV, on the other hand, will be watched by a much bigger and general audience. Because of that I don't really buy the "we have more explicit and good depiction in manga, so it's okay" as an excuse. The majority of people who watch anime don't read yuri manga or LNs.

The majority of people who watch anime don't read yuri manga or LNs.

Truly a fate worse than death.
B'yeah, it's easy to sometimes forget that we all exist within our bubbles. Still, it should be fair to expect more by now. Not like we haven't had our fair share of more overt yuri anime with widespread appeal.

last edited at Sep 24, 2026 11:26AM

My point is that for most non-himejin yuri is still just subtext and class S. The only explicit romance between girls they've seen is G Witch and CPK. We need more rep.

last edited at Sep 24, 2026 1:02PM

My point is that for most non-himejin yuri is still just subtext and class S. The only explicit romance between girls they've seen is G Witch and CPK. We need more rep.

Sayonara Lara is just as explicit as CPK is, and I don't think the ending changes or reverses any of that. Lara literally has to reject the concept of true love in the finale to save Mari's life, because "true love" was forced on her by mermaid society just as much as princesshood was.

The story's incredibly strong trans narratives and sapphic narratives are very much fully realized throughout the show, even if I think the pacing of some of the episodes was off.

My point is that for most non-himejin yuri is still just subtext and class S. The only explicit romance between girls they've seen is G Witch and CPK. We need more rep.

Way to tell KimiShinu to fuck off

My point is that for most non-himejin yuri is still just subtext and class S. The only explicit romance between girls they've seen is G Witch and CPK. We need more rep.

Way to tell KimiShinu to fuck off

KimiShinu is yuri in the first place though, and marketed as such. Op was talking about works that were not primarily geared towards yuri fans.

KimiShinu is yuri in the first place though, and marketed as such. Op was talking about works that were not primarily geared towards yuri fans.

Exactly.

The story's incredibly strong trans narratives and sapphic narratives are very much fully realized throughout the show, even if I think the pacing of some of the episodes was off.

I'm 99% sure the trans themes are completely accidental. It's great people resonated with it, but I genuinely can't see the creators of the anime being aware enough to think of it. I'm not going to give credit to someone for accidentally making a good rep.