The thing that drives me nuts with this season is that Season 1 had already felt like it really, really moved past yuri-baiting. There's a sense of physical attraction and flirting that most yuri-bait shows never really have. The show has het folks having het romances, but Kumiko is never really part of that, and then Shuuichi exists pretty much only as a foil to show how uninterested Kumiko is in him and by contrast how she's very into Reina. He's into her, and so he invites her to the festival and to practice music with him. She declines both, and does them instead with Reina.
Right up until S2E1 the camera really follows Kumiko's eyes as she's obviously checking out Reina, everything is designed to be read as a romantic relationship. When they're alone together they're even more physically intimate, it's a great little suggestive detail that KyoAni didn't just add in on accident.
It also worked really well thematically. Kumiko's whole story arc is season 1 is rejecting just going along and fitting in with the group, to pursue what she wants even if it costs an upperclassman their seat in the band or causes hurt feelings. If you read Kumiko as gay, then she's undergoing a similar journey regarding her sexuality. Unlike a lot of All-Girls school yuri where homosexuality is kind of the only available flavor of romance, all of Kumiko's friends are straight, there's a boy who likes her, there's other straight couples in band. But instead of going along with all of that, she pursues Reina.
And then it suddenly just all stopped. Shots of Kumiko checking out Reina or vice versa were no longer used. It's not even a case of, "Just kidding it was bait all along!" They've completely changed how they portray their interactions and feelings from season one.
So what happened, did the publishers of the novel complain and tell them to stop making it so damn gay? Did KyoAni just lose their nerve or was there a staff change in season 2 who wanted to take things in a different direction? I really don't get it.
last edited at Dec 14, 2016 8:02PM