Lots of replies to stuff I wrote but I have nothing new to add to the conversation because my mind is currently being blown by Birdie Wing. I have no idea how I overlooked this one.

I am glad you enjoy it. It is without a doubt a hidden gem among this year's anime releases and thankfully already renewed for a second season.

---

I will be charitable and assume that you did not just equate any of the slowburns you or me listed as bait.

Depends on which ones, but generally what happens in volume 7 of an LN doesn't really matter for an anime only watcher. I don't consider them much different especially when the romance isn't in the forefront like in Executioner and Otherside. And Symphogear always aimed to be Schrödinger's yuri.

This is a poor definiton of "bait" then in my opinion. Is an adventure anime "adventure bait" because the final villain is not defeated by the end of season 1? Of course not, it is a work in progress with the obvious intention of a resolution. The same goes for romance anime that don't get a second season. Why is it bait when the intrinsic idea is that by the end romantic feelings will perservere?

No, bait should be - even if not nefarious by default - something that obviously flirts with yuri themes, but has no intention to ever deliver on them. Let us forget about the original bait and switch definition that requires a derailment into het and simply treat bait as the word suggests... something to attract a certain type of viewer's interest. It is something that gets attention, much like an anime that has a incredibly obvious shock factor scene in the first episode to attract the "edgy" demographic, but then swerves into 11 more episodes of generic fantasy/SOL/mystery. Yuribait is often just the promise of something gay happening with no actual plans to go there. But once they hooked that audience in they have already won, as yuri fans in particular are desperate for content. To not conflate this with subtext in general, sometimes romantic themes are just not that relevant to a story in the first place, so subtext is the extend of what it cares to show, but then it is almost never used as bait to begin with as it is too minor to attract people from the start.

Executioner and Otherside Picnic make very clear early on that the romantic tension between the main characters is both intentional and endgame. There may be twists and turns that make it not always as clear-cut, but the point is that a faithful adaptation is setting up the romantic parts the same way the source material did, which means it is genuine in it's delivery, unlike bait. To be an "anime only" is the audience's own shortcoming in this particular case. It is nearly foolish in this day and age to expect an adaptation to complete a story in an industry that purposely picks on-going series as their targets.

I don't think I agree with that at all; what usually drags things out are harems, love triangles, or in yuri roadblocks like "but we're both girls!" I guess there's meme manga that somehow gets 3 seasons like Rent-A-Girlfriend but that's not exactly the norm. The more memorable and/or highest rated het romances are usually pretty definitive over 12 or 24 episodes, especially if they're adaptations of shoujo.

You are just saying the conventions of romance stories drag down romance stories' pacing. I am shocked, shocked I say!

There are rarely any anime that are definitive within 12 episodes. If such things get rated highly, then it is simply because anime onlies are desperate for conclusions, which makes a lot of sense of course. 24 episodes are also a much different standard. Yagate Kimi ni Naru could easily be completely adapted within two seasons. It's a fairly normal length. But 12? As we have seen that is not possible. Het shows enjoy a broader audience and thus get more chances to be renewed for another season, especially lowly ahem... bait for lonely teenagers who need a certain type of self-insert fantasy (I am desperate not to use the I-word here).

I've always been partial to Kase-san because its basically a shoujo manga with two girls.

Nothing about Kase-san is intentionally Shoujo manga like. Not any more than most Yuri manga are, as Yuri is tacitly an off-shoot of Shoujo manga to begin with. Kase-san's tropes and framework are pretty strongly based in general yuri conventions. I cannot say whether your perception of Shoujo is awfully specific or if you just happen to have avoided certain types of yuri branches.

Yuri actually tends to be sort of formulaic; its really heavy on themes of self discovery and it always kind of comes back to classic trope pairings like 'meek kouhai X disaster senpai' or 'gyaru X plainy' -- though occasionally something like Citrus will mix it up a bit where its gyaru X disaster senpai. And don't get me wrong I enjoy it but there's something to be said for stuff that's gay but detached from some of the tropes that are the bedrock of yuri as a genre.

This is a meaningless discovery I fear. The same can be said about any romance story. Het romance has it's repetitive tropes, BL has its repetitive tropes. Yuri is nothing special in that regard. The majority of all fiction is "formulaic" or the much more popular term of recent decades "generic".

last edited at Sep 27, 2022 10:44AM

and thus it's functionally pretty similar to some of the most prominent "bait" anime out there.

Nooo, not you too, fellow subtext enjoyer Pekoe :(

Lots of replies to stuff I wrote but I have nothing new to add to the conversation because my mind is currently being blown by Birdie Wing. I have no idea how I overlooked this one.

Yes. Everything is going according to plan. rubs hands

To be an "anime only" is the audience's own shortcoming in this particular case. It is nearly foolish in this day and age to expect an adaptation to complete a story in an industry that purposely picks on-going series as their targets.

To be an unsatisfying anime is still the series shortcoming. If you're the type of person to pick up an LN series after watching the anime that's your prerogative, many of us aren't so the anime is the only opinion we have of a series. If its not particularly compelling in its early going -- again it just doesn't matter what happens in LN volume 7.

In fairness to Otherside Picnic the adaptation was a bit butchered. I actually kind of tried to read the series but didn't really enjoy it enough to stick with it. There are series I get into here and there; yuriwise I loved ILTV and enjoyed Sexiled but the odds of me picking up an LN series are still pretty slim.

There are rarely any anime that are definitive within 12 episodes. If such things get rated highly, then it is simply because anime onlies are desperate for conclusions, which makes a lot of sense of course.

Um... are you one of the people who doesn't really watch or read het romance? Because your assertion makes no fucking sense otherwise. Off the top of my head there's Kokoro Connect, Tsuki Ga Kirei, Horimiya, Bakemonogatari, VN adaptations like ef, and I'm sure a lot more that I can't think of. Yeah, two cour is a lot more to work with but that's also a lot more room for a love triangle or an amnesia subplot or some such.

Nothing about Kase-san is intentionally Shoujo manga like. Not any more than most Yuri manga are, as Yuri is tacitly an off-shoot of Shoujo manga to begin with.

Hmm... that's not completely wrong but sort of misleading. Yuri has relatively little in common with shoujo romance and was built more on amplifying female friendships that existed in shoujo and especially class S. Kase-san is more in line with typical shoujo romance.

Being friends before being lovers can be limiting when it comes to romantic tension, I guess that's the crux of why I think yuri kind of has a variety problem. I also don't really know how to quantify an LN series that is 6 volumes of friend zone with a final volume of "please sit on my face". I'll take the face sitting but I guess I'm just generally not fond of class S. It kind of feels like a relic from another time.. which I guess it actually is.

I don't think I agree with that at all; what usually drags things out are harems, love triangles, or in yuri roadblocks like "but we're both girls!" I guess there's meme manga that somehow gets 3 seasons like Rent-A-Girlfriend but that's not exactly the norm. The more memorable and/or highest rated het romances are usually pretty definitive over 12 or 24 episodes, especially if they're adaptations of shoujo.

You are just saying the conventions of romance stories drag down romance stories' pacing. I am shocked, shocked I say!

It doesn't have to be that way, though. Just because it's the norm doesn't mean it's not worth complaining about. Lonely Girl is by far one of my biggest favourites in recent years, precisely because it has none of that. That's not to say it doesn't use many of the tropes we've all become familiar with, but the tropes are usually used to push things forward rather than back. They were already making out and cuddling from the start and we got several entire volumes after they officially started dating. I want more of that in my life. Like, 100000x more of that. You can tell romance stories about people who are a couple. It's possible! It really is!

TB posted:

and thus it's functionally pretty similar to some of the most prominent "bait" anime out there.

Nooo, not you too, fellow subtext enjoyer Pekoe :(

Don't misunderstand! I accept that the average yuri fan is moving away from non-explicit works and can see why that might be. Doesn't mean I'll stop enjoying them anytime soon though!

Also,

as yuri fans in particular are desperate for content.

It's funny, isn't it? Because there's no shortage of "yuri" content. There is absolutely tons of "yuri". But there's so little that actually delivers, leaving us all hungry for more. For lack of a better word, being a fan of yuri feels like being in a perpetual state of being blueballed for years and years and years without end. Probably why my patience for what I perceive to be bait is so low at this point... especially since, in the manga sphere if not in anime, we actually have made a lot of progress over the decades in how forward writers are willing to be.

last edited at Sep 27, 2022 5:37PM

It doesn't have to be that way, though. Just because it's the norm doesn't mean it's not worth complaining about. Lonely Girl is by far one of my biggest favourites in recent years, precisely because it has none of that. That's not to say it doesn't use many of the tropes we've all become familiar with, but the tropes are usually used to push things forward rather than back. They were already making out and cuddling from the start and we got several entire volumes after they officially started dating. I want more of that in my life. Like, 100000x more of that. You can tell romance stories about people who are a couple. It's possible! It really is!

It depends on what you mean by romance. "Romance" is a genre with fairly strict expectations, one of which is the ending must be the two leads getting together and "living happily ever after." The driving tension and source of conflict in the narrative is the two leads wanting to be in a relationship but being unable to for whatever reason (this is where the classic misunderstanding usually comes in). This applies to yuri, a subgenre of romance, just as much as it applies to het (and BL) romances.

It is of course possible to write a story about a couple who's already together, but it requires you to find some source of tension and conflict other than the "will they/won't they," and you don't have the romance genre formula to fall back on. It's just a lot more difficult to do that. You can even see this difficulty in Lonely Girl, which I do enjoy, but which kind of stalled out and turned into full slice-of-life once they started officially dating. (Anemone is in Heat is currently solving this problem by switching to a side couple lol.)

There are some excellent manga currently exploring this space, though. If you haven't already -- and don't mind reading about severely flawed protagonists -- I highly recommend checking out Brides of Iberis.

"Romance" is a genre with fairly strict expectations, one of which is the ending must be the two leads getting together and "living happily ever after."

Romeo and Juliet might voice an objection here. It's certainly a common trope in the entire anime/manga/LN sphere, but as an overarching genre of storytelling I think this expectation would not be grounded in reality.

It is of course possible to write a story about a couple who's already together, but it requires you to find some source of tension and conflict other than the "will they/won't they,"

Yeah, I feel like this is the most trivial caveat ever... have you ever been in a relationship? Relationships are never "happily ever after with zero tension for the rest of your life". If anything, it's the opposite. Merely depicting a relationship provides boundless opportunities for conflict and drama.

You can even see this difficulty in Lonely Girl, which I do enjoy, but which kind of stalled out and turned into full slice-of-life once they started officially dating.

Hmm, I don't agree, though? I think it's done a perfectly fine job of continuing the story, with stuff like tension about how much time they spend together, their plans for the future, coming out to their friends. Mind you, it's a fluffy, low-drama story where all of the issues are generally resolved quickly and happily, but it was also like that before they started dating, so I don't think that's really related to the topic at hand.

Romeo and Juliet might voice an objection here. It's certainly a common trope in the entire anime/manga/LN sphere, but as an overarching genre of storytelling I think this expectation would not be grounded in reality.

I mean that a happy ending is literally listed as a requirement by the Romance Writers of America (I'm aware we're talking about Japanese media, but it's more or less the same there):

Two basic elements comprise every romance novel: a central love story and an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, not a romance. That's why I said it depends on how you define the word.

Yeah, I feel like this is the most trivial caveat ever... have you ever been in a relationship? Relationships are never "happily ever after with zero tension for the rest of your life". If anything, it's the opposite. Merely depicting a relationship provides boundless opportunities for conflict and drama.

Of course, I never said it was impossible, just that it's more difficult to come up with conflict outside the standard romance template. In particular, it's very difficult to write conflict between two characters who are basically good or at least who the audience are expected to sympathize with; this is why most fictional antagonists are one-dimensionally evil, and why most obstacles in romance are external (misunderstandings, evil parents, love triangle, whatever).

I would also venture to guess that a large subset of the romance audience wants to read about an "ideal" relationship they can self-insert into, and bluntly depicting the difficulties that arise from (most/all) real-world relationships ruins that wish fulfillment aspect.

To be clear, I do agree with you that I'd like to see more work that seriously tackles realistic disagreements and conflicts that arise between two (or more!) people in an established relationship. I'm just theorizing as to why those works aren't particularly common.

Hmm, I don't agree, though? I think it's done a perfectly fine job of continuing the story, with stuff like tension about how much time they spend together, their plans for the future, coming out to their friends. Mind you, it's a fluffy, low-drama story where all of the issues are generally resolved quickly and happily, but it was also like that before they started dating, so I don't think that's really related to the topic at hand.

I confess I didn't love the manga before they got together either (not because it's fluffy and low-drama, the characters just aren't particularly compelling to me), so that's a fair point.

I remember when the current yuri landscape included parodies like Strawberry Panic! and outright tragedies like Blue Drop, so the current climate, even with stories that could be seen as "bait," is much more tolerable to me.

To be an unsatisfying anime is still the series shortcoming. If you're the type of person to pick up an LN series after watching the anime that's your prerogative, many of us aren't so the anime is the only opinion we have of a series. If its not particularly compelling in its early going -- again it just doesn't matter what happens in LN volume 7.

Yes, well, that is certainly your own personal issue then. There is nothing more to say here.

In fairness to Otherside Picnic the adaptation was a bit butchered. I actually kind of tried to read the series but didn't really enjoy it enough to stick with it. There are series I get into here and there; yuriwise I loved ILTV and enjoyed Sexiled but the odds of me picking up an LN series are still pretty slim.

I agree on Otherside Picnic. I honestly have no idea why they changed the order of things so haphazardly. There are plenty of cases where LNs/manga are just superior to their anime adaptations anyway, so it is usually better to go for the source material first. The anime is merely an advertisment to hook readers at that point.

There are rarely any anime that are definitive within 12 episodes. If such things get rated highly, then it is simply because anime onlies are desperate for conclusions, which makes a lot of sense of course.

Um... are you one of the people who doesn't really watch or read het romance? Because your assertion makes no fucking sense otherwise. Off the top of my head there's Kokoro Connect, Tsuki Ga Kirei, Horimiya, Bakemonogatari, VN adaptations like ef, and I'm sure a lot more that I can't think of. Yeah, two cour is a lot more to work with but that's also a lot more room for a love triangle or an amnesia subplot or some such.

I am sorry, this is Dynasty, is it not? I may have experience with het works, sure, but it is obviously not a focus of mine. That being said, your exceptions don't matter. I could make a list of 100 het romance anime that are not complete in a 12 episodes season. Even more if we add non-romance focused ones. What does throwing around names prove? As usual I have to note that you have tunnel vision. And it appears to me that you are far more knowledgable about het works than yuri every time we talk. Not that this is a flaw or anything, enjoy what you will. It just means that often you seem to be hyper-focused on the things you are familiar with over a broader perspective.

Nothing about Kase-san is intentionally Shoujo manga like. Not any more than most Yuri manga are, as Yuri is tacitly an off-shoot of Shoujo manga to begin with.

Hmm... that's not completely wrong but sort of misleading. Yuri has relatively little in common with shoujo romance and was built more on amplifying female friendships that existed in shoujo and especially class S. Kase-san is more in line with typical shoujo romance.

Yuri has little to do with Shoujo romance? Except a majority of early yuri manga used Shoujo tropes, Shoujo artstyles and dynamics. The distinction only came about slowly. I suppose there are two schools of thought there of course, one being Shoujo-like yuri and the other being Class S style yuri, both birthing different aspects of the genre. But tropes like the "handsome school prince" who pins girls against walls and crossdresses etc. are 100% steeped in Shoujo origins, where the girl first and foremost had to replace the role of the boy.

In your previous comment you asserted what you consider the "bedrock" of yuri works, but you failed to mention any of the dynamics that are part of this side. Beyond the more recent "gyaru x shy glasses girl" tropes that you brought up, there have been the "Onee-sama/garden of lillies" works or the "tomboy x sheltered lady" pairings etc.

Nobody thinks Class S is actually yuri these days (I hope) and no yuri LNs I know of are this insipidly stretched out as you claim (with the exceptions being those which dont actively focus on romance and... AdaShima, but just because AdaShima is a unique case of Iruma's madness).

Being friends before being lovers can be limiting when it comes to romantic tension, I guess that's the crux of why I think yuri kind of has a variety problem. I also don't really know how to quantify an LN series that is 6 volumes of friend zone with a final volume of "please sit on my face". I'll take the face sitting but I guess I'm just generally not fond of class S. It kind of feels like a relic from another time.. which I guess it actually is.

Being firends before being lovers is literally what 90% of Japanese romance is like though. Slowburns are the standard when it comes to romance, particularly in manga where the editor forces the mangaka to drag the story out as much as possible. Het is far more symptomatic of this than BL and Yuri actually, it is just that the expression of said friendship is always way hornier and the girls tend to be vying for affection regardless of relationship status. Yuri's slowburns take more time for the realization of romantic feelings on average, though, that much I agree with. And BL... well BL is a different beast entirely. Aggressive progress is the norm.

---

@protectmomo

You are just saying the conventions of romance stories drag down romance stories' pacing. I am shocked, shocked I say!

It doesn't have to be that way, though. Just because it's the norm doesn't mean it's not worth complaining about. Lonely Girl is by far one of my biggest favourites in recent years, precisely because it has none of that. That's not to say it doesn't use many of the tropes we've all become familiar with, but the tropes are usually used to push things forward rather than back. They were already making out and cuddling from the start and we got several entire volumes after they officially started dating. I want more of that in my life. Like, 100000x more of that. You can tell romance stories about people who are a couple. It's possible! It really is!

Naturally, it doesn't (and perhaps shouldn't) have to be this way. I was merely pointing out that this is the norm, the convention and that saying "It only happens if you include the things that most things include" is a pointless observation. Tropes are not innately an issue, it is the skill of the writer and how they use it that defines a work. YagaKimi avoids most tropes, making it a universally enjoyable work, meanwhile AnoKiss steeps itself in tropes, but it is enjoyable because it revels in its melodrama unabashedly.

As for the idea of starting a romance in the couple stage, this is obviously great and has been done well before (Hana ni Arashi is a great example), but it requires a much tighter handle on the characters and conflicts. The chase, the build-up and the gratification of the romantic pursuit are inherently easier to invest an audience in. There is a clear "end" goal that the plot progesses towards. This structural advantage can never be understated.

My compromise is to have it all. Start with proper build up to a relationship... and then don't stop. For when you had time to establish the cast properly before the romance, it is easier to create a contrast that makes the second half all the more fresh.

Also,

as yuri fans in particular are desperate for content.

It's funny, isn't it? Because there's no shortage of "yuri" content. There is absolutely tons of "yuri". But there's so little that actually delivers, leaving us all hungry for more. For lack of a better word, being a fan of yuri feels like being in a perpetual state of being blueballed for years and years and years without end. Probably why my patience for what I perceive to be bait is so low at this point... especially since, in the manga sphere if not in anime, we actually have made a lot of progress over the decades in how forward writers are willing to be.

I would not agree at all that there is "no shortage of yuri content". You always have to apply a proper standard first. Compared to het and BL works, yuri has an insignificantly small pool to draw from. Your issue about quality goes hand in hand with that. The rule of "90% of all fiction is garbage" applies unilaterally, meaning that if you have 100 yuri works, 10 may be decent or good. But you have 1000 het works, so 100 may be decent or good in comparison. This leads to the disparity.

That being said, I find yuri overall has a much higher quality rate than het or BL, so that is the only advantage of the genre. Maybe there are 20 in 100 works that are decent instead. Still not great, but alas...

last edited at Sep 28, 2022 5:51AM

I am sorry, this is Dynasty, is it not? I may have experience with het works, sure, but it is obviously not a focus of mine. That being said, your exceptions don't matter. I could make a list of 100 het romance anime that are not complete in a 12 episodes season. Even more if we add non-romance focused ones. What does throwing around names prove? As usual I have to note that you have tunnel vision. And it appears to me that you are far more knowledgable about het works than yuri every time we talk. Not that this is a flaw or anything, enjoy what you will. It just means that often you seem to be hyper-focused on the things you are familiar with over a broader perspective.

Is this what they call "projection"? You're the one who decided to invoke comparisons to het in the first place, if you're not knowledgeable enough to back up your own assertions maybe stop making them?

Yuri has little to do with Shoujo romance? Except a majority of early yuri manga used Shoujo tropes, Shoujo artstyles and dynamics. The distinction only came about slowly. I suppose there are two schools of thought there of course, one being Shoujo-like yuri and the other being Class S style yuri, both birthing different aspects of the genre. But tropes like the "handsome school prince" who pins girls against walls and crossdresses etc. are 100% steeped in Shoujo origins, where the girl first and foremost had to replace the role of the boy.

AFAIK a lot of early yuri was tragic. And don't get me wrong, I love dramatic shoujo here and there (Ai Yazawa is one of my favorite mangaka ever) but I'm talking more about bubblegum romance here. Otherwise... I'll give you that the "princely girl" came from shoujo but more often than not she's not even gay. Ouran High School Host Club gave a "prince" character a reverse harem. I wouldn't consider them a gender swap either though I'm sure they've been used that way.

In your previous comment you asserted what you consider the "bedrock" of yuri works, but you failed to mention any of the dynamics that are part of this side. Beyond the more recent "gyaru x shy glasses girl" tropes that you brought up, there have been the "Onee-sama/garden of lillies" works or the "tomboy x sheltered lady" pairings etc.

Nobody thinks Class S is actually yuri these days (I hope) and no yuri LNs I know of are this insipidly stretched out as you claim (with the exceptions being those which dont actively focus on romance and... AdaShima, but just because AdaShima is a unique case of Iruma's madness).

I don't believe AdaShima has face sitting but I was definitely thinking about it when discussing dragged out LN. And going through an exhaustive list of yuri tropes was never my intention either; that's a conversation for a different thread. As far as Class S though I'd assume people still consider Maria-sama ga Miteru yuri, which was pretty much pure Class S. It casts a really, really long shadow over modern yuri, though at least the more problematic implications of Class S were lost to time, though I don't want to diminish what it was for its time here either.

Being firends before being lovers is literally what 90% of Japanese romance is like though.

...but you just admitted het isn't your focus in a previous paragraph so you're basically pulling numbers out of your ass. And you don't like examples either so I'm not sure how to respond here. If your point is that 90% of yuri romances start as friendship that's basically my criticism of the genre and why I'm talking about its roots in Class S and relationships that overemphasize friendship in the first place.

It feels like you're just trying to derail and score some internet points here but the discussion I thought we were having was 'subtext vs bait vs slow burn' and because I know yuri relationships have historically been a 'road to nowhere' the burden is IMO on the slow burn to prove its going to be different. If it can't really do that in one anime season I just don't see it any different than bait, though Class S is probably a better label.

To answer your point(lessness) though I guess I will give you that childhood friends are really common in het but they tend to be unsuccessful in love. I'd give them like a 10% success rate with plenty of memes about the childhood friend losing. I know very little about BL (aside from some BL bait here and there) but I got the impression rivalries were a more common basis for a relationship than friendship. Maybe I was mistaken.

I mean that a happy ending is literally listed as a requirement by the Romance Writers of America (I'm aware we're talking about Japanese media, but it's more or less the same there):

Ehh... have you ever looked up MAL ratings for the "romance" tag? There's an overwhelming number of tearjerkers at the top; stuff like Clannad, Your Lie in April, I Want to Eat Your Pancreas, etc. And Makoto Shinkai has made a career out of scenes of longing (between two people who barely know each other, mind you) against the backdrop of an immaculately rendered golden hour sky.

Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of "happily ever after" but Japan really seems to favor the bittersweet as well.

TB posted:

and thus it's functionally pretty similar to some of the most prominent "bait" anime out there.

Nooo, not you too, fellow subtext enjoyer Pekoe :(

Don't misunderstand! I accept that the average yuri fan is moving away from non-explicit works and can see why that might be. Doesn't mean I'll stop enjoying them anytime soon though!

Oh, thanks for clearing that up. My apologies for doubting you! Subtext 4eva.

I mean that a happy ending is literally listed as a requirement by the Romance Writers of America (I'm aware we're talking about Japanese media, but it's more or less the same there)

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, not a romance. That's why I said it depends on how you define the word.

I don't have a literature degree; I'm just a person who reads, critiques the things I read, and sometimes writes a bit of ff. That said, as that ordinary person, I don't find any kind of categorisation where "tragedy" and "romance" are exclusive categories to be useful in any way at all. I'd suggest that tragedy is on a dichotomy only with comedy; and that no matter where a story falls on the sliding scale of tragedy/comedy it can be romantic or it can be something else in addition.

Regardless of what the Romance Writers of America might say, if you tell me that Your Lie in April isn't a romance story, I'm going to think that's not particularly conducive to having a conversation or understanding each other's perspective.

I would also venture to guess that a large subset of the romance audience wants to read about an "ideal" relationship they can self-insert into, and bluntly depicting the difficulties that arise from (most/all) real-world relationships ruins that wish fulfillment aspect.

This is a good point. I enjoy reading about messy relationships in general, but I do have a red line; it's a particularly unpleasant subject for me, so I don't really want to read stories about cheating. Unfortunately for me, that strikes out a number of stories about established couples.

I will say, though, that this point about tension/conflict in a story after having an established couple circles back to the very start of the conversation. There's a third path, where you both have an established couple, have an "ideal" relationship, and still have tension/conflict: by not making the story entirely about romance. That's what I want to see, and as of yet don't think I've ever seen it in a single anime. In Lycoris Recoil, if Takina and Chisato get together, that doesn't change anything about the story's conflict - the tension was never "will they won't they", it was "government assassins vs. terrorists". We even got a homosexual male relationship, all I freaking want is for them to do exactly that thing they just did but with women now.

I would not agree at all that there is "no shortage of yuri content". You always have to apply a proper standard first. Compared to het and BL works, yuri has an insignificantly small pool to draw from.

Hmm, I'm not sure this is true. I have no idea about manga because I don't generally keep up with het manga, but there's a small enough amount of anime each season that I try to keep tabs on everything airing, and in terms of anime I think that the pool of "yuri" is actually quite close to het, if you're counting subtext and bait, because every season has numerous CGDCT, idol, etc anime and I think the majority of them do yuri bait.

@strayalive

Ehh... have you ever looked up MAL ratings for the "romance" tag? There's an overwhelming number of tearjerkers at the top; stuff like Clannad, Your Lie in April, I Want to Eat Your Pancreas, etc. And Makoto Shinkai has made a career out of scenes of longing (between two people who barely know each other, mind you) against the backdrop of an immaculately rendered golden hour sky.

@protectmomo

I don't find any kind of categorisation where "tragedy" and "romance" are exclusive categories to be useful in any way at all. I'd suggest that tragedy is on a dichotomy only with comedy; and that no matter where a story falls on the sliding scale of tragedy/comedy it can be romantic or it can be something else in addition.

As I keep saying, it really depends on how you define "romance." Romance as a genre has a specific set of tropes/expectations/"rules," including a happily ever after (among other things). These rules are not necessarily ironclad, but they are the overwhelming standard. But obviously any type of narrative can have a romance as a part of it -- call this romance as a "tag," like on MAL.

The reason I bring this up is that "yuri" is a romance subgenre. When people set out to write a yuri manga (or novel or whatever), they largely have romance genre tropes to fall back on. And as @Licentious Lantern says, romance tropes exist for a reason; the "will they/won't they" dynamic provides an inherent tension and a clear goal that automatically makes audiences invest in it. (Manga like Nisekoi and Rent-A-Girlfriend can persist literally only on that for hundreds of chapters...)

Also, this doesn't affect the larger point, but Clannad absolutely has a "happily ever after" ending.

There's a third path, where you both have an established couple, have an "ideal" relationship, and still have tension/conflict: by not making the story entirely about romance. That's what I want to see, and as of yet don't think I've ever seen it in a single anime.

I also would absolutely love to see more of this. The problem is that almost every anime -- frankly almost every piece of media -- with a gay main character is a "gay romance" first and foremost. I can think of almost no works of narrative art with an LGBT protagonist that aren't fundamentally about their love life. There are several reasons for this I'm sure, but the biggest is probably that (due to homophobia) studios and investors are afraid they'll lose a large part of their audience if they have a gay main character in an otherwise "mainstream" work. "Yuri" and "yaoi" are specific genres with their own built-in audience, even if it's a smaller audience than for het romances (especially for yuri). But if you're aiming at a more broad, mainstream audience, the funders are going to be terrified of scaring off the homophobes. Disney cancelling The Owl House is a case in point here.

That being said, there are actually a few recent anime with an explicitly lesbian main couple that aren't romances first and foremost. I can't vouch for their quality, but this is true for both Otherworld Picnic and Magical Girls Spec-Ops Asuka. MagiRevo is also getting an anime adaptation soon. I also have high hopes for Birdie Wing season 2. Times are changing, albeit slowly.

last edited at Sep 28, 2022 4:51PM

Finished watching Birdie Wing season 1. IDK if anyone else is planning to watch it but haven't at this point but have some spoiler tags anyways, I would certainly recommend going into it blind if you have the chance.
I got baited in an entirely different way. Where did my illegal underground golfing go??? That was peak Anime, and I was here for it. Now I feel like I got tricked into watching a normal school sports anime. It's still seriously great, don't get me wrong, it's not like I dislike sports anime or anything, but that kinda moved it from "best new anime I've watched in years" to...well, it's still pretty high up there on account of lack of competiton, but man. It's like the writer(s) were thinking "what kind of unique hook can I use to get people interested in this story" but the hook was way cooler than the story they were hooking us into. The whole thing with Eve graduating to normal society was very nice and all, but I think I would have preferred it to be the "happily ever after" ending.

We're getting a second season in January, and I don't think the current arc has the potential to last for the whole thing. Plenty of time for things to get wild

last edited at Sep 28, 2022 6:07PM

The villains of the mafia arc have yet to receive their commeupance, so I'm positive we'll see them again.

The reason I bring this up is that "yuri" is a romance subgenre. When people set out to write a yuri manga (or novel or whatever), they largely have romance genre tropes to fall back on. And as @Licentious Lantern says, romance tropes exist for a reason; the "will they/won't they" dynamic provides an inherent tension and a clear goal that automatically makes audiences invest in it. (Manga like Nisekoi and Rent-A-Girlfriend can persist literally only on that for hundreds of chapters...)

Also, this doesn't affect the larger point, but Clannad absolutely has a "happily ever after" ending.

It can go either way for Key adaptations. The formula for Key visual novels (and Jun Maeda anime) was called nakige (crying game) and I'll let Wikipedia explain it:

Games from publisher Key often follow a similar formula: a comedic first half, with a heart-warming romantic middle, followed by a tragic separation, and finally (though not always) an emotional reunion.

The thing is -- there are formulas for maintaining (or introducing) tension even after the main couple gets together. I brought up Kase-san earlier in the thread because it follows a proven shoujo formula for keeping things going; its not like "will they/won't they" is the only way to keep people interested.

The villains of the mafia arc have yet to receive their commeupance, so I'm positive we'll see them again.

Hmm, that's the thing, though. The entire first arc was about the orphan girls making it out of the slum life, which I think was the perfect comeuppance, and about Eve's character development. It was... very dramatically conclusive, too, what with Rose and all. As much as the unapologetically Anime golf was the reason I was so enthralled originally, I think it'd actually be narratively unsatisfying for Eve to return to that life now.

and I don't think the current arc has the potential to last for the whole thing.

This exact tournament arc, probably not. But I feel like the whole thing that was set up is that Eve made it to the good life, where she can compete with her gay golf girlfriend rival and push each other further and further. Which, gay aside, is basically the exact premise of all school sports anime. I'd be a little surprised if they buck this and go back to the wild side, given how much they emphasised Eve's transition from "someone who hits a ball with a stick for money" to someone who genuinely enjoys golfing.

The villains of the mafia arc have yet to receive their commeupance, so I'm positive we'll see them again.

Hmm, that's the thing, though. The entire first arc was about the orphan girls making it out of the slum life, which I think was the perfect comeuppance, and about Eve's character development. It was... very dramatically conclusive, too, what with Rose and all. As much as the unapologetically Anime golf was the reason I was so enthralled originally, I think it'd actually be narratively unsatisfying for Eve to return to that life now.

I doubt Eve will return to that life, more like that life will return to her lol. The orphan girls may have made it out but Catherine is still perfectly capable of using them to threaten Eve to golf for her again or something. Not to mention the ending of season 1 implies that Aoi's family has been involved in some fucked-up shit; the Amawashis being linked to the golf mafia is a natural way to bring both "worlds" together.

Not to mention the ending of season 1 implies that Aoi's family has been involved in some fucked-up shit; the Amawashis being linked to the golf mafia is a natural way to bring both "worlds" together.

Hmm, I didn't catch that but now that you mention it they certainly could be setting up for that. I would be fascinated if this is the direction it went.

There's a trailer available for Birdie Wing's second cour. The mafia plot makes a return. I personally think there's a lot of room for more insane shit, and I don't think the school tournament arc will take up that much more room.

In fact, that trailer made me wonder if the anime was initially meant to have two consecutive cours, but production issues forced the staff to delay the second half.

In fact, that trailer made me wonder if the anime was initially meant to have two consecutive cours, but production issues forced the staff to delay the second half.

Split cours like this are becoming more and more commonplace, so it was likely planned like this from the start. I guess it helps avoid production issues before they even have a chance to appear.

can't vouch for their quality, but this is true for [...] Magical Girls Spec-Ops Asuka

I remember dropping this while it was airing. Trying to watch it again now, and maybe it's shallow of me, but it really strikes me how much budget matters for an action anime. Something with this concept has no right being this boring. The voice acting is completely flat, the OST appears to have only one song (although it is good), and the fight scenes are completely lacking in both direction and raw animation quality. The sound effects are particularly egregious, with gunfights feeling as though they're playing airsoft.

All of that being said, I have relatively little to criticise about the writing so far*. It's interesting, in that it's basically the inverse of LycoReco. LycoReco had incredibly high production value, even if there was no substance backing the style. I suppose watching them almost side by side it's easy to see why anything animated by A-1 is immensely popular regardless of the quality of the story. I think I'll have to continue Asuka from the manga, because the anime isn't doing it for me.

*Mostly, it's written by a man and you can tell. The aggressive fanservice is incredibly grating and there's a god damn goblin r*** scene. But story-wise, it's fine. The gratuitous violence is not my cup of tea but I can accept it in a story that tries to depict what would happen when mahou shoujos meet the reality of our shitty planet. The fact that one of the central aspects of the plot is Asuka coping with her PTSD lends credence to the violence that makes it more meaningful than merely edgy. Although it is definitely also edgy.

last edited at Sep 30, 2022 10:09AM