A follow up for the winter season now that most of the shows are ending. Not following up on every show I mentioned since I didn't watch them/someone else has already done a well enough update/no real change from what was initially reported.

Gushing Over Magical Girls: I haven't watched the anime yet since I'm waiting for the "Super uncensored" version on the Blu-Ray, but I did read the manga to a bit past where the anime adapted and I've seen peoples's post about it. It went all the way with the "Room you can't leave unless you have sex" probably being one of the highlights. With it being such a success and BD pre-orders already selling out, it seems like a season 2 will happen.

Delicious in Dungeon: so, turns out this is actually getting 24 episodes so we can actually get more Falin and Marcille moments. So far in the one ep of them being back together we got a bath and bed scene full of subtext

Mato Seihei no Slave (Chained Soldier): one of the girls clearly has a crush on her commander. Also, getting a second season so it might be possible to reach that supposed yuri that happens later in the manga.

Metallic Rouge: "She's my best stranger". Nice little moment.

'Tis Time for "Torture," Princess: from ep 5 onwards the subtext is more noticeable, especially with the introduction of a certain Vampire girl.

Urusei Yatsura (2022) 2nd Season: so far nothing big with Ryuunosuke but the season isn't over yet.

Pon no Michi: other than one joke about one of the girls getting a gift like a boyfriend would, not really any subtext. Still a good show and seems like we'll get a second season based on the ending.

And now for the surprise of the season: Honkai Star Rail Acheron and Black Swan's animated short. Pretty clear yuri with this one but the official Honaki Star Rail tik tok added text over the video to make it even more blatant.

I's wild how different the quality focus can be in 3D anime.
On one hand we got Girls Band Cry with amazingly lively (and fruity) looking character animation and expressions especially! And on the other hand we got Highspeed Etoile which has super high res renders of futuristic motorsports cars but characters that are barely more than moving cardboard cutouts xD

Related: Jellyfish can't swim in the Night is also super hecking pretty and reaaal gay. Some good food this season

last edited at Apr 6, 2024 1:57PM

Jellyfish is looking like it'll be a great show! Just watched episode 1 and it looks fantastic (and really gay). Just wish HiDive would fix their site, app, and region locking issues.

Blue Archive:...

BA player here, half of the girls are into the player (Sensei) whose gender is up to you. Their personality goes from reliable to pervert depending on the story. I'm going to assume the anime will ignore the player stuff and just do the cute girls stuff like Azure Lane did? It looks like it's adapting chapter one, Abydos story, so maybe they have something there? I don't see anyone voicing the player character like Arknights did. The PC isn't super necessary anyway, but we might miss out on Aru being a cute dork.
*Forgot to mention there is a bit of yuri. Ako canonically has a thing for Hina, Serika is a tsundere and she blushed from Shirako's comments here and there.

I'm not even a BA player i find it pretty amazing you are pretty much completely wrong about sensei

Why would they drop such a bomb at the end of Jellyfish and then move on like nothing happened? is it the end of the road for us? and of course they don't elaborate, but at the very least we can confirm is not anyone in the room because that would be a confession and I doubt it

last edited at Apr 27, 2024 2:22PM

Time for a new round of "something gay happened on a show, should I allow myself to be excited even if I'll most likely end up disappointed" !

I've been thinking about it, and you know what, I think it's okay to get excited. I've watched and read enough serialized media to know that this excitement rarely ends up justified, but I still think it doesn't negate the emotions that we felt in the moment. I may look back at this post and my gushing in the Dynasty Discord server in three months and feel like an idiot. But an anime made my heart flutter, and that's a very rare occurrence these days for me, so fuck it. I'm excited.

This is about the jellyfish anime btw.

It feels like it should go somewhere? It's clearly being framed as a meaningful moment and not just gals being pals

There was a lot of romantic framing in the episode even before the last scene IMO, like textbook romantic buildup. Honestly the first episode felt to me like it was setting up a romance, but I brushed it off at the time because every yuri fan knows that super gay meet-cutes don't mean shit. Maybe I was onto something though!

Like if this gets no follow-up I think it would just break a basic rule of storytelling. Not that I'm saying it can't happen (remember Gekidol? lol), just that it would be seriously amateurish writing.

Did we ever have a season with this many obvious yuri ships?

Jellyfish[canon]
Seiyuu radio[canon]
Whisper me a love song[canon].
Dungeon meshi[heavy subtext]
Girl band cry[heavy subtext]
Train to the End of the World[heavy subtext]

Seiyuu radio[canon]

ayylmao, it's heavy subtext at best

Seiyuu radio[canon]

ayylmao, it's heavy subtext at best

Dungeon Meshi is a stretch as well. That series doesn't care about romance much at all. Still great though! It does feel like there's more variety now. Hopefully that continues across the board.

last edited at May 5, 2024 12:29PM

Seiyuu radio[canon]

ayylmao, it's heavy subtext at best

Its a yuri novel

Seiyuu radio[canon]

ayylmao, it's heavy subtext at best

Its a yuri novel

That's not what i heard. I only heard it was subtext.

Seiyuu radio[canon]

ayylmao, it's heavy subtext at best

Its a yuri novel

The manga is tagged subtext here, and everyone else I've seen talk about it says it never goes past subtext

last edited at May 5, 2024 9:05PM

Girl band cry[heavy subtext]

Make that canon now.

As side for this season: Ishikawa Puro (creator of Kuttsukiboshi) has an indie yuri series on his youtube channel. While the first two episodes have been out for over a year, about a month ago he added English Subs so that overseas viewers can enjoy his work. Also, a new episode of it just dropped (So far no official subs on it yet but the auto translate for this one honestly wasn't that bad) and let's just say that it adds to this season.

Here's a link to it: https://www.youtube.com/@user-he2fy6tk4o/videos

Next season:

Shy is coming back

My Deer Friend Nokotan does have yuri, but it's an absurd gag comedy, so it's not very serious yuri

Nanare Hananare is a schoolgirl series, and it's coming to us from the main Bandori director. Probably going to be at least a bit gay

Mayonaka Punch is all-female. I'd expect it to at least have subtext

VTuber Legend is apparently a fairly accurate depiction of vtuber streams, so I'd expect flirting

Dungeon People doesn't look to have any outright romance, but with the main characters both being female it'll probably be shippable

2.5 Dimensional Seduction also has an actual lesbian couple among the supporting characters, but they didn't get an arc focused on them until very recently in the manga (as in, the arc ended literally last week), so it's obviously not going to be in the anime, even if it's already confirmed to be 24 episodes long.

On the other hand, it's shockingly easy to ship the girls together even though this is a harem title. There were times while I was reading the manga where I seriously started to think the MC was a bait and the main female lead was the real harem protagonist all along, because she has a very harem-esque power of making everyone love her. And she manages to be even more blatantly bi than Marin from the similar title Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru.

last edited at May 31, 2024 9:39PM

Man that last episode (#9) of Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night went hard. Not so much with regards to being yuri (though it's extremely relevant here), but moreso with regards to being my favorite episode of all the shows I've been watching this season so far.

Jellyfish's last episode was rough on my heart.
And in the preview we see Kano being depressed, which means this episode is looking like it'll be rough too.
It also looks like it'll be a Mei episode, which doesn't help since she's by far my least favorite character. Her whole "Kano-tan is my oshi!" act was kinda funny at first but it's been getting old.

Girls Band Cry continues to be great. All the discussion over translation of "that scene" from episode 8 has been interesting: https://old.reddit.com/r/yurimemes/comments/1d774ya/well_this_is_awful_girls_band_cry/

last edited at Jun 5, 2024 10:50AM

When I saw the creepy otaku in Jellyfish 07 I decided not to watch the next episode, then I heard the one after that was drama heavy, looks like things will stay that way for a while which kinda sucks, even if I don't know the reason yet, makes me feel like is better to wait until the series is over now and I was looking forward to each episode every week before :(

THANK GOD for Yuru camp and Dungeon meshi! and I'm going to consume Girls Band Cry soon

Jellyfish's last episode was rough on my heart.
And in the preview we see Kano being depressed, which means this episode is looking like it'll be rough too.

Yeah the current high drama arc isn't the fluff you might want from a CGDCT show, but I really appreciate the way it's done. It seems relatively well grounded and I think the characters are all acting in a very consistent and "realistic" manner according to what we know (or have just learned, talk about presenting backstory) about them. I don't watch external previews for future episodes. I usually take my anime as they come, when they come.

I had the impression that they took a very effective "show don't tell" approach to both current and past events in this episode, with little commentary added (e.g. mama Hayakawa's manipulative approach to negotiation was super well presented without overplaying it too much or making her an obvious villain). In the later parts it felt more like Kano was reliving some of her uncomfortable experiences, allowing us to learn of the past through her eyes, rather than having her explain it to others (which is what I meant by "commentary").
Direction, acting and animation were top notch in this one.

So Hana wa Saku, Shura no Gotoku, Takeda Ayano's series about a high school recitation club is getting an anime adaptation.
I'm honestly p hype about this, it's a great series. Dunno much about Studio Bind but they did Onimai!, which was good, so there's that~

https://x.com/MangaMoguraRE/status/1800837218195431839

Takeda Ayano anime adaptation

Author of Hibike Euphonium

I know I have plenty of company in the many yuri fans who were traumatized by the Euphonium yuri bait. Couldn't continue that series after a male background character came out of basically nowhere to pair with the MC.

I'll have to 100% know whether there'll be yuri or not with this new anime before I can consider watching this one. "Fool me once, shame on me..." and all that.

Takeda Ayano anime adaptation

Author of Hibike Euphonium

I know I have plenty of company in the many yuri fans who were traumatized by the Euphonium yuri bait. Couldn't continue that series after a male background character came out of basically nowhere to pair with the MC.

I'll have to 100% know whether there'll be yuri or not with this new anime before I can consider watching this one. "Fool me once, shame on me..." and all that.

I don't think it's labeled yuri anywhere. It doesn't seem like it is, based on what I've seen of that manga on Mangadex.

last edited at Jun 13, 2024 7:54AM

Takeda Ayano anime adaptation

Author of Hibike Euphonium

I know I have plenty of company in the many yuri fans who were traumatized by the Euphonium yuri bait. Couldn't continue that series after a male background character came out of basically nowhere to pair with the MC.

I'll have to 100% know whether there'll be yuri or not with this new anime before I can consider watching this one. "Fool me once, shame on me..." and all that.

Can't blame the author for the Euphonium anime bait. That's entirely on KyoAni.