They should keep things like this for a while, I'm sad that they didn't show anything about Dva! she's just making comercials?

D.Va's all about gettin' paid

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

I dunno, I think the problem right now is that Wei Wei is just trying to enjoy her hot young girlfriend without actually making an emotional commitment to her. She's obviously been hurt pretty badly, she's at least partially in the closet, and her girlfriend broke up and married a man.

Her dating a kid just for fun isn't the way to resolve her pain, she needs to be able to actually have a real relationship, and from the last chapter it seems like she's still kind of avoiding getting too emotionally intimate with Ding Yi, even if maybe she's not even doing it consciously.

Plus of course Ding Yi's got her own shit going on, which we still know almost nothing about, but obviously she's keeping all of this a secret from her own family as well. She could very well be hoping that Wei Wei is going to take her away from her family.

I for one appreciate Bloom Into You's strong anti-girls-getting-hit-by-trains stance

But Touko's sister was japanese trucked :P

Hey the trucking industry employees a lot of people.

How would you like to tell those drivers' families that daddy doesn't have a job anymore just because he's been running over Japanese schoolgirls?

I for one appreciate Bloom Into You's strong anti-girls-getting-hit-by-trains stance

I really like this chapter. It being about lesbians helps a lot.

For once, a lesbian couple.

Though it had to be the "horribly abused by ex-husband so turned gay" trope.

The older one may have been gay from the start eventually.

To be honest it sounded a lot more like the "married lesbian in the closet who finally became true to herself" than turning gay from abuse.

I'm leaning towards this, since the text implies a delay between her leaving her husband and meeting Kayo.

That and it said that even aside from the abuse, she never liked the sex--now maybe that's cause he was an abusive jerk, or maybe it's cause she wasn't actually into men (or both).

Anyway, for me the important thing is, it was a pretty sweet love story. Nice chapter.

Yeah, it seems silly to assume that the author is pulling out that sort of tired trope, when the series as a whole has been about a man coming out of the closet and getting divorced. He didn't suddenly get turned gay by his wife, either!

She has a real name, but Tomoko mentally dubbed her "Emoji" because her face looks like, well, an Emoji.

IIRC they have a radio show where they'll do listener-submitted scenes

I mean, it still kinda means something that they're choosing to do those sketches, and that the Japanese fanbase is obviously not buying the "oh they're just close friends" handwave either. But it's not canon in any way.

KumiRei was pretty gay...and then there is Taki again. Since they erased almost all Shuiichi parts, they should just remove the Reina-Taki ones too. They could keep Taki's back story, but damn this yuri -het exchange from one minute to another is just bad. They are trying too hard to prove this is just a phase.

It is seriously annoying me. Season 1 felt so fantastically genuine between Kumiko and Reina, now they've totally retreated from that into just the occasional vague yuri cliche.

It's especially aggravating when you then go check out Yuri on Ice which is just unapologetically gay. It's actually a lot like S1 of Hibike, a story about a person's personal growth, with a side helping of great gay romance. The difference being that in the end KyoAni only cares about marketing their cute girls, while Yamamoto Saya is interested in actually making meaningful art.

Shoot, at this point I have more hope for Flip Flappers than I do for Hibike Euphonium.

Boku wa Mari no Naka felt like the author was just kind of done with it. I know he had already started a new series, and you can really notice that he's obviously investing less time on Mari in the later chapters. More blank backgrounds, bigger frames, and the plot progress starts really dragging. It just kinda seems like the author wanted to do his big plot twist, and once that was obvious he was ready to be done with it.

I do still read Mari as totally gay though. Like, in the early chapters we learn about her having a ton of anxiety over various aspects of her life, especially the stress of judgment from her peers, and her attempts to keep up her perfect appearance. That she then has a romantic encounter with another girl could be read as the final straw, she already is stressed out at trying to fit in, now she's learning about her sexuality and realizing she has to hide that too? We know she had already been turning down boys who had asked her out, and Isao also finds girly mags in Mari's closet. You could read it as one reason why Mari envied Isao so much, that his sexuality was catered to while she has to keep hers hidden.

The show mostly stays as just a cringe comedy. But the manga's sense of humor has gotten a lot gentler, and things are better for Tomoko now. It's kind of gone from only Tomoko feeling awkward and confused to Tomoko making a larger cast ALSO feel awkward and confused. Emoji is one of those girls, Tomoko has unintentionally triggered some real complicated feelings in her, all without the slightest clue that she's done anything.

There are earlier yuri manga you can look at that reference same-sex marriage being legal in various European countries, but it's always pointed out kind of wistfully, that some random country far away is more accepting, there's no realistic plan to go there.

But the US isn't just a military superpower, it's a cultural one as well, especially in East Asia. Students study English, pop musicians include English lyrics because they're cool and they export well across the region, American movies and TV shows are watched and enjoyed. America is both cool and familiar.

And really you can look at the evolution of the way that yuri manga talks about sexual identity as tracking a great deal with the growth of gay civil rights in America. Classic yuri often has that star-crossed lovers vibe, that their love is beautiful but inherently tragic, or it goes the other way and just treats it as a childish fancy that will be grown out of eventually. But now magazines like Yuri Hime have stories that are increasingly confident in viewing their characters sexuality as an identity, that they are writing lesbian love stories, and their love is equally valid as a het romance. Even the Japanese term for lesbian is an English loanword.

Asia paid attention to the growing visibility of gay people in the US and the dialogues in the US about gay identity during the gay marriage debate, and when gay marriage was legalized nationwide they really noticed. That's not just some far-away country in Europe they don't know anything about, they're familiar with America! They consume the culture, they travel there, they send the kids to college there. I don't have the link to hand but even in Korea, which is more socially conservative than Japan, the press was interviewing a Korean gay rights activist and he said how important the US legalizing gay marriage was to his own movement. He said that Koreans want to be like the US because the US is cool, so legalizing gay marriage would send a big signal that maybe it's actually OK, especially to younger people.

There's been some bits that make we wonder if Cocona and Papika have some greater connection, but "Cocona might be gay" has been a strong enough theme that I'm not too worried about it (seriously, that bit with dress Papika alone...)

My main fear for the show is actually that they'll never develop Papika beyond a generic manic pixie dream girl

It is kind of interesting just by itself though that Papika is a MPDG for another girl. Not something we get very often.

Kuzu no Honkai is kind of half fucking terrible, and half actually really interesting. The plot itself is dumb and soapy and has way too much pointless scheming just for the sake of people being terrible.

The interesting part is the way it approaches HS romance as much more about A) being horny and wanting to get laid, and B) as a way of seeking status among your peers, being cool and being perceived to be sexually active and desirable, and the feeling of self esteem that comes from being desired. The main couple aren't really into each other, but they're both cool and so they start dating even though they're actually into other, unavailable people. And then from there they start a sexual relationship as well, not because true wuv but just because it feels good and they're horny teenagers.

The main girl's best female friend is in love with her, and after some stuff happens they start having sex. And she actually thinks that it feels a lot better than when she's with her phony boyfriend. But she apologizes and breaks it off because she's still not into her friend, and doesn't want to hurt her, she feels guilty for leading her on just to feel good and feel wanted.

So on the one hand it's not yuri, but on the other hand the main female character definitely seems to be bi, her friend -with-benefits being female is not why she breaks things off. Though I haven't read the more recent chapters since then so things may have changed, I dunno.

I think it's just going to depend a lot on the adaptation, and how in depth they're going to explore her sexuality. It's an important, if occasionally fuzzy, theme in the manga, but I can't imagine the anime is going to be quite so explicit about things.

last edited at Nov 17, 2016 6:53PM

I did enjoy Shuuichi in season 1, because he largely functioned as a prop to demonstrate how uninterested in boys Kumiko was, in contrast to how totally into Reina she was.

The first episode of this season was so damn gay I was sure they were actually going full bore with it, but since then I've been getting increasingly frustrated with KyoAni.

Weirdly I hated the extra shipping that Hibike threw in the last episode. When it's just Kumiko and Reina being all gay for each other in the middle of their otherwise obviously straight classmates, it makes it feel more like a genuinely queer story. But when more girls are getting romantic overtones to their relationships it's just a sign that none of it actually means anything, KyoAni just think girls liking girls is cute (but don't worry they're just friends!).

One of the things that made season 1 feel really unique is that het relationships were around, and yet Kumiko couldn't be less interested in being in one. Her friends even thought Shuuichi was cute, and she's just like "lol nope" to the idea of going out with him, and whenever anyone talked about cute boys she was plainly at sea - but her narration repeatedly notices good looks in women. So not only did she feel like an actually lesbian character, but her characterization had more to it than that, she's got a whole story about her realizing how much she loves music and that she wants to work her ass off to be great at it. When mainstream yuri is so often infantilizing towards its female characters it was awesome to see something like that.

Yeah I don't think it's fair to class this in with "Will they or won't they" stories that just depend on constant misunderstandings and coincidences to keep the story in a state of status quo. Ssamba's really interested in depicting in close detail the growth of a relationship, and the two of them working out what it is they want from the other.

Like, they feel like a way more real couple than tons of other fictional couples who are officially together, and their relationship has deepened a TON since they first met, as well as their understanding of themselves.

Some of it is also just that Ssamba wants to write a story about restrained desire too, I mean she loooves Carol and The Haidmaiden, and she's plainly going for a similar sort of vibe. This is not some, "Oh we're just friends, tee hee!" bait and switch!

I'm sorry I never wanted to be rude (in fact I'm an ace) I came at that conclusion by the lack of desire towards his partner and many other reasons that I saw, maybe she's homoromantic o she's not
(I'm not good in English, sorry if I made a mistake )

You weren't being rude. I just think that we really don't know what sexuality she is because she doesn't even really know.

It's cool if you can relate being an ace to her experience, but personally, IMHO, I think it's best to hold off. Depression can really do a number on one's sexual drive. (from personal experience I know this)

Yeah, she's dealing with big time depression and also social anxiety, neither of which are very helpful to the libido. And she's hardly the only person who's ever been too nervous to get aroused during a first sexual experience.

She seems pretty sure that she's into women sexually. It's just that sex isn't actually what she was needing, she needs friendship and intimacy a lot more right now.

Like, the thing to me is that if you read them as just friends you're just left with a ton of questions. If you read them as yeah, they're totally dating, or at least in sort of that teenage not-quite-officially-dating-but-definitely-a-thing relationship? They totally make sense. Kumiko's got her friends, and she acts one way with them, and she's got her girlfriend, and she acts more intimately with her. Remove like, two lines from Reina about Taki-senseii and the entire rest of the story works on that interpretation. Add in those two lines, and Kumiko's (lack of) reaction to them, and it's like... What the hell is this relationship exactly?

last edited at Oct 13, 2016 1:55AM

Yeah, the whole romance angle has really been done through like how scenes are shot and arranged, it's less about the things they actually say.

Like one of the visual things that was simultaneously subtle yet really, obviously purposeful has been Reina and Kumiko's body language when they're alone vs. when they're with Kumiko's friends.

When they're with friends, they maintain the same (rather distant, actually) personal space as everyone else. And the way the images are composed really intentionally highlight that separation - 1 2 3

But when they're alone, there's an immediate difference, no separation of personal space at all 1 2 3

And like you mentioned, the show makes heavy use out of perspective shots to push Kumiko's attraction to Reina. That's typically something like an A-B-A sequence - A: we see Kumiko looking at something, B: we cut to what she's looking at, A: we cut back to Kumiko's response to what she's looking at. Pretty much all of the "objectifying" shots in the whole first season aren't just done for fanservice, they're the B shots of Kumiko checking out Reina (and occasionally vice versa).

Which I mean, like, that's all really normal visual language to use in a romance. The weird thing with Hibike is that the script itself is rarely admitting a thing, while the visuals themselves seem to have a completely different idea about matters.

last edited at Oct 12, 2016 11:20PM

You know, on the one hand you make a good case for how much Kumiko and Reina are growing.

On the other hand, one of the things I actually thought was super interesting about season 1 was how much it actually rejected a lot of the typical communal social values that you usually see in anime. The band as a group gets better, but not everyone likes everyone, and Kumiko and then Reina cause waves by competing for solos and parts in the band instead of just valuing what their seniors want. Kumiko and Reina both want to be great, and part of that quest for improvement isn't just improving themselves but being better than others, beating them out for the top spot, even if they're on your team. And we'd get that in the personal drama too, like when Reina gets really annoyed at that twin-tails girl she goes outside and yells to herself about what a bitch she is. It's easy to overlook but it's really pretty subversive, that's not how most Japanese fiction values behaving in a group.

Kumiko's quest so far in season 2 seems much more typical, she's trying to find a solution that'll settle everyone down, soothe hurt feelings, and help the group. It'll be interesting to see how the story handles it and if it plays with Kumiko's role as peacemaker at all.

Aaaaand episode 2 goes right back to, "teehee, what, no, we're just friends!"

Goddamn it KyoAni

Got a link Faylicia?

Yeah, it's not clear what's actually going on with that girl but her life plainly seems to be in chaos. She needs an adult figure she can depend on, not sex in a hospital bed with a possible concussion.

It also seems like she was using sex to change the subject, to distract the doctor from asking her about stuff she doesn't want to answer. Like, I don't think the writer wants us to think this is all just hunky dory romantic, the doc is making bad decisions and doesn't know anything about this girl.

I wonder if her parents disowned her for being a lesbian...

It seems like it's 60/40 that, or that she hurt herself so that she could get closer to the doctor, and it's going to be some sort of stalker-ish subtext, something like The Girl At My Door.