For the first official
blog post of the panelmonkey.org/The Sprite Cemetery what do I choose
to talk about? My history with The People's Sprites? How I bought the
URL? Why the Name change? Nope.
How the Yuri Genre of
Anime Annoys me Personally: The Happy Ending.
WHY DON'T WE EVER GET ONE!?
I have been watching yuri themed anime for a couple of years now and I kept noticing something
rather odd. I couldn't quite think what it was at first. Then I watched
Aoi Hanna (Sweet Blue Flowers.) First Fumi Manjoume's heart gets broken
by her cousin (who probably was only bi-curious and not really gay.)
Then a heart wrenching confession of her sexuality to her friend
Akira Okudaira. Then another crushing heart break by Yasuko Sugimoto
who not only outed Fumi against her will and then dumped her most
likely because Yasuko probably wasn't even gay curious, just going
out with Fumi as a rebound relationship.
After all that what does
Fumi get for a a happy ending? Standing in the snow with her best
friend Akira. No confession of love, no dancing, no laying together
naked (
it's anime, of course those sixteen year old girl are going to
get naked) LIKE IN THE OPENING CREDITS! Sure they hold hands as they
walk away into the night, but is it too much to ask for a kiss?
Destiny of the ShrineMaidens pissed me off big time. We start of with the maid Outoha who
loves her mistress Chikane Hemimiya but because of their social
statuses all Outoha can do is cheer on Chikane. Chikane is in love
with Himeko Kukrusugawa. Chikane thinks that since they are both
women she can never be with Himeko. Looks like we have two lonely
lesbians here. That is until Chikane turns into the psycho bitch and
rapes Himeko and then tortures her during the last battle. As Chikane
lays dying in Himeko's arms she tells her what she was really doing
and confesses her love for Himeko. Then Chikane is healed and they
hold hands, hug, get naked (
of course, this is anime,) and vow to
stand together against all odds. It seems all odds won out when
Chikane is ripped away from Himeko, thrown in a closet and the door
is shut on that relationship. As Himeko walks ever so lonely to
school we see the ever so lonely Outoha looking forlornly at a tree
and a hit parade of all the villains having their histories rewritten
into happy endings.
We are thrown a bone
during the last minute of the last episode when Himeko meets a
reincarnated Chikane at an intersection and they hug. Did we really
need the Fushigi Yugi ending? Couldn't Himeko and Chikane been allowed
to have walked hand in hand to school with Outoha cheering them on?
At least it's better than the manga ending. They were reincarnated as
twin sisters. Maybe that was the inspiration for
Candy Boy. (
That's a
rant for another time.)
Is there an anime which
gives the lesbian couple a happy ending? I have watched a lot of
anime in my life, but not all of it. I have watch a lot of yuri themed
anime in the past few years, but not all of it. Keep that in mind as
I pick my brain trying to come up with some examples.
Sakura Trick,
Yuru Yuri,
and
Kiniro Mosiac do come to mind, but these are comedies. They are
not meant to tell some great story. While Sakura Trick comes closest
to some drama, it falls just short. Don't get me wrong, I like all
three series, I watch them over and over. They are meant to give you
that warm fuzzy, not make a dramatic statement.
What I want is the hand
holding, fingers interlocked, in bed together, or wake up from a
night of bliss, declaration of love moment that either ends or begins
a series.
One that comes to mind is
Yuri Kuma Arashi. Kureha Tsubaki and Ginko Yurishiro do have that
declaration of love, hug, promised kiss, and holding paws moment.
Then a firing squad unloads on them. By firing squad unloads on them
I mean a line up of girls with guns sends a lot of bullets in our
heroines' direction. When we see them next they are walking around a
higher plain of existence. Now did they escape the hail of gunfire or
did Kureha and Ginko die of lead poisoning before ascending to this
higher plain?
A little less weird and
ambiguity? Please?
How about
Steel Angel Kurumi 2? (What I call Project AKo part 2.) We do have Kurumi
carrying Nako Kagura off to school. Nako is happy, Kurumi is happy,
Karinka is happy, Uruka Sumeragi is happy, and Saki is happy.
Everybody is happy. Really? It's been a few many years since I
watched this so I don't remember Nako making any declaration of love
for Kurumi. Keep in mind Kurumi is a robot that has obedience code
hard wired into her. She is in love with whom ever kisses her first.
Unlike Karinka who breaks this code, Kurumi never does. So is Kurumi
in love with Nako because of her own free will and doesn't mind the
obedience code or is she in love with Nako because of the code? As
far as I can recall this is the same Kurumi from the first series
that was in love with Nako's ancestor Nakahito Kagura.
Here we have
RevolutionaryGirl Utena the Movie. All weirdness aside, we do have Utena Tenjo and
Anthy Himemiya (any relation to Chikane?) kissing and naked (this is
anime, so of course those I don't know how old they are girls are
going to be naked,) rolling of down the road together forever. Pretty
ground breaking for 1999. Still, I can't leave the weirdness aside.
So far I have limited my
rant to commercially made anime. By commercially made I mean its
purpose is to sell merch of some kind. DVDs, Blu-Rays, toys, laundry
detergent, so on and so forth. Telling a story isn't a priority. If
there is a story that's just incidental.
I've also not discussed
hentai. I haven't seen a whole lot and I wanted to keep my discussion
limited to anime most likely to be seen on broadcast TV. A medium
that has the largest audience.
If I open up my diatribe to OVA sold at a Comiket
we find Kuttsukiboshi (Stars Intertwined.) While not as weird
as Utena was, there is enough yuri tropes from the bad old days in
these two episodes to rant about for several pages of Open Office Writer with the font set at 12. To some up it's psycho bitch Aaya Saitou meets
psycho/psychic bitch Kiiko Kawakami. We do have the confession of
love in an airplane bathroom. The hand holding fingers interlocked
while plummeting to the Earth at terminal velocity. The together
forever (naked, of course) moment on some other planet, alone. I
guess the lesbians can be together if no one can see them.
It's 2015. If
Akuma no Riddle had a
yaoi couple together happy out in the open for all to see, why not a
yuri couple?
