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EP. REVIEW: Sarazanmai


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Super_M



Joined: 08 May 2018
Posts: 201
PostPosted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 2:36 pm Reply with quote
yurigasaki wrote:
gloverrandal wrote:
Zeino wrote:
I'm just glad that Ikuhara is expending his scope again. As good as Yuri Kuma was, it suffered from being thematic retreaded ground from Utena with the ending being a retread of Penguindrum's. Maybe he did need to make a much more direct "LESBIANS EXIST. THEY AREN'T A CHILDISH SCHOOL GIRL THING TO BE GOTTEN OVER. THEY DON'T EXIST TO JUST BE FETISHIZED. THEY ARE REAL PEOPLE WHO DESERVE ACCEPTANCE AND RESPECT!" avail of a message to Japanese Audiences in 2015 but the well of exploring queer experience through the female side was starting to run dry for him.


The amount of lesbian school girl fetish in the show itself and all the merchandise made for Yuri Kuma Arashi tells me that wasn't his message at all. Ikuhara loves fetishizing lesbians.


i'm not sure how to break this to you, but a majority of the fanservice in yurikuma arashi was pushed by the female staff members, one of whom is and out and proud lesbian who frequently publishes manga oneshots about queer women that often get a little racy.

you can criticize yurikuma if it's not to your taste, but dismissing the intent of a creator entirely when you clearly don't actually know much about how the show came to be is pretty ignorant and reductionist.


Well I'm not expert I not watched YuriKuma but anime are comercial products and straight people have much more money than gay people. So even if Ikuni create this show with thought about lesbians, he know straight guys would be big source of revenue for this kind of show.

I like Sarazanmai but so far people have mixed reactions. I want to more people appreciate that show and gave it chance espacially becouse it something little diffrent than typical seasonal anime.

Sorry for my bad english.
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Dragonsandphoenix



Joined: 21 Jan 2015
Posts: 82
Location: Malaysia
PostPosted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 9:48 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Well I'm not expert I not watched YuriKuma but anime are comercial products and straight people have much more money than gay people. So even if Ikuni create this show with thought about lesbians, he know straight guys would be big source of revenue for this kind of show.


Bold of you to assume that Ikuhara makes anime for anyone but himself. But in seriousness Sarazanmai feels like it's been marketed the most out of all his shows. But even then he's just doing his own thing. And this is anecdotal but while I was watching Yurikuma I didn't really see a lot of male fans? Most of the people I follow online who were talking about the show were women. And I can't imagine it did very well financially. If there is a demographic Ikuhara is aiming at with his shows it is not straight men. [/b]
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Cardcaptor Takato



Joined: 27 Jan 2018
Posts: 4787
PostPosted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 9:56 pm Reply with quote
The Yuri Kuma Arashi manga did run in a seinen magazine in Japan but I think people are making assumptions about Ikuhara's motives for including sexuality and nudity in Yuri Kuma. I think in all his shows the presence of sexuality serves a purpose to the story, message, and symbolism and is rarely meant to be titillating in itself. Personally I don't think the sexual content in Yuri Kuma Arashi was that much more sexually graphic or fanservicey than the sexual content in the Utena movie.
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Top Gun



Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 4566
PostPosted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 10:45 pm Reply with quote
I got excited when I saw that Jacob would be handling episode reviews for this series, and he did not disappoint in the least. Really well done. (I only hope that someday you come back to tackle more of Utena!)

I just watched the first two episodes tonight, and as always I found it amazing how quickly I shifted from the usual visceral "what the literal **** am I watching Ikuhara" reaction in episode 1 to "oh hey, gay dancing otter cops, cool" in episode two. One thing that Jacob only touched on, and maybe I'm reading too much into this, but my initial reaction to meeting Haruka was to wonder if he was transgender. I mean I know that young boys are often androgynous, but his hairstyle and clothing choice seem to be heavily female-presenting as far as anime kids go. That would add even more of a wrinkle of Kazuki's choice of methods to get closer to him.
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Dragonsandphoenix



Joined: 21 Jan 2015
Posts: 82
Location: Malaysia
PostPosted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 2:14 am Reply with quote
If anyone's interested in learning more about the otter cops then I highly recommend going through their official twitter account, @keeponly1luv. Someone has translated all of the tweets here: http://19.04se.cc/sarazanmai/reomabuarchive/ There's some light foreshadowing for the anime but 90% of it is just the two's daily updates of their day-to-day lives. Really, the fact that the staff put in so much effort in making these two seem like real people, creating and regularly updating a fictional twitter account for 6 months prior to the anime's release is actually impressive.
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yurigasaki



Joined: 06 Apr 2015
Posts: 192
PostPosted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 12:11 pm Reply with quote
Super_M wrote:
Well I'm not expert I not watched YuriKuma


Then what makes you think you know enough about the show to make a sweeping generalization about the creator's intent?

Buddy, listen. I'm a gay woman. I've watched Yurikuma all the way through probably six or seven times at this point. Believe me when I tell you: It really ain't for straight men.

Quote:
straight people have much more money than gay people. So even if Ikuni create this show with thought about lesbians, he know straight guys would be big source of revenue for this kind of show.


Putting aside how [expletive] ridiculous the idea that "straight people have much more money than gay people" is (I'm BEGGING you to provide a source for this), if Ikuhara was really relying on this show to make bank... why wasn't it pushed for merchandise and marketing?

If you check online databases such as My Figure Collection, the total goods available for the series are just around 340 (though this includes unofficial and unreleased goods). This sounds like a lot... but then, compare it to a character like Super Sonico who is built from the ground up to appeal to straight men and has over one thousand. Or what about Rem, who is basically a gijinka of waifuism at this point? Over six hundred.

Your argument that the show featured female sexuality in order to get straight men to spend money on it completely falls flat. Yurikuma simply isn't traditionally 'fanservicey' in a way that people aiming for a straight male audience go for. When it does go for eroticism, it very much rings of fanservice made with the female gaze in mind and any appeal to men is basically accidental.
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Super_M



Joined: 08 May 2018
Posts: 201
PostPosted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 2:31 pm Reply with quote
yurigasaki wrote:

Then what makes you think you know enough about the show to make a sweeping generalization about the creator's intent?

Buddy, listen. I'm a gay woman. I've watched Yurikuma all the way through probably six or seven times at this point. Believe me when I tell you: It really ain't for straight men.

Well, I don't want much argue about show I don't watched and don't plan watched. I seen some spice pics like https://imgur.com/gallery/taUAZ
People are diffrent, for example some gay men liking BL and some gay men hating BL with passion, but if you say as lesbian that you like YuriKuma and it's aimed at lesbian so I don't argue.

Maybe Ikuni gave some interview about show target audience, so that the case would be clearer.

yurigasaki wrote:

Putting aside how [expletive] ridiculous the idea that "straight people have much more money than gay people" is (I'm BEGGING you to provide a source for this),.


I mean straight people are like 95%-99% population.
yurigasaki wrote:


if Ikuhara was really relying on this show to make bank... why wasn't it pushed for merchandise and marketing?

If you check online databases such as My Figure Collection, the total goods available for the series are just around 340 (though this includes unofficial and unreleased goods). This sounds like a lot... but then, compare it to a character like Super Sonico who is built from the ground up to appeal to straight men and has over one thousand. Or what about Rem, who is basically a gijinka of waifuism at this point? Over six hundred.

Your argument that the show featured female sexuality in order to get straight men to spend money on it completely falls flat. Yurikuma simply isn't traditionally 'fanservicey' in a way that people aiming for a straight male audience go for. When it does go for eroticism, it very much rings of fanservice made with the female gaze in mind and any appeal to men is basically accidental.


I just think most people want to their show to be as succesfull as posible with, therefore reach diffrent kind of people. But true I don't know Ikuni.
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wolf10



Joined: 23 Jan 2016
Posts: 898
PostPosted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 6:21 pm Reply with quote
Super_M wrote:
yurigasaki wrote:

Putting aside how [expletive] ridiculous the idea that "straight people have much more money than gay people" is (I'm BEGGING you to provide a source for this),.

I mean straight people are like 95%-99% population.

So what you meant to say is, "the amount of wealth controlled by straight people vastly exceeds the amount controlled by gay people," which is so absurdly broad that it stops meaning anything, especially for subculture stuff like anime. Speaking in terms of individuals, not every straight on the planet is a paying customer, and I wouldn't underestimate the disposable income of the average gay, especially the average gay nerd.

I think Ikuhara doing his own thing must be working for him, or he wouldn't have landed noitaminA as a backer for this series. Nobody bets on a known loser.
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gloverrandal



Joined: 20 May 2014
Posts: 406
Location: Oita
PostPosted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 7:26 pm Reply with quote
yurigasaki wrote:
i'm not sure how to break this to you, but a majority of the fanservice in yurikuma arashi was pushed by the female staff members, one of whom is and out and proud lesbian who frequently publishes manga oneshots about queer women that often get a little racy.

you can criticize yurikuma if it's not to your taste, but dismissing the intent of a creator entirely when you clearly don't actually know much about how the show came to be is pretty ignorant and reductionist.


But I do recall advertisements and campaigns that predominately targeted men when the show was airing. https://www.cafereo.co.jp/goods/68941 I find it wrong to say the show was not targeting men with these advertisements and the manga running in a seinen magazine. I can understand if foreigners do not know about this stuff, but you are saying as if you personally know the director. Has he said what you are saying he said in an interview somewhere?
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Dragonsandphoenix



Joined: 21 Jan 2015
Posts: 82
Location: Malaysia
PostPosted: Wed Apr 24, 2019 1:10 am Reply with quote
Creator intent or no, we should all agree that YuriKuma belongs to the gays. We all know what happened last time an Ikuhara show was ripped off by straight people (Darling in the Franxx).
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Super_M



Joined: 08 May 2018
Posts: 201
PostPosted: Wed Apr 24, 2019 12:54 pm Reply with quote
wolf10 wrote:

So what you meant to say is, "the amount of wealth controlled by straight people vastly exceeds the amount controlled by gay people,"

More or less what I meant.

wolf10 wrote:

I think Ikuhara doing his own thing must be working for him, or he wouldn't have landed noitaminA as a backer for this series. Nobody bets on a known loser.

I think noitaminA experiment with content about queer men. Banana Fish had strong gay undertones and manga was popular which both men and women. Sarazanmai have Ikuhara and his most popular work Utena have even reference in anime pokemon. Next season noitaminA stream BL manga Given, I don't know much about this work. If these works sell well maybe in future there will be more anime with gay content. For now Banana Fish sold good amount Blu-ray/DvD with shrinking discs market.
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Oggers



Joined: 29 Nov 2017
Posts: 357
Location: Ontario, Canada
PostPosted: Wed Apr 24, 2019 6:58 pm Reply with quote
Dragonsandphoenix wrote:
Creator intent or no, we should all agree that YuriKuma belongs to the gays. We all know what happened last time an Ikuhara show was ripped off by straight people (Darling in the Franxx).


Did Ikuhara ever direct anything with mecha in it? I'm not sure what he would have made that Franxx ripped off.
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Cardcaptor Takato



Joined: 27 Jan 2018
Posts: 4787
PostPosted: Wed Apr 24, 2019 10:10 pm Reply with quote
I would say ultimately who Ikuhara's intended target audience for Yuri Kuma Arashi is irrelevant to whether or not audiences found something meaningful in the work. Some LGBTQ people loved Yuri Kuma Arashi and other LGBTQ people didn't. Likewise the same was true for straight Ikuhara fans. I would say Ikuhara's works can be enjoyed by anyone regardless of orientation, identity, and background, but I can respect Ikuhara's works won't be for everyone. This is true of any work of entertainment.
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yurigasaki



Joined: 06 Apr 2015
Posts: 192
PostPosted: Thu Apr 25, 2019 6:55 am Reply with quote
gloverrandal wrote:
But I do recall advertisements and campaigns that predominately targeted men when the show was airing. https://www.cafereo.co.jp/goods/68941 I find it wrong to say the show was not targeting men with these advertisements and the manga running in a seinen magazine. I can understand if foreigners do not know about this stuff, but you are saying as if you personally know the director. Has he said what you are saying he said in an interview somewhere?


I'm not... really sure why you're presenting this like it's some kind of "gotcha"? It's just fanservicey merch and unless my Japanese is really bad, I'm pretty sure there's nothing in the product page saying BOYZ ONLY NO GURLZ ALLOWED

If your point is "there's titty merch of this character so OF COURSE THE WHOLE SHOW FOR MEN" then uhhhhhh are you just not aware that gay women... are attracted... to other women? As Lulu herself would put it, it's kind of our thing. Gay women – and especially gay otaku women – are quite possibly the thirstiest human beings on the planet. We love big titty merch.

As for the manga though, I'm also not sure why that's apparently a gotcha? It was published in a seinen magazine, yes, but the manga is very much not the anime, so again... not sure why that's a gotcha. Even then I find it hard to believe the manga is supposed to be aimed at straight men, given that it's written and illustrated by Akiko Morishima of all people. Like, forgive me, but I don't think it's really a stretch to say that the manga about gay women, written by a gay woman, who has built a whole career around writing manga about gay women, aimed at gay women... might be for gay women?

Like, I really don't understand why you need an interview of Ikuhara looking directly into the camera and saying "I made this for the gays" to accept that a story about gay romance and fighting against everyday bigotry and oppression and learning to find a place for yourself even in a world that hates and abuses you for something about yourself that you can't change... that's written by a director who has a history of telling queer stories... and worked on by An Actual Lesbian, Who Writes About Gay Girls For A Career... might be for gay people? THAT JUST KIND OF SEEMS LIKE A GIVEN TO ME.
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wolf10



Joined: 23 Jan 2016
Posts: 898
PostPosted: Thu Apr 25, 2019 5:36 pm Reply with quote
Considering Ikuhara's confessions with regards to his pitching progress, it's entirely possible that he pitched Yurikuma to the network as hot girl-on-girl action and then turned around and made something for and about actual lesbians.

But leaving that aside: ENTAAAAAAAAAA. T^T

I'm really enjoying this show's complete lack of subtlety in regards to basically everything. The beginning of episode 3 throws plausible deniability out the window, and everything after is like, "but just in case you didn't quite get it yet."

On the spoiler end of things: the reveals that spoiler[Haruka is wheelchair-bound and also way more into his big brother than he is Sara] both feel kind of inevitable, but work so well as a piece of the puzzle. Also, spoiler[when delusion!Kazuki ran up to Enta, I started to wonder if there's a second Kazuki trying to fix the past or something, tying into the pre-credits scene in the first episode, but really it was really just in Enta's head].

The misanga is probably really important, though. I'm most familiar with them as one of the primary equipment slots in Inazuma Eleven (which also amusingly has the same school uniform colors), but that's because they have a special significance in Japanese youth soccer. They're worn as a lucky charm for victory, but there's also a superstition that if you put one on and wear it until it unties itself, your wish will be granted. Now rewatch the episode 1 opening scene with that knowledge.
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