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EP. REVIEW: Yurikuma Arashi

1) This is at least the second time you've made a special "writing advice for you!" post. I ignored the first one, but figured I should butt in if you plan to keep doing that.

2) Speaking from the perspective of a fellow reviewer, unsolicited "writing advice for you!" posts are literally the most annoying responses to my work I can imagine getting.

so they're just decisions made in the interest of not using the same words too many times in a sentence. It's a different school of thought in writing, but perfectly valid. It can give required plot sum-up in particular a more dramatic tone, which can make the sentence more tongue-in-cheek grandiose and fun.

I think you have a mistaken idea if you think it never is. I mean, do want examples of papers on the latent colonialism of Jane Austen? Because I can send you enough of those to keep you in reading material for years.

I wasn't saying all academic criticism is bad. As is possibly obvious from my congenitally pompous writing style, I spend a considerable amount of time reading academic critics whom I admire.

There's a tight present-tense narrative that plays out from the first episode to the last, but our initial impressions of characters are constantly re-contextualized by flashbacks, which build to a nuanced conception of them and their relationships.

Even if they were bullies, Kureha is now being punished for their deaths, showing that violence only begets more violence.

I think the solution Yurikuma will come to is the same as the one in Penguindrum – you can't avoid pain altogether, but you can form bonds of love in order to share and overwhelm it. Yurikuma looks like it might mirror Penguindrum's ending of tripartite salvation leading to transcendence. [...] In Yurikuma, Kureha saves Lulu, (taking her to the Door of Friends), Lulu saves Ginko, (taking the bullet for her), and Ginko saves Kureha, (dragging her out of the blizzard).

I just wanted to point out a couple of awkward sentences in this weeks review:

"...Kureha lost her memories of Ginko because the bear traded them away to the Court of Severance in exchange for the ability to become human."

and

"Sure, they impose things on her, but the Lone Wolfsbane continues to insist that she can both..."

The bolded parts are easily fixed by replacing them with "she" and "Ginko" respectively.

So basically now are we praising the director for just making a linear narrative with flashbacks in the middle to explain the characters? Really? Like, 95% of current stories?

its position is "screw the rest of evil yuris", because that's how the show treats them, 100% evil, without a bit of humanization or doubts or tridimensionality or something.

The show doesn't even attemp to condemn Ginko for her killings

The flashback of Kureha tortured by that legion? I thought that was hilariously ridiculous, it's so sudden, over the top and unnatural that it's hard to be perturbed.

...she's basing everything on her kneejerky personal feelings, and not doing anything to dig deeper into the show's themes or symbolism or anything like that. Which is pretty frowned-upon in academia, where you pretty much always have to have an intellectual argument for why you feel the way you do about a work. You have to present your ideas so that they're applicable and understandable to people who don't share your experiences. You can never just say "I feel, therefore it is."

But in general, disagreement ≠ ignorance.

However, what has surprised me is that my emotional investment in the characters and their situations has steadily grown despite these distancing elements.

anonamon wrote:

I just wanted to point out a couple of awkward sentences in this weeks review: "...Kureha lost her memories of Ginko because the bear traded them away to the Court of Severance in exchange for the ability to become human." and "Sure, they impose things on her, but the Lone Wolfsbane continues to insist that she can both..." The bolded parts are easily fixed by replacing them with "she" and "Ginko" respectively.

It seems to me that using "she" in the first one could easily create confusion ("Wait, who traded memories away? Kureha or Ginko?"). As for the second, using "the Lone Wolfsbane" reminds us that of the significance of the scene where Ginko was called that to the scene under discussion, and vise versa.

Though of course the reviewer's reasons for writing what she did might be completely different.

There's also something that sounds awkward about the use of "suki" for "love" that for some reason makes me uncomfortable. If I read a subtitle with the noun "love" (I will never back down on love) I expect to hear "I will never back down on ai", and even after 11 episodes, hearing "I will never back down on suki" is just weird. I can't really explain it, it's just unsettling.

Oh come on. I don't believe that you actually think Yurikuma's use of flashbacks - so many of them, dispensing information in such a piecemeal way - is like "95% of current stories."

This is correct, and interesting. Though your finding in it simply a reason to morally disapprove of the show just raises the question of what the bears and "yuris"/humans have come to represent for you.

It is hilariously over the top - quite consciously so - but that doesn't stop it from also being perturbing.

So basically, without a compelling villain, the heroes' struggle seems all the more vacant and I don't really feel compelled to root for them.

I suppose the Invisible Storm/Exclusion Committee is supposed to represent blind mob mentality/heteronormativity that has no actual arguments or goals and just judges people because they can