Yurikuma Arashi – Muddled Metaphors

Production

Ikuhara has a distinctive style and you can usually recognize any project that he helms. To me, Yurikuma Arashi looked a lot like Penguindrum. And Penguindrum is a masterpiece. This said you can see a lot of the familiar visual styles he employs. High contrast backgrounds, impactful set pieces in minimalist environments, an extremely cozy and welcoming home setting for the main characters, angled super low shots and lots of signposts. Also spiral staircases. Actually, Utena was the only other series to use that as a motif. Penguindrum had a lot of elevators, scaffolding and high-rises so the concept of levels and layers was still there but no actual spiral staircase as a recurring theme. Does Ikuhara see some connection between spirals and lesbians? I would really like to know that.

Aside from the usual elements, Yurikuma Arashi does some very interesting things with symmetry. The settings are often almost unnervingly symmetrical. It creates a slight uncanny feel. Like when you see a picture of someone and their left side is a perfect reflection of the right. It’s subtle but your brain still picks up that something is visually off. However, he offsets that by framing characters to the side or off-kilter. The visuals are pretty great in fact.

The voice acting is peculiar. It’s even more insistent than in any of his other series. All the characters really enunciate as if they are theatre majors. This is obviously in line with the themes the series explores and it fits. What I’m saying is that the entire production is geared towards creating a sense of otherness even in more mundane moments (although the story is particularly weird) and it succeeds beautifully. There is also tons of visual and non-textual storytelling going on which is great…kinda…

Story & Characters

Ikuhara really likes surreal stories. He crams a lot of themes in his series and keeps a lot of it open-ended. It allows the audience to interpret and connect with the stories in a myriad of ways and I think that’s fantastic. On the downside, however, if the audience does not connect with those themes then his series will most likely range from mildly boring to borderline unwatchable. So strong and consistent themes are a must.

And this is where I think Yurikuma Arashi really fails in comparison to other titles. It does tackle a lot of themes and, interesting ones at that, but it often confuses the allegories and had me wondering just what it was trying to tell me a bit too often.

For instance, there is a strong theme of acceptance throughout the series. Girls vote to exclude someone if they are different if they refuse to conform to societal norms because they perceive that as evil. OK, so then the Bears who are their sworn enemies represent the chaos and freedom of a society without constraints. Well no they don’t. They also exclude their own and have “unwanted” bears.

Also, Kureha who is the girl being excluded doesn’t look, act or speak any differently than anyone else. There is no clear way in which she is not adapting to the norm. A first I thought it was a more specific type of difference in that Kureha is open about romantic feelings towards another girl but no, everyone in the series is more or less openly gay so no.

Then I thought that could be the point, that what we perceive as scary and different simply isn’t and that the people alienated by society are in fact the same as everyone else. Strong theme, I like. But then, why add Bears into the story. They ARE different. Way different. And with the exception of the two main Bears, they are all harmful. They have all been responsible for the death of characters we are supposed to love. So different is bad?

The entire series is a bit like that. It’s very odd and interesting in the way weird things are interesting. You stumble onto a theme and there really are a lot of nice ideas in it, but when you think a bit about the bigger notion behind the events it sort of falls apart. The allegories don’t stick together. And that’s what I think was the downfall of this series.

That’s not to say that Yurikuma Arashi doesn’t have anything going for it. I noticed that a lot of people who don’t usually like Ikuhara did like this particular series. It is a lot more direct about the sexual themes which I liked. And there’s something almost feminine in how the material is approached. The camera gaze and contextual framing seemed that way to me, at least. However, it does that annoying this of calling girls in romantic relationships “friends”. Gal Pals!!!

It’s visually stunning and the characters are concepts rather than people which can be very interesting when it works. It’s definitely one of the more unique Yuri titles I have seen and I still think it’s worth a watch. Despite the fact that Yurikuma Arashi is a clearly flawed anime, I found a lot to like in it and I am happy to have watched it.

You might like this anime if:

You’re a huge fan of Ikuhara or a huge fan of Yuri. If you think it’s funny that a show about lesbians uses bears, which is a popular gay slang, as metaphors.

I save all my screencaps on my Pinterest and you can find more there if you are interested. But I still like to show you a few in the post. If you’re like me, screencaps are something that really helps you decide to watch an anime or not.