Lolikitean Christmas continues with more Madoka (click for yesterday’s).

I never “shipped” Kyoko and Sayaka the way some have. As some of you may remember, yuri goggles lost their usefulness for me thanks to Erica Friedman treating Aria the way yuri fangirls will. I shouldn’t blame her. In fact, I retract all my previous poison. But she was still wrong, still a bullheaded dipshit, and her obstinate insistence upon reading her fandom and tendencies into everything from Noir to AIR ruined yurispec for me forever.

All this said: the friendship between the two weakest characters in the cast impressed me, and when Kyoko’s scorpion and Sayaka’s mermaid clash in their final fight, I was shaken.

Never forget.

Love & mutual destruction are not infrequently linked.

(ShizNat, anyone?)

[canned introduction] Maria-sama ga Miteru: a show about disgustingly rich girls attending a private school that at once shields them from the harshness of reality and subjects them to the darkest, most horrific thing a girl could go through: romantic friendship with other girls! [/canned introduction]

As DiGiKerot pointed out, there’s a lot wrong with this new season of Maria-sama ga Miteru. This isn’t limited to the OP song change, or to the running in the OP sequence. This episode sees the *gasp* introduction of apparently heterosexual men! In my Hanadera Academy? Obviously it’s more likely than I thought—I would have said the chances were 0%.

Spiral power? “Your sexy lesbian is a sexy lesbian that can pierce the gay man’s gayness?” I don’t even know!

Anyway, this episode sees us approximately one year after the events in episode one of season one. The school festival is coming up, and Lillian Jougakuen’s Yamayurikai is once more holding a play. Once more, the boys from sister gay school Hanadera Gakuen are participating. Once more, there’s some tall, dark, and bishoujo girl bitch who hates men and wants out. Once more, Yumi is given the task of making everything work out.

By the way, Kanako. You want Yumi to remain an angel?

Protip: People die when they’re killed.

Crazy Sachiko, in classic Crazy Sachiko style, informs the actors that the girls and boys will be switching roles. Well, she’s gotten better about gender issues in the last year (remember her moaning about how evil men were?), but this kind of blunt trolling isn’t very attractive. At first Yumi is displeased with her onee-sama’s decision, but then she decides to take it like a good little walking vagina when said onee-sama melts her with her eyes.

Shirukii is also on board with Sachiko’s “meaningful” expressions.

“Rape is imminent.”

In between the Yamayurikai practicing the play and Shimako training her new dog, Yumi has some flashbacks of when she became Crazy Sachiko’s petite soeur. We get some nice piano version of Pastel Pure that almost makes up for the new OP, and… Yoshino suggests that Yumi have a nice anniversary with her onee-sama. I’m starting to see eye-to-eye with IcyStorm here; Yoshino rocks. “Nice anniversary?” Roses, chocolates, a fancy dinner, and a hotel room.

The fanfiction writes itself!

In any event, Crazy Sachiko clearly remembers what day is coming up. She’s got her rape mask on.

Later on, Yumi and Touko are having some problems with their relationship. Thankfully Yumi has learned the lessons taught by Rainy Blue and confronts Touko directly, making a big fuss in front of the Yamayurikai’s sex chapel.

As the school watches in horror, Yumi trills “Ano (Tou)ko wo Rape.”

Now that Maria-sama ga Miteru is current again, I should really do some YFR fic of it, huh?

The stage was set. The metools painted a rainbow over Lillian’s entryway and the Yamayurikai took to the sky in kaiawase formation. Who will profit? Who will get sexxings? Who will make my next blog post funny? So many questions, and a whole another week until episode two…

(The emo girl was emo, but such is the lot in life for those who fall in love with DEAD PEOPLE WHO WERE KILLED. OH EM GEE.)

Fuck Yesssssssssss

Toward the end of the episode, we are informed that Rosa Gigantea is coming back for the school festival. The possibilities are endless. Personally, I’m hoping for the “Sei surprise-sexes Yumi while Yumi is waiting for Sachiko to meet her for their after-festival anniversary-celebratory make-out session” route. Other lovely possibilities include a threesome, an overly-dramatic scene with humongous sexual tension, and a tennis match.

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The possibilities seem endless. This could be a really interesting detective story or a really bad story about unrequited love, suicide, paranoia, and rebirth as your lover [...]

Looks like it’s following that first option.

Baka-Raptor commented on that post, saying:

Blog this. Nothing else.

Now, the big problem I’m having with following Baka-Raptor’s advice is that, as frankeinstein noted, I only blog the worst shows. And, as fall underwhelms with its vast selection of mediocre titles, this second episode of Mouryou no Hako has lifted the show onto a pedestal far above this season’s standards. In other words—it is not only not shit, but it is so much better than the (bad) non-shit that it’s hard for me to ridicule it.

Seriously. I tried blogging this episode, in my usual style. You can see what happened below:

it-it does hurt, but you can start moving…

“Shit… I have failed in my duties…”

	What are these “duties” you speak of, Mr. Cockblock?
	I was honor-sworn to protect Yoriko’s virginity!
	Fuck you!! Thanks to your attempted intervention, this show is losing to Ga-rei Zero in hotness levels!

Exhibit A: Ge-rei Zero is HOT

P.S. Baka-Raptor, Ga-rei Zero has dinosaurs, lesbians, and characters who are like you. I’m not trying to boss you around, or anything, but watch that shit.

“Hey, Ma’am. I won first-place in a competition for the blankest sex face. You, clearly, did not.”

… yeah. My attempt at blogging the episode deteriorated very quickly, as you can see, into “funny” screencaps accompanied by sex jokes. Why is there so much sex on my mind? I blame CCY-senpai.

*drools*

Ahem! Anyway, yeah. Mouryou no Hako is shaping up to be one of the better shows this season, in my opinion. Up there with Ga-rei Zero and Earl and Fairy (why do people say this one’s a guilty pleasure? Where’s the guilt in it? It’s fucking awesome), as I see it. And as such, it’s hard for me to make fun of it.

Of course—I don’t really know how the show’s going to shape up yet. For all I know episode three will be back to nonsensical poetic lesbianism, and I’ll be able to knock it for all I’ve got. But right now, I’m interested in following the show a bit more seriously.

Majime na Lolikit
How Aria Ruined Subtext, or Why Yuri Isn’t Funny Anymore

In early 2005, I finished watching AIR. At the time, I was active on the AnimeSuki.com forums (handle: Broken), and was active in discussing the episodes as they were aired and fansubbed. In the AIR episode 12 thread, someone linked to lovelykitsune.com‘s special feature. LK had written Misuzu’s final diary entry for her. I laughed my ass off and proceeded to read through the rest of his archives. I gobbled up his Maria-sama ga Miteru reviews like candy. It was, as he himself put it, a writer’s gold mine.

Amazed at how humorous this Maria-sama show appeared to be, I downloaded it (along with Negima and Kanon, some of the first anime I consumed after my introduction to the medium via Naruto) and watched it.

I laughed at the subtext and the ridiculous premise (it’s a lesbian Catholic school lolol) but the show simply wasn’t as funny as Lovely Kitsune had portrayed it. Saddened, I groped for a new angle from which to enjoy it, and eventually I found it: I could amuse myself by looking too far into possible subtext and then laughing at how gay everyone was (it’s a lesbian Catholic school lolol). It wasn’t that I was homophobic (those were turbulent times, and I was seriously considering the possibility that I myself was gay—actually, I still don’t have an answer O_o), but the overabundance of this otherness was more than enough to make me chuckle.

After reading Pretty Face (“Become my onee-sama #2!”) and watching such blockbusters as Mai-HiME (ShizNat) and Kannazuki no Miko (best confession scene ever), I found that I liked this ‘shoujo ai’ business quite a bit. They were so cute, and in a lot of cases they were facing adversity in order to stay true to themselves and their hearts.

A lot of the lulz went away, but the yuri goggles remained.

(What am I talking about? The lulz was as strong as ever. I lurked the shoujoai.com forums for a while and witnessed the first ever declaration of YFR—the hilarious forum interchange that led to me creating kyousora.com and infecting the minds of several other anibloggers.)

Eventually I came upon Strawberry Panic. It made me laugh at the yuri because it was laughable. I blame this entirely upon premise and script. Oh, and the over-dramatization of everything. Around the same time, I was just a fledgling aniblogger. I discovered danbooru. I discovered various other things… like Shoujo Sect… long and short of it is that I came to this revelation: yuri is hot!!

Subtext became even more awesome as I tread into the world of AWESOME Nanoha.

Desires were fulfilled as Kyoushiro to Towa no Sora ended.

And after some time, I saw Aria.

You say good things sometimes, Alice!

Aria’s an odd cookie. Almost entirely female cast, lots of deep caring and emotion, and yet not once—not once did I find a hint of girls’ love, subtextual or otherwise. I found sisterly doting, I found friendship, I found admiration.

Please direct your attention, for a moment, toward this post of Erica Friedman’s: Yuri Anime: Aria OAV Arietta (Thanks to icystorm over at Miminum Tempo for the heads’ up.)

I’ve never been a huge fan of Friedman’s. I know she’s done some great work, etc., but one day I stumbled across some Noir review of hers and it made me cringe. Noir wasn’t yuri as far as I could tell. I recall thinking to myself—is friendship such an impossible thing?

This is, for the record, the same reaction several of my classmates had in Bible as Literature when my teacher presented unto them the theory that David and Jonathan were “romantic friends.” So maybe I just had a preconception of Noir since I’d seen it before and might find the romance between Kirika and Mireille if I were to go into the show with Friedman’s review in mind… but there’s still a distinction, I feel, even between:

- romantic friendship

and

- sexuality

I can’t really imagine David and Jonathan going for that hawt hawt butthsekcz. They definitely did seem like more than (contemporary definition of) friends to me, though. The characters in Noir share an incredibly powerful bond; does that mean that they are a yuri couple? I don’t recall any indications that the two of them felt ANY attraction toward each other, physical or mental or otherwise. I was under the impression that they were brought together by the past, or fate, or something dumb like that, and that perhaps the “odd bedfellows” saying applies.

But a yuri couple?

And I say that same thing to Aria, only a million times over.

Creating something, together—possibly the height of human existence.

When I first watched Aria episode two or whichever, the one where Akari sleeps over in Aika’s room, I probably thought something like, “oooo yuri action oh yeah.” I guarantee that by the time I finished season one, such vulgar thoughts had been completely dispelled. When I say vulgar, I am not incriminating yuri—I am incriminating subtext. Sure, it’s there, and I’m sure people can find it (after all, Erica Friedman did!), but what does it add, other than cheap giggles? If it’s not solid, if it’s not canon, it’s only speculation.

Speculation is something that you get fans to do when you try to entice them with fluff (see: Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu). Did Kozue Amano want use to try to figure out which of the Aria girls were getting off on which others’ fingers? For some reason, I doubt it. Did Mag Garden? Please. It’s there, but only if you’ve trained yourself to find it anywhere can you find it in Aria. Subtext can literally be found in everything if you’re well enough trained.

It’s like over-analyzing things.

I’m not trying to be a deconstructionist, I’m just trying to rationalize—what benefit does Aria gain from lesbianism? I found it quite reassuringly non-retarded that the work just about never touched on sexuality (we know Akatsuki is crushing on Akari and that Aika and Harry Potter get together, but even that doesn’t tell us that much) because, from my point of view, sexuality is a fairly boring topic (though this does not mean that I intentionally ignore it). It’s much more interesting for me to focus on the scenery or the messages or the character drama than the possibilities of who’s attracted to whom. Yes, believe it or not, you can have character drama without romance! Alicia and Akari’s tearful hug in Origination 13 was not the culmination of their lust and sexual tension.

gomenasi, for everything gomenasai

Before you say “but it could be!” let me point you to a very similar scene, both in direction and character action: AIR episode 6; Tohno Minagi returns to her mother’s home and the two share a tearful embrace.

The writer(s) behind AIR had serious mom issues, methinks—there’s a bit of a trend here.

(I refuse to believe that Minagi was hot for her mom. If you think that this is a bad comparison becaue she was hot for her mom, please explain to me why and how she is hot for her mom.)

And because there is nothing explicitly stated in Aria, and because I see no sexuality implied in it, I don’t find any lesbians. Whether the characters ARE gay, or straight, or bi, or what have you, is a pointless question: none of the characters are in yuri relationships. You can spend a lifetime speculating about sexuality if you have no solid cues.

The idea of Aria porn makes me uneasy.

The show is too pure for that. Too innocent. Too much about living a certain way. Not at all about whom to do or why.

Similarly, the idea of pairing Aria characters and doing anything in the vein of fanporn unsettles me, be it fanfic or fanart or so much as discussing one’s support for a coupling. Much as Neo-Venezia is a world beyond disease and homicide, it is a world beyond sex. Such thoughts simply don’t exist in Aria. There was never anything about dating or societal pressures to fulfill gender roles and get into certain relationships or making babies or not making babies or defying a conservative society or taking advantage of a liberal one. None of these topics are touched upon, thus furthering the detachment from sexuality.

And with all the unbridled potential for yuri (a full cast of females at the extremes of hot or cute in terms of both appearance and personality), combined with this total absence of sexuality, I have completely lost my drive to examine subtext or find lesbians in anime.

I don’t see the point anymore.

Why seek cheap laughs or pursue fetishes when something so perfect, so pure, so devoid of questions exists? Aria is the end-all be-all of my anime experience, and it has vanquished my love for yuri. It has vanquished my love for giggling childishly at possibilities.

Aria killed subtext.

And one last note, in case any staunch Aria yuri fans are reading this:

If Akari and Alicia were in a lesbian relationship, would Alicia have left to go get married to some other person? Alicia is mature. She doesn’t need to graduate schoolgirl lesbianism.