Thoughts on common garden yuri
August 22nd, 2008
Hi all - as you can see, my post writing has dropped to about 0.5-1 post/week. Gomen nasai! >_<
On a competely different note, the weather was glorious in the Lake District last weekend, contrary to the weather reports. Screw you weather forecasters!
The topic I'm going to be discussing today is the common garden yuri. More specifically, I'm going to be discussing why yuri has to occur for the most part in all girls (Catholic, or churchy) schools in order to interest its audience
I'm sure that most of you that read this blog are pretty hardened yuri fans, and have probably noticed that much of the yuri on the market today, be it animated or printed format occurs in all-girls schools. In fact, its pretty easy to pin down the type: young student infatuated with experienced older sempai who is cool in countless different ways. Not including the ways of clam fishing, no doubt.
Yes, it does seem to be the goal of all yuri mangaka to perpetuate the myth that all-girls schools, specifically Catholic all girls schools are in fact hotbeds of lesbianism that you wouldn't believe. I mean, what could you expect with a school that has all its students board in shared dorm rooms? If my school forced me to do that, I would have been elbow deep in fudgepipe by my second week...well, perhaps anyway.
And the problem doesn't just lie with the male mangaka. You would perhaps expect the rather more inexperienced male storyweaver to misconceive the straight uptight girls only world of the Catholic girls school as merely a thinly disguised blanket for depravity and carpet munching, but in fact even the female mangaka seem to go along with the trend...
Perhaps the only mangaka that I can think of at the moment that paints a more true to life picture of girls-only schools is Towa Ooshima - artist for Joshikousei, where the girls are rude, disgusting and boy-crazed. Ahh. That kinda reminds me of my secondary school days. In a bad way.
Because, the truth of the matter is, girls-only schools are not the dens of depravity and Sapphism that the dreams of Loser Fanboy would have you believe. In fact, Love went to a church all girls secondary. I’m pretty sure it didn’t make her into a lesbian. Pretty sure. I think the one fly in the ointment of the all-girls-make-gay theory is that in fact, being surrounded by girls doesn’t make a straight girl gay. In fact, it probably makes her want to go to mixers and discos and other ill-conceived and embarassing ways to meet members of the opposite sex in order to pull them and then constantly fend off their attentions to get anywhere past 2nd base. Or 3rd base. Depends how slutty they are.
So why does the world of Japanese animation depend so heavily on this premise?
One hypothesis is that the main purveyors of yuri are, (surprise surprise) the Loser Fanboy. These people are unlikely to know about all girl schools, and are probably unlikely to come in close contact with people who have been to all-girls schools in their short and very fulilling lives. Therefore, even though the premise is a lie, the secret is safe with them (unless they read this post. Oops)
The second hypothesis is that it is a very easy way in which to introduce yuri into a storyline. If there are only females in the cast, where can you get the love interests? Either make it into a harem anime a la Negima or pepper it with yuri and pseudoyuri to keep the fanservice maniacs happy.
Third is perhaps the most obvious. Anime is a world of stereotypes. The storylines that make up seasons and seasons worth of anime are a very small set of tried and tested formluae that work and are popular with enough of a nich of the buyers and consumers that they can afford to be repeated time and again. Unfortunately, the “all-girls-school-yuri” is one of these, after Marimite went on to 3(ish) seasons. This means that for the forseeable future, real yuri fans will have to wade through the stereotype in order to get at the real pearls like Girlfriends and (dare I say it) Shoujo Sect. (only the Shinobu/Momoko storyline, alright!)
Fourth and lastly, it’s nice.
Yep. It’s nice. There’s just something safe feeling about the all-girls-yuri formula and its predictable relationships that makes for mindless bedtime watching/reading. And since anime doesn’t pride itself on producing believable storylines, why the hell should it bother us that it doesn’t happen in real life? Meanwhile, the real fans among us can keep a watch out for the odd effort that really stands out or decides to break the mould with something new and completely different. I’m talking about you, Simoun. Be proud of yourself.
The rest of you, buckle up. We’ve got lesbians to train!



































