Thoughts on common garden yuri
Posted on | August 22, 2008 | 12 Comments |
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!
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August 22nd, 2008 @ 9:59 pm
I can’t really agree but can’t really disagree with you ~,~ The one thing is, i thinks its not possible that Ãn a girls school everyone would be gay or some counts like 20%. But i think to always be near girls and not beeing surrounded by men could interfere in a straight girls thinking. (As example there are or a better question are there any yaoi animes in all men schools?!) I mean you get friends and over this status lovers by often meet and interact with people, when all of this people just are of one sex that ‘could’ make you like them more as just as a friend of yours.
August 23rd, 2008 @ 8:01 pm
I agree and disagree. It’s a well known fact that any group of people in one place for a long period of time will have sex with each other regardless of gender or orientation (NASA said it and I believe it). But it doesn’t make people gay. Does yuri happen at all girls schools, oh i guarantee it. But sexual experimentation/boredom relief does not = lesbian.
August 24th, 2008 @ 1:19 am
it is either a school girls or a women’s prison… I am pretty sure they are trying to avoid a hard core pr0n…
August 24th, 2008 @ 9:01 am
I think that the point I was trying to get across is that perhaps all-girl environments may expose the gayness latent in some people, but they won’t turn straight people gay. Also, there is a slight confounding factor in that slightly more gay females may apply to join all-girl high schools…for obvious reasons.
Therefore you get a confusion between cause and effect. As love and I both found at our single sex education, by the most part single sex education makes you horny and desperate, not gay.
August 24th, 2008 @ 2:52 pm
dude I use to love this site because it was a real yuri loving site that looked at things from a point of view different than the stupid erica from ozaku but now that you are talking too much abut the loser fanboy and all that stuff talking bad about the all girl all yuri story dude you are wron in fact you sound like erica now remember this thing dude the nice thing about this story is that all girls mean no guys so is a yuri heaven in fact the best thing about strawberry panic is that in fact there is no gur not even in a picture or anything so is a perfect yuri world
August 25th, 2008 @ 1:21 am
I must say im a fan of marimite at this Point – the men in it aren’t ugly, and there ARE men. (I really like Yumi’s brother =] ) And its not that way of irrealistic as the most other Yuri’s / By the way to mention Simoun … indeed a very nice idea ~ ich choose to be … uh … wait will there ever be a gender or will i be a Girlie Male or a Girlie Girl?!
August 25th, 2008 @ 11:20 am
knmotoko: I thought that perhaps you’d noticed that I use the term “loser fanboy” in a rather ironic sense, since I am one myself. I think it’s perhaps a little hypocritical not to realise that we are indeed yuri fanboys, since we are all boys and are placated by stereotypical or mediocre animu storylines purely because there is no penis and the girls are nice looking.
Is it really so bad to analyse the basis for our obsessions and point out the weaknesses in our particular niche of the industry?
Unfortunately, when you choose to read my blog, you choose to read my opinions.
August 27th, 2008 @ 1:12 pm
This actually makes me feel bad now. I feel like im an old little pedophilic girl that likes other little more loli looking ones and even pays the industries for things like looking at them having fun with each other. Im a loser fangirl that didn’t realize this till the end.
I really often need to nood to your opinions and agree because what you say often makes sense. But this really makes me think bad of myself am i really this bad? (the word bad stands for multiple bad words about me, but bad sounds nicer, that lets me still feel a bit better.
August 28th, 2008 @ 11:04 pm
Joku: I think that’s inspiration for my next post! I definitely went through a phase like that, but I’ve come to the conclusion that no interest is “bad” (unless it harms someone else, of course), so you should never be ashamed of your interests, since that is part of who you are. True you may not be able to share it with many people, but that it what the internet is for and no one will ever judge you on this blog (or else I’ll delete the comment ^_^)
August 29th, 2008 @ 2:50 am
Yuribou, I think you hit it right about the whole all girl school must=hot yuri action theory. A lot of the current mangaka, male or female seem to feel that if you separate the sexes from one another a large percentage of males will go gay, and most girls will go lesbian.
When I was in basic training for the Army we had fifty guys all living together without seeing a girl for the first eight weeks and as far as I could tell no one magically converted from being straight to being gay. All we did was sit around and talk about what we would do to the first willing girls we would meet when we got our first weekend pass.
When I spent twelve months in the desert with no women I didn’t all of a sudden find myself checking out guys asses, thinking, well I’ve never liked guys before, but now I really want some of that.
But, I still love the whole yuri genre. Nothing gets me going more than going out with my current girlfriend for a night of drinking and dancing with other couples, and by the end of the night us guys will sit around watching our girlfriends and wives bumping and grinding, and touching each other on the dance floor, ya got love hot women and booze.
September 18th, 2008 @ 4:33 pm
Women’s colleges have an extremely high percentage of lesbians in the U.S.
September 18th, 2008 @ 11:34 pm
Colleges yes, convent schools.. not so much. Then again most girls in all women colleges did go to single sex schools first.. Then again in my experience, women’s colleges are just hot beds of sex all round…