2253: It is the Piece of a Smile Everyone Acquires

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I’ve already written generally about how much I like yuri/shoujo ai slice-of-life anime Yuru Yuri, but I wanted to single out a particular episode as a great example of what this genre does really well: the third season’s eighth episode, boasting the impressively Engrish title It is the Piece of a Smile Everyone Acquires.

Yuru Yuri has a few aspects in common with other, similar slice-of-life shows, but the show it reminds me of most is Squid Girl/Ika Musume — a show where, despite its fantastical, ridiculous premise, manages to be oddly believable and comforting in how it depicts its relationships between characters. It’s not so much the thematic similarities that I’m concerned with, more the format: Ika Musume explicitly splits each of its “episodes” into several smaller vignettes that tell miniature stories in their own right, and within these vignettes the show often experiments with form, structure and even aesthetic. Its most striking episodes are the ones where it goes completely off-piste, such as those that feature the “miniature Squid Girl”, whose sequences are completely dialogue-free, and which make wonderful use of music and animation to produce surprisingly evocative, emotive scenes.

The similarities between Yuru Yuri and Ika Musume struck me during the pre-credits opening of It is the Piece of a Smile Everyone Acquires because it adopts a similar approach to the aforementioned “miniature Squid Girl” episodes: it’s completely dialogue-free, focuses on a character that isn’t normally at the forefront (or, in the case of mini-Squid Girl, isn’t normally in the show at all in that form) and does all its storytelling through its soundtrack.

In the case of It is the Piece of a Smile Everyone Acquires, the episode opens by focusing on the student council president, a character who is so meek and timid that we only ever see her mouthing words in regular episodes; she has no voice, so far as the audience is concerned. The characters always understand, her, though, which is the core joke of her character, but this opening sequence approaches it from a different angle, showing how she understands people — and makes herself understood — without the use of words.

Yuru Yuri already has a wonderfully evocative soundtrack that complements its on-screen action perfectly, but this opening sequence in It is the Piece of a Smile Everyone Acquires takes things to a new level: adopting an almost programmatic approach to its music, with distinctive themes and instrumentation being used for the individual characters who show up over the course of the sequence, it’s a fine example of how words, sometimes, simply aren’t necessary: you can make an interesting and heartwarming piece of art using only visuals and sound. (You can make an interesting and heartwarming piece of art using only one of those things, too, of course, but this is a TV show we’re talking about here; to deliberately refuse to use one of the core features of the medium is noteworthy.)

The rest of the episode is entertaining in itself, too, but somewhat more conventional for the most part; this pre-credits sequence, however, was so striking I felt I had to write something about it. I’d share the video here if it was on YouTube, but no-one appears to have ripped it; you can, however, watch the full episode on Crunchyroll at this link, and I can highly recommend the whole series from the very beginning if you want some enjoyable, lightweight fluff to cheer yourself up with.

2247: Yuru Yuri: Charming, Dumb, Gay as a Window

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I finally started watching the third season of Yuru Yuri, an anime whose first two seasons I found immensely enjoyable despite it being one of those “slice of life” affairs where pretty much nothing of note happens throughout.

Yuru Yuri is packed with charm and some wonderful characters, though, and it’s through the strength of these characters that the show truly shines.

For the uninitiated, Yuru Yuri follows the total lack of adventures of a group of four schoolgirls who form a club that doesn’t really do anything except hang out and drink tea. Over the course of the first couple of series, a few other regular cast members were added, and each of these put in frequent appearances in the third season — so frequent, in fact, that, judging by the new title sequence, they’re now considered to be core members of the cast rather than regular recurring characters.

The astute and/or weebtastic among you will know that yuri is used to refer to Japanese popular media with lesbian undertones (or indeed explicit overtones) and the inclusion of this term in the show’s title is no coincidence. There are no male characters in the show whatsoever, and there are numerous members of the cast — both regular and irregular recurring — who clearly have the hots for another one of the girls.

The most obvious is first-year Chinatsu’s infatuation with her cool, calm and collected senpai Yui, but there’s also the clear attraction between the mostly sensible (but painfully tsundere) student council vice-president Ayano and the utterly chaotic, hilarious Kyouko, who is a total dick but somehow immensely likeable with it. Then there’s former series protagonist Akari’s older sister Akane, who puts up a facade of being the sensible onee-san, but is actually a complete siscon, degenerating into wildly inappropriate acts with Akari’s possessions whenever she’s by herself (or thinks she’s by herself). And Chinatsu’s sister Tomoko, who is infatuated with Akane. And… you get the idea. There’s a whole lot of lady-love going on.

This isn’t an ecchi show by any means, though; the yuri side of things isn’t fetishised at all, and we never actually see anything going on between these characters. It’s a show that, when it deals with feelings of affection, prefers the more romantic side of love in the schoolyard rather than anything overtly sexual. It’s all sidelong glances, lingering looks, wondering if that contact was intentional; of course, some characters make their feelings more obvious than others — Chinatsu and Ayano both being the most obviously gay for their respective objects of affection, albeit in different ways — but still, for the most part, the show depends on the feeling of “will they ever realise or acknowledge their feelings for one another?” and actually resolving one of these strung-out instances of romantic tension would almost certainly throw the rhythm and feel of the show off somewhat.

Mostly, though, Yuru Yuri is a show that makes me feel happy when I watch it. It’s not deep and meaningful and it doesn’t have anything especially profound to say beyond “friends are great”, but it’s always a pleasure to enjoy an episode. It’s one of those shows where you feel like you’re being included in a group of friends just hanging out and having fun; there’s no real point to it all, but it’s nice to experience nonetheless.

1104: Tsuntsun, Deredere

It’s funny to think that it was only this time last year that I played Katawa Shoujo, rekindled my love for all things Japanese and got properly “into” the visual novel medium. Over the course of last year, I played a bunch of VNs and took some tentative steps into the world of anime, too, and I haven’t really looked back since. I’ve found a medium (well, several forms of closely-related media, really) that “speaks” to me, and that’s always a pleasant feeling, particularly when there is a whole shitload of stuff in that medium for you to explore and discover.

Because it was only last year that I got into all this shit, though, it was only last year that I found out what the word “tsundere” means. I had occasionally heard it mentioned by people I knew were into anime and Japanese games, but I’d never thought to look it up before — perhaps because I assumed it was an obscure, specialist piece of jargon relating to something that I wasn’t, at the time, particularly immersed in.

There’s a good chance that there are a few of you reading this who have absolutely no fucking idea what I’m talking about right now, so allow me to educate you. Then you can walk away from one of these posts feeling like you’ve learned something for once. Wouldn’t that be nice? Of course it would. Let’s go, then.

“Tsundere” is a word primarily (though not exclusively) used in relation to characters in Japanese media (manga, anime, games and everything in between) who run “hot and cold”. Tsunderes are usually female, though not always. The word is a portmanteau that combines parts of two different words to describe the two main moods of the character — tsuntsun describes the part of the personality that is aloof and/or irritable or even outright hostile; deredere describes the soft, squishy and adorable lovestruck centre that the abrasive exterior is protecting.

The tsundere is a stock character in a variety of Japanese works, and can pretty much be guaranteed to put in an appearance in any “harem” stories — i.e. those that include a male protagonist and a disparate gaggle of female heroines who flock to him for various reasons that are not always to do with love or sexuality. (Popular anime Sword Art Online has been described by some as a harem work, for example; even though the main focus of the story is on the romantic relationship between protagonist Kirito and female lead Asuna rather than Kirito attempting to knob his way around cyberspace, a number of episodes introduce a female character who is drawn to the protagonist for some reason before disappearing without a trace by the next episode.) They are a character type that is obviously exaggerated for either comic or dramatic effect — sometimes both — and thus it’s unlikely that you’d find a real-life tsundere. At least, not one that takes quite the same form as you’d see one in an anime or game.

The tsundere can be recognised through a number of different means. Most commonly, it’s through the use of the iconic combo of stuttering slightly when around the object of their affections, and the curiously-specific denial of something that belies their deredere side through what initially appears to be tsuntsun behaviour. (“What? I-it’s not like I’ve been thinking about you or anything…!”) Other tell-tale signs include excessive use of the word “baka” (idiot, stupid) for the slightest misdemeanour and blushing beet red when confronted with an obviously romantic or sexual situation that they haven’t steeled themselves for.

Most tsunderes have tsuntsun as their default behaviour pattern and lapse into deredere when they let their guard down, but characters who represent an inversion of this format exist, too, spending most of their time adorably lovestruck and occasionally lapsing into abrasiveness and hostility if provoked. The latter type can easily be confused with the yandere, which also has deredere as their default behaviour type, but hides proper full-on psychotic mania underneath if the object of their affections either doesn’t want them or is taken away from them. (A tell-tale sign that an anime yandere is about to go bonkers, incidentally, is that their eyes go completely blank, lacking the usual “sparkles” seen in the corner of anime eyes. If a character goes like that, you should probably get worried, and you can pretty much guarantee that someone is going to die very soon.)

Yanderes aside, the tsundere’s behaviour is usually tolerated and accepted by their friends, and rarely commented on directly — it’s just the sort of person they are. The object of their affections usually has to take the brunt of the tsuntsun side, but close friends who want to help the tsundere get closer to the person they obviously like often have to deal with this, too. More often than not, the long-suffering best friend either just shakes it off or is completely oblivious to it, having presumably learned to tune it out a long time ago.

There’s something oddly attractive about a tsundere character, which probably explains why it’s such a commonly-appearing trope. I couldn’t possibly speak for everyone on why this is, but from my own personal perspective, I find the commonly-used “hard-hearted bitch showing a softer side” approach to be an effective one that helps me to sympathise with the characters in the relationship. Reasons that “tsuntsun by default” tsunderes act the way they do vary by story, but one thing is constant — letting that deredere side out is a sign that they’re letting down the barriers around themselves and showing another character that they both trust them and care about them. It can be a very touching moment if handled effectively.

Here are a few of my favourite tsunderes. Oh come on, you knew this was coming.

Noire (Hyperdimension Neptunia)

Noire, the character who represents Sony and the PlayStation in the Hyperdimension Neptunia series of games, is very obviously a tsundere thanks to her regular use of curiously-specific denials when talking to Neptune in particular. She seems aloof, arrogant and abrasive most of the time, but gradually reveals herself to be someone who just really likes to try and do their best at all times. She obviously likes Neptune, despite what often appears to be open hostility, and has found that her efforts to make the land of Lastation as good as it can be have left her lonely.

Irina (My Girlfriend is the President)

Irina Vladimirovna Putina, the Rusian [sic] president in the visual novel My Girlfriend is the President, is a textbook tsundere. Spending most of her time early in the game alternating between yelling at the protagonist Junichiro and twatting him around the head with her slapping fan every time he does something pervy (which is quite often), she eventually shows a softer side and ends up being a positive influence on Jun. Jun also has a positive effect on her; while she manages to mellow him out somewhat, his easygoing nature helps her be less uptight.

Ayano (Yuru Yuri)

Poor old Ayano is the butt of a bunch of jokes in the slice-of-life anime Yuru Yuri. The feisty redhead is obviously carrying a rather large torch for resident chaotic character Kyoko and is completely unable to express her feelings adequately, instead regularly flying into a blind rage at Kyoko’s slightest misdemeanours. Kyoko, being Kyoko, doesn’t mind at all, and is oblivious to Ayano’s feelings. The only one who is truly aware of Ayano’s crush is student council member Chitose, who regularly fantasises about the pair of them, usually resulting in a violent nosebleed.

1005: Easygoing Lilies

Well, as I suspected might happen when I wrote my first post on the subject of Yuru Yuri, I appear to have become mildly addicted to the thoroughly silly adventures of the Amusement Club.

For those who missed aforementioned post and are too lazy to click on the link and see what I’m talking about, Yuru Yuri is a show about lesbian schoolgirls. No, not like that. That is basically what it is, though. (A show about lesbian schoolgirls, not porn.) It’s a show that features an all-girl cast where homosexual feelings towards one another are the norm rather than the exception — rather refreshingly, the show regards same-sex feelings of attraction and love as just something that happens rather than something that is in any way “shocking” or out of the ordinary. It’s not a show that’s trying to push a particular agenda on its viewers, in short — certain members of the cast feel certain ways towards one another, and they just happen to be girls. Which is cool with me.

After a little while, this simply becomes something you accept in the world of Yuru Yuri, and you are then able to focus on the real highlight of the show — the characters. This is not a show where anything earth-shatteringly important happens, you see; no-one is struggling with Big Issues, no-one is feeling a sense of guilt over their sexuality, no-one suffers anything other than the most temporary setbacks (and then usually only for laughs) and no-one gets hurt in anything more than the most ridiculous slapstick fashion — we’re in the territory of comedy “bumps” popping out of people’s heads here, which is something I don’t think I’ve seen since I was a kid.

But no; there are no Big Issues to come to terms with, which lets the characters shine simply by being themselves. It’s an excellent and diverse cast made up of an interesting mix of established tropes and characters who subvert said tropes nicely.

Chinatsu, Akari, Yui and Kyoko, the four girls who make up the school’s “Amusement Club” pictured above, are the main stars, with Akari ostensibly being the “protagonist”. Akari’s main distinguishing feature is that there is absolutely nothing remarkable about her whatsoever, however, which tends to lead her being the butt of many episodes’ jokes as she gets left behind entirely or, in some cases, ends up turning completely invisible due to her lack of presence. She is endearing and entertaining in her own right, however, and despite the show’s joking insistence that she is not worth focusing on, she’s sweet and cute. She also has the most terrifyingly creepy siscon older sister I’ve ever seen, too — in one particularly hilarious and memorable (if weird as fuck) scene, said sister settles in for a comfortable evening home alone, clutching her Akari body pillow which she’s dressed in one of Akari’s uniforms, and wearing a pair of Akari’s knickers on her head. It’s a gloriously uncomfortable scene, particularly when Akari comes home early and her sister only just manages to hide the evidence of her misdeeds.

Yui, meanwhile, is “the sensible one”, and a bit of a tomboy. She’s the sort of character who rarely smiles and is quite softly-spoken. In many ways, she’s the mother figure of the group, as she lives by herself and puts up with the others — particularly Kyoko — invading her home and demanding food. Yui sometimes seems to be a bit of a “blank slate”, but occasionally we get a glimpse of her humanity through her getting into a video game or playing with her younger relative Mari. Yui is also particularly skilled in dealing with Kyoko, regularly shutting down her often-incoherent hyperactive rants with just a single word.

Chinatsu is the exact opposite of Yui. A lively, energetic young girl with bright pink frizzy hair in bunches, Chinatsu is carrying a rather large torch for Yui and will do anything to try and get closer to her. While she is initially presented as a sweet, innocent, shy girl, it becomes very apparent very quickly that Chinatsu can be aggressive, grumpy, mean and a bit of a bully at times — though she’s not particularly good at any of those things, often leaving her looking rather ridiculous. She’s also terrible at drawing, creating pictures that look like something out of a particularly unpleasant horror movie.

Kyoko is the clear highlight of the show, however. Kyoko does not give a shit what anyone thinks and just does what she feels like. She clearly has some sort of attention-deficit disorder, and is usually hyperactive. Despite this, however, she is fiercely loyal to her friends and clearly values her time with the group. She’s also caring and considerate, and is also the most obviously “gifted” of the group — not only is she a talented (and respected) doujinshi manga artist, but she’s also able to score full marks on almost every test she takes with minimum effort, much to the chagrin of her rival Ayano. She’s also mildly obsessed with Chinatsu’s unbearable cuteness, and takes every opportunity to find an excuse to make her cosplay as “Witch Girl Mirakurun”, to whom Chinatsu bears an uncanny resemblance even when out of costume.

Although these four make up the main cast, the secondary characters are all interesting and entertaining too, particularly in the second season, where they each get much more of a chance to shine. We have the aforementioned tsundere student council vice-president Ayano, who likes Kyoko but would never admit it; her best friend Chitose, who has a habit of getting nosebleeds as a result of perverted thoughts about Ayano and Kyoko getting together every time she takes her glasses off — and also goes on a kissing rampage any time she ingests chocolate; and the ever-entertaining duo of rivals Sakurako and Himawari who are absolute polar opposites in almost every way but clearly care deeply for one another. Sakurako is extremely childish, aggressive, demanding, hot-headed and flat-chested; Himawari is mature, motherly, firm but fair and in possession of a fine pair of breasts which Sakurako is quite understandably very jealous of.

The way these girls interact with one another and play together is the reason to watch Yuru Yuri. You can get to the end of an episode and realise that absolutely nothing happened beyond “some girls hung out together” — but that despite this, you still had an entertaining experience. It’s one of those experiences where you feel like you’re “friends” with the characters and that you’re getting the opportunity to just chill out and hang around with them. It’s not a show that’s going to slap you around the face with The Feels on a regular basis, nor does it ever claim it’s going to be, but for something that’s just plain fun to watch, I think it’s going to be hard to beat.

1001: Yuriyurarararayuruyuri

Hello! And welcome to the first post-1,000 post on this blog. I hope you like the “New Game+” redesign I’ve done. I figured it was worth doing something noticeable to highlight my achievement. And now I’ll stop blowing my own trumpet. Back to business as usual.

I’ve been continuing my journey through the strange and bizarre world of anime recently. I finished watching The World God Only Knows a while back, so I was looking for something new to explore. I have a few DVDs of recommendations from my friend Lynette on the way, but I was interested in trying something a little bit different while I waited for them to arrive.

So it was that while browsing Crunchyroll I came across Yuru Yuri, an anime that I’d seen mentioned by a few people around the place. I didn’t really know anything about it save for the fact that “yuri” is a term often used to refer to “girls love” or, to be less euphemistic about it, material with lesbian themes. I had no idea whether Yuru Yuri’s title actually had anything to do with yuri as a genre, or whether it was just part of the name. “Yuri”, after all, is also a fairly common Japanese name that means “lily”.

As it turns out, Yuru Yuri (literally “easygoing yuri”) is most certainly a yuri work, though more in a sense that it focuses on close personal relationships between a group of girls rather than having sexual overtones at its core.

Yuru Yuri centers around a group of middle-school girls who start an “amusement club” in the defunct Tea Club’s premises at their school. They essentially use this as an excuse to goof off and avoid doing anything that would actually require effort, and over the course of the series, their relationships with one another (and with a small cast of supporting characters outside the main four) grow and change — in some cases into love; in others into fantasies about one another that will (probably) never be fulfilled; in others still into close friendship. The show doesn’t make a big deal of the fact that seemingly almost everyone at the all-girls school they attend is homosexual; instead, it’s simply treated as the way things are. People can like each other, regardless of gender, and this can lead to exactly the same sort of awkwardness and confused feelings as in heterosexual relationships. Just like real life! Who’d have thought it.

All this perhaps makes Yuru Yuri sound a bit more serious than it actually is. The girls’ relationships and feelings for one another are an important part of the show, sure, but for the most part it’s very much a “slice of life” anime in which the cast get into various amusing scrapes that are usually resolved by the end of the episode. It’s very lightweight and cheerful in tone throughout, and the characters are all very distinctive and exaggerated in terms of their appearances, personalities and iconic behaviours — though the show isn’t above subverting its own tropes at times if the opportunity to play something for laughs exists.

One amusing aspect of the show is that Akari, the character set up to be the series’ “protagonist” in the first episode, gets some fairly harsh treatment throughout. Not necessarily in terms of the things that actually happen to her, mind — this isn’t a show that does nasty things to its characters — but in the fact that more often than not an episode ends up focusing on the other characters to her exclusion. On more than one occasion she gets sidelined in favour of seemingly incidental plotlines, and in some episodes she’s not even present at all. This particular aspect of the show is lampshaded continually, with the “next episode” previews often consisting of the characters arguing over who is actually the protagonist, regular references to Akari’s lack of presence (often represented by her literally turning invisible) and the pre-credits “Yuru Yuri is starting!” sequence (hosted by Akari) getting increasingly ridiculous as the series progresses. It’s a fun commentary on the “blank slate” nature of a lot of anime protagonists.

There are also plenty of silly things that happen in almost every episode, too. For example, Chitose, one of the supporting cast members, is obsessed with her best friend Ayano the student council vice-president getting together with Kyouko, one of the main four cast members. Every time Chitose takes her glasses off, she “tunes out” of reality because she can’t see and ends up fantasising about what Ayano and Kyouko would get up to if they ever admitted their feelings to one another. These fantasies are usually rather suggestive, but always stop before anything actually happens, usually because Chitose has a near-fatal nosebleed as a result of her pervy thoughts.

It’s a strange show, to be sure, and an acquired taste. It’s one of those things where nothing of any particular note happens in any episode, but the comfortable familiarity of the characters and the gentle sense of slightly suggestive humour that pervades it gives it a very endearing feel, assuming you can stomach its unrelenting moe cuteness. The whole cast — main and supporting — is likable and distinctive, and it’s just a very pleasant watch if you don’t want to have to concentrate too hard or be bombarded with The Feels at every opportunity.

You can watch Yuru Yuri on Crunchyroll.