#ginko lulu

[keterok]

Merry Christmas, Grr-grr~

[lacevalentines]

♡ See you next bear! ♡

[shining-seal]

🌸🐻 Yuri Kuma Arashi 🐻🌸

[hakonohanayome]

Yurikuma Arashi - Morishima Akiko

[witchofanguish]

[pier-monsters]

goodnight sketches

[bad-kendi]

Psycho Teddy || Yurikuma Arashi thing?

[squipedmew]

through all my years of absolutely adoring Yuri Kuma Arashi, I have never drawn fanart of it, which is just baffling to me. YKA was such a formative piece of media for me in middle school, and has shaped my aesthetic sensibilities as an artist, and as I’ve been rewatching it recently, I decided now would probably be a good time to try and do the show justice with my art. Go watch Yuri Kuma Arashi guys, it’s awesome. 

[horse-girl-anthy]

years ago when I was scoping out Yurikuma before watching it, I came across an article which claimed that the show uses the word "friends" to refer to Lulu/Ginko/Kureha as a way to nod at homophobia. even though the show is so gay, it still implies that the relationships between the girls are platonic. but when I watched it myself, my impression was quite different.

all Ikuhara works are about friendship (well, Penguindrum is slanted towards family, but the same concepts apply). friendship doesn't exclude the possibility of sexual or romantic attraction, of course, but I would argue it is actually the key theme, even more important than sexuality.

to understand this, it's necessary to think of friendship in existential terms. friendship is not a lesser form of romance, not something to be taken for granted. to quote from The Politics of Experience, "Before we can ask such an optimistic question as 'What is a personal relationship?', we have to ask if a personal relationship is possible, or, are persons possible in our present situation?"

if we cannot count on even the existence of individuated human beings, then friendship becomes a momumental thing, as it is predicated not only on the tenuous proposition of selfhood, but also on the even more remote chance that selves can cross the void of being to touch one another.

Ikuhara believes that friendship exists in the world, that it is possible to achieve. he is truly one of those idealists who thinks that life is not worth living without love and connection. but that doesn't mean he thinks it's easy. friendship is only ever won in his stories at the end, and at great cost. it took 39 episodes for Utena and Anthy to meet, and they lost each other soon after. but had they never met, what would their relationship be worth?

I've long thought about how Ikuhara works employ cliche: for instance, lines like "I believe that I'm never alone" or "we'll be together forever." these sentiments become cliche in the first place because they touch a chord with people, echoing their deepest longings. but Ikuhara makes them work by earning them, portraying the process necessary to reach a place where they apply. friendship is so precious because, once achieved, it is immutable: it transforms the self and renders suffering irrelevant.

Ikuhara has said that he created RGU to give hope to kids struggling with the question of suicide. the show never addresses the topic directly, instead couching it in metaphorical terms: the coffin, the chick, the end of the world. RGU, and all Ikuhara works, serve as a concrete demonstration that it is possible to be a human being, and to create a lasting connection with other human beings. if that's not worth living for, then I don't know what is.

[abarero]

Donate $5 USD (or equivalent in your currency) to one of the charities and receive art or fic from one of the 100+ volunteers in exchange!

I will be writing for the following fandoms (I believe I’m the only creator for these outside of Madoka.)

Magia Record (Mobile Game Story Only): Iroha/Sana, Rika/Ren, Masara/Kokoro, Jun/Mitsune, Mikoto/Hanna, Touka/Nemu, Rena/Kaede, Momoko/Mitama, Shizuka/Sunao, Himena/Sasha

Puella Magi Madoka Magica (TV Series Only): Madoka/Homura

RE: Cutie Honey: Natsuko Aki/Honey Kisaragi

Yuri Kuma Arashi: Ginko/Kureha, Lulu/Ginko/Kureha

how does this work?

donate $5 USD (or more!) to one of the palestinian charities/gfm mentioned in this thread.

take a screenshot of the receipt

fill the form!

creator is assigned and will make your fan work!

note: $5 USD is one prompt so if you donate $10 you can request two prompts and so on

I’m only able to offer a few slots but feel free to donate towards one of them!

[pinkarachnia]

Lesbian Anime Review #8 - Yuri Kuma Arashi

Shrek voice: “Dykes are… like bears”

When I started watching this show, I didn’t know the name Kunihiko Ikuhara. I watched the first few episodes with my partner and commented to them that this show reminds me a lot of Mawaru Penguindrum. I don’t know whether I feel very smart or very dumb but I guess I got that vibe for a reason.

Man, I really like Ikuhara shows. I was looking at his credits on MyAnimeList and he directed the opening sequence for Aoi Hana, which I praised in my review. I watched the first of the two Penguindrum recap movies and I still love that show. I hadn’t seen the full lyrics to Nornir translated before, and it goes harder than I remember from 2011. I can only imagine that YuriKuma sprung forth from his mind when he learned that despite the release of Revolutionary Girl Utena, homophobia still exists. Keep fighting the good fight, Ikuhara!

First, non-plot elements. The animation is good but it’s not Eizouken, you won’t be blown away constantly. I like the art in this show a lot. I never stopped thinking the bears were adorable. It has a classic Ikuhara extended transformation sequence but it doesn’t appear in full after the third episode. I don’t mind this really, I felt like after I saw the bear girls lick honey off naked Kureha the third time I had seen it enough.

Oh yeah this show is horny as fuck. They loaded this with classic yuri yearning, but what if they could touch each other while they yearn? All the yearning appears to be kiss related, but other activities are fair game here. More on that in the spoiler section later.

I like the opening and endings to this. The opening theme to this makes me understand why people like ASMR. The ending has a cute dancing bear and I’m always happy to see that little guy bounce around.

Every episode someone stands before a court of three bear men called Life Sexy (judge) Life Cool (prosecutor) and Life Beauty (defence) and they judge whether they have the right to transform from bears into humans. I didn’t want to put this in the plot discussion section. Fuck you.

It’s going to be very hard to talk about the plot of this show without spoiling it, but to give you a very general idea, Yuri Kuma Arashi is about a world that is split into two halves; one where the humans live and one where the bears live. They’re separated by a huge literal barrier called the Species Divide. They have always hated each other, but they have always loved each other. The main character, Kureha Tsubaki, is a human girl. Bears have started infiltrating her high school in disguise as human girls because they want to eat her. She seems to be a prime target for bear attack. Humans in this world are always vigilant for bear attack and a lot of them seem to have firearms. Kureha herself practices with a rifle in case of a bear encounter because her mother was killed by a bear when she was younger. The plot kicks off when two bears disguised as humans infiltrate the school, Ginko Yurishiro and Lulu Yurigasaki. All the bears put Yuri in their human names so you can always see it coming. What could this mean? I know the answer to that. Let’s go on an adventure into the least subtle subtext I’ve ever seen.

Spoilers from here. That is sexy. Shabadadoo.

I don’t really want to talk about the plot to this show, I just want to talk about what the plot means. Just like Penguindrum before it, this show is very heavy on the symbolism, but unlike Penguindrum I found it really easy to decipher what it all means here.

This is a show about gay persecution. The bears are gay people and the humans are straight people. There are a couple of exceptions where you see a human character partake in a gay activity but that appears to be the overarching theme here. It’s pretty on the nose from the point where you clock that every bear has Yuri in their name, but the most prominent examples of this are with the main character and her deal and with her mother and her friend, the school principal.

The principal, Yurika, is a bear. She was close friends with Kureha’s mother, Reia. Yurika goes through a terrible grief when Kureha is born because she realises that Reia never loved her the way she loved Reia. Sorry you fell for a straight girl, Yurika.

As the plot progresses it quickly starts revolving around the relationship between Ginko and Kureha. They were friends as kids because Kureha crossed the Species Divide to find Ginko and brought her over to the human side of the world, where they lived together for a time. She has no memories of their friendship, which we’re lead to believe is because in order to gain the power to turn into a human girl, Ginko forfeited Kureha’s memories of their friendship. At the end, they reveal that this wasn’t quite accurate, it was actually Kureha who asked the court to allow Ginko to become human. The court tells her that this is an arrogant wish, that it’s presumptuous to assume that Ginko would want to become human to stay with her in a world that hates bears. Kureha is a child at the time so she doesn’t understand that conversion therapy is wrong, so she does it anyway, forfeiting her own memories as the price. At the climax of the show, Kureha stands before the court again and makes a new request, that she be turned into a bear. They’re happy she finally gets it and she goes bear mode. Then she and Ginko get to kiss and it’s the end.

There’s a great subtitle in episode 12 and I don’t know if it’s a line from the dub, but there’s a firing squad of human girls aiming at bear Kureha and Ginko and the leader is saying, “shoot her! She’s a bear! She’s disgusting!”, but the subtitle for “she’s a bear” was “she’s gay” just in case you didn’t get it. I really like this. Why not drop all pretences in the final episode? This show was always about this.

There’s a recurring sequence where a league of school girls called the Phantom Wuthering (Toumei na Arashi) get out their phones and vote for who amongst their peers is the evil one to be eliminated and it’s always Kureha. Since she was a kid she’s been branded a bear sympathiser so she’s the obvious pick to all these girls who have been trained to eliminate gay people (bears). But also, they’re constantly manipulated by a leader figure who either is a bear who wants to eat Kureha or is being manipulated by a bear. Some bears are just evil, but I guess some gay people are evil too so whatever.

I will happily fly the banner for Ikuhara’s brand of surreal storytelling, but I would like very much to know if the girls survived at the end or if they died to the straight girl firing squad. Just this once I’d like it if we could be slightly less vague about it. Literally every other gay gets buried in this show, and they did leave it ambiguous; the straights are pleased with themselves because the gays have been removed, and neither Kureha or Ginko were in the bear afterlife scene with Lulu at the end, but they just say, “no one knows where they went” and to be honest I am a little dissatisfied with that. I just don’t think those straight girls would be celebrating if there weren’t cadavers.

But I digress, this was a lesbian ass anime. Genuine props for making it about homosexuality and the fear of being outed in a group where you would be hated by your peers. I can’t wait for Ikuhara to learn about trans people.

Final thoughts:

I’m going get some honey and pour it directly into my mouth.

I’m giving this one an 8/10.

[lacevalentines]

♡ See you next bear! ♡

[letsmagicalcooking]

🍰 Recipe Sneak Peek🍰

Ginko and Lulu are busy investigating the strange behaviors of humans, maybe we can distract them for just a bit!

@/Callieopes' Promised Kiss Salmon is the perfect treat for the Kumarian duo!

[valkyrievanessa]

ok, so let's talk about Yuri Kuma Arashi, the manga version, i watched the first ep of the anime years ago, didn't understand a shit and stopped, i read the manga and i have plans to watch the anime itself... so, the manga broke my heart in a way i could not believe it was possible, wtf is this manga?! like, it have some weird things, but the story is fucking perfect (and tragic). This will have spoilers, big spoilers, if you don't like spoilers and enjoy Yuri, go read the manga, is short, can be read in a day and is perfect.

so, our protagonists, the main couple, Kureha and Ginko, they are the cutest couple ever, born to be a couple, their love is so cute and perfect, i want to huge both, specially Ginko, this girl needs therapy, a lot, she is just a baby bear that needs a hug.

like, Ginko have this whole psicological trauma because she killed someone by accident when she was a kid, and it was the mother of the girl she fucking loved, and the great love of her mother's life.

and the whole bear thing at least in the manga, is not real, it is something that exist only in Ginko and Kale (Ginko's mother) minds, it was something that Kale had, because she felt different from anyone else, she believed when she was a child, after she became 17, she would become a bear, never happened of course, so she started to believe that everyone is a bear, including her, but they are pretending to be human, Ginko being raised by someone like that also got it from her mom, so the whole bear thing? only in the mind (sometimes people will use the bear costumes). The only person Ginko see as a human is the girl she loves, Kureha, it was the same thing for kale, the only person she saw as a human was Kureha's mother, Reia

Like, maybe Kale started all this thing with bears because she was a lesbian and felt different from everyone, or not, it was my theory (that kinda falls apart, but it is something) and after she met Reia, things changed to her, it was the only person Kale acknowledges as a human, it was the love of her fucking life, she wanted to marry with Reia, she would do everything for her... and Reia married a guy that she liked, she didn't love the guy, she met him, had a summer love with him and decided to marry the guy just because. She acknowledge that it was a mistake after the marriage, because she noticed that she was in fact, in love with Kale (it was kinda too late, that single act destroyed Kale's life).

She kinda thought that the girl was straight, but ignored the possibility that Reia could be Bi and did something stupid, because Reia would had accepted the proposal. How Reia died was an accident, kinda. When Ginko and Kureha was children, Kureha got lost in the forest that had a lot of bears, Ginko decided to go help the girl, stole Reia's gun and went to find Kureha, when Reia find boths she makes so much noise that Ginko without knowing shoots and kills Reia, causing a giant trauma on Kureha, on herself, on Kale and on her aunt that was also in love with Reia, so... yeah, this manga talks a lot about trauma, like a lot. (Kale actually started to say that she killed Reia and devoured her like a bear).

This manga talks a lot about grief, the whole Kale's arc is about that, Lulu's arc too (her past made me want to die of sadness, like, wtf?!!), Yurika's arc too, she loved Reia, but after she died she started to fuck her brother's wife (Kale), i mean, both already had something before, but their relationship got a lot messier after. And Lulu? one of my favourite characters, she is in love with Ginko since she was a child, but their relationship started because she could not handle the grief and guilty of her little brothers death, it was an accident, but she felt guilty, because she was the responsible for him, so she kinda made Ginko her world after that. (she misses him so much that she have a teddy bear named after him and she takes care of it like it was him)

Lulu is so precious that i want to protect her from everything. Sumika is another favorite of mine, she does a lot, but as someone that helps Kureha to save Ginko, she helps everyone, all because she loves Kureha, she say to kureha that she loves her, but want to be a friend and... ouch, like, ouch. Just Imagine, you love this person, you love them so much that you would do everything for them to be happy... but this happyness will not be with you, and you know that since the beggining, that's Sumika in the manga, she helps Kureha a lot, part of the motive everything went well was because of her, and in the end she wanted to really have magic powers like people was saying about her, because that way she could make Kureha love her, it was really sad.

And the protagonist, Kureha, did everything she could to not only discover how her mother died, but did everything she could to save the girl she loved (Ginko was so depressed that i started to fear for her life), Kureha is an amazing character too, like, i probably love all the characters from this manga.

well, that's it, talked about everything i wanted about this manga, i reccomend, cannot say the same about the anime, not because the anime is bad, it is because it's 2 different stories, with 2 different objectives, i will watch the anime, maybe tomorrow.

[hakonohanayome]

Yurikuma Arashi - Morishima Akiko

[witchofanguish]

Lulu to Ginko in the manga