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coldgoldlazarus · 2 years ago

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Heyy so i've been enjoying a lot of the yuri things you post about a lot, are there any good shows that you recommend watching? Ive seen and enjoyed bocchi and witch from mercury a ton and i have a lot of time these next few days to burn :)

Oh, I'm glad to hear that!

Hmm, what are some good Yuri shows aside from Gwitch and Bocchi?

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Admittedly, this is hard to answer as thoroughly as I'd like, since I generally have a hard time starting new shows and keeping up with them, so there are a fair few that I haven't actually gotten around to watching yet that I've really wanted to. Still, I'll mention a few of those since they do come highly recommended and I've had my eye on for a while, and then get into the ones I actually have seen.

-Kase-San and Morning Glory: Haven't seen, but did read the manga it's based on a while back; as I recall it's a very simple but very sweet slice-of-life sort of thing about a girly girl, a tomboy, and their shared love of gardening. Rather than a full series, I think it was adapted as a longer OVA or two? So I don't know how much of the story it covers, but it's also the kind of thing where, outside of the developing relationship of the leads, there's not too much in the way of like, a hard-hitting narrative to adapt. It's just super cute.

-Lycoris Recoil: In contrast to the last one, LycoReco is a recent anime-only sort of thing, and much more plotty from my understanding. It's basically the next thing I plan to properly sit down with in the near future, but until then I'll admit I don't know a whole lot about it; the main vibe I've gotten is that it is like, this action-drama about secret agents(?) first, yuri romance second, but it still does go out of its way to make the romance unambiguous and compelling, rather than trying to hide it behind subtext like older shows would have done. So at least based on what I've heard, it sounds worth your while, just I guess tread with caution since it may also get into some darker territory?

-The Executioner And Her Way Of Life: Another recent one that I haven't gotten to yet, but have read some of the manga for and so at least have some idea of what to expect. It's similar to Lycoris Recoil in being an action show first, but still very very clearly gay, so yanno, factor that in on whether you want to see it or not.

The premise is a sort of parody-taken-seriously of standard isekai stuff, taking place in a fantasy world that's constantly suffering from people reincarnating there from earth, growing overpowered and selfish, and causing radical, harmful upheaval. In response, an elite assassin's guild was formed to hunt down and eliminate these isekai "heroes" before they can get too powerful. The protagonist is one of these assassins, and the plot (and romance) starts when she's sent to kill a recently-isekai'd girl... who's special power is that she's seemingly unkillable, and immediately develops a crush on the assassin. Very much a slow burn enemies-to-lovers sort of vibe, but what little I read seemed promising.

-Wandering Witch: Another one I don't know a whole lot about, just that it's come highly recommended by some people whose good taste I generally trust. As the name implies, it seems to be a fairly slice-of-life-ish piece about a pair of witches? But beyond that, I don't really know much, so prolly worth looking into more yourself.

-Otherside Picnic: As I understand it, it's basically like the movie Annihilation, but gay? A pair of girls traveling through this uncanny sectioned-off region where all sorts of creepy supernatural happenings are going down, and it gets very existential. I've admittedly kinda dragged my feet on this one, since I have a complicated and inconsistent relationship with horror stuff, but it does sound very intriguing. Though I will say, from my understanding the yuri is very clear in the LN and manga, while the anime downplays that stuff into subtext? So it's probably more worth reading than watching.

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With those out of the way, time to talk about the ones I do know! A couple of these I'll pair up because their vibes are similar, but I'll still try and discuss each with due depth.

-Urara Meirochou & Konohana Kitan: These two are cut from a pretty similar cloth, that I guess I'll just call "Historic supernatural cuteness"? Both are set in fantasy versions of olden japan, but the overall vibe is similar to modern-day Cute Girls Doing Cute Things shows. I considered leaving them off the list since they're also much more reliant on subtext than most of the others here, but I have too much of a soft spot for Urara Meirochou to be able to ignore it ^^; (I have half-unfinished fanfic for it, which given the scarcity of my writings these days has to count for something!)

Urara is about a group of girls seeking to become apprentice fortune-tellers in this mazelike city dedicated to the craft, though all coming at it from very different walks of life. It's pretty simple and episodic, but the main thing that made it for me was the dynamic between the main protagonist, a literally feral girl who's having difficulty adapting back to human life after being literally Raised By Wolves, and a prim and proper noble daughter who's completely befuddled but also enamored by her antics.

Konohana Kitan, meanwhile, I never got around to finishing just because Life Happened™ at the time, but it featured a bunch of Kitsune running a bathhouse; very Spirited Away in some ways, but a lot more relaxed in tone.

-Izetta, The Last Witch & Princess Principal: Another pair that came out around the same time, but that are tonally kind of the opposite of the last two. Both take place in kinda steampunky/dieselpunky parallel history versions of early 1900s europe, and feature spies and intrigue and action primarily, while, due to when they came out, the yuri elements legitimately straddle the line between subtext and just text.

Izetta is almost a precursor to Witch From Mercury in some ways? Just again, different settings. It takes place during a parallel of World War I and II, with the Germany analogue attacking a tiny border country as part of its overall war plans. The princess of that smaller country, though, winds up calling on help from (and falling in love with) the last witch in the world to help repel the invasion with magic. Izetta very much feels like a prototype of Suletta, and rides an anti-tank-rifle instead of a broom, which is awesome.

Princess Principal, meanwhile, is more focused on class divides and zeroes in on the spy theme more clearly. Basically, in an alternate version of London that's split down the middle Berlin-style, a group of teenage academy students who are actually plants by the opposing side, team up with a traitorous lower princess to sabotage the royal family... though one of the spies has a pre-existing history with her that makes everything even more complicated. It's a really interesting one, told in non-chronological order, that understands the less glamorous side of intelligence operations while still having a fair amount of dramatic action and twists, and alternates between feeling like a CGDCT show and an intense political thriller. And yanno, the gay. I also actually haven't finished this one because Life Happened™ and it's been a while since, but one of these days I want to rewatch and properly finish it. What I did see, was very very strong, though.

-Black Rock Shooter (2010 OVA & 2012 Series): This is another one I wasn't sure I should include, but eh, here we go. Basically, a sort of supernatural psychological slice of life? It alternates between a fairly straightforward school drama, and mysterious glimpses into this almost eldritch other world where monstrous humanoid entities are locked in endless, often rather brutal, combat. As things go on, the two seemingly disconnected stories wind up coming together in interesting ways. Being an older series, the yuri is very much subtexual, but still kind of a core element of the story anyway? It's difficult to explain. The OVA and the Series are basically different takes on the same premise; I favor the OVA as the more subtly-told version, but despite the series getting weirdly melodramatic in places, manages to expand on the concept in some cool ways, so I'd say both are worth watching if it sounds interesting.

(Sidenote, though: Don't confuse BRS 2012 with the more recent series, Black Rock Shooter: Dawn Fall. Dawn Fall is part of the same franchise, but other than some shared characters it's almost completely unrelated, with a wildly different core premise and tone. And while I did like a couple things it did, on the whole I just can't recommend it, especially in comparison to the original but also just kind of in general on its own merits. I'd steer clear of that one unless you're morbidly curious and able to stomache some frankly unnecessarily disturbing content.)

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-Citrus: Something of a dishonorable mention before we move on to the big ones. Citrus is one I kind of have a lot of mixed feelings on personally, but I still feel like it's worth consideration, at the very least for the historical significance. TLDR; a boisterous gyaru moves to a new school and immediately winds up clashing with the school's repressed killjoy Student Council President, only for it to turn out that thanks to their parents remarrying, the two are now stepsisters. Cue lots of weird sexual tension and a revolving door of side character rival love interests.

A lot of people list the psuedo-incest nature of the two leads' relationship to be the big point against it, but to be perfectly honest, that aspect of it doesn't really bother me; I just didn't care for it because of basically the rest of the writing. There's a lot of what's basically sexual harassment in the manga, that the anime further escalates in adaptation to be as 'steamy' and 'torrid' as possible, and between that and the aforementioned side characters who (almost, there is one big exception and she's another reason I wasn't a fan) all have a more compelling (and respectful) dynamic with one or both of the leads, it failed to really sell me on the central pairing. I hear it does develop in a better direction later on, but that's after I lost patience to keep reading, and the anime basically only covers right up to the point where their interactions stop feeling so... uncomfortable.

At the same time, though, I will admit that Citrus does have its merits. There are a lot of people who do love it, so I'm not really speaking for a crowd here, and while I strongly dislike the student council president stepsister, the gyaru protagonist is a genuinely fun cinnamon roll who did nothing wrong and made what I did read/watch enjoyable despite my complaints. And like I said, I have heard it gets better, if you can get further in the manga.

And if nothing else, we do honestly owe Citrus, because the manga did help make yuri more popular and well-known, and the anime marked the shift from subtext being the only way to imply a relationship between girls, to more recent series being able to show it in full and not downplay the romantic or even sexual elements of a lesbian relationship. So, I guess despite what it took to get there, we probably wouldn't have it nearly as good as we do now without Citrus, so on that merit it is probably worth checking out.

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And finally, there's my top three recommendations:

-Magirevo (or; The Magical Revolution Of The Reincarnated Princess And The Genius Young Lady): Another recent one, but that I actually was able to sit down and watch through entirely, huzzah! Genre-wise it's kind of a weird one, being technically an Isekai but only barely; the protagonist has vague and fuzzy memories of a past life on earth that do inform her decisions and drive to an extent, but she refreshingly still feels mostly a part of this world she was born and raised in. It also takes a lot of cues in terms of the setting and typical tropes from the traditionally (tragically) more het-oriented Otome/Villainess genre, so without as much familiarity with that, some of the metatextual twists to those formulas that I really enjoyed, may not land the same? But it's still pretty solid even aside from that.

The basic concept there is that the protagonist, a princess in a magically-strong royal family who herself lacks any magical capability, becomes something of a mad scientist in her efforts to find a way to use magic through other means, and abdictates succession to her younger brother. However, over time he begins acting more erratic, until a breaking point is hit when he publically disavows his betrothed fiance. And the princess, who's also a massive lesbian who's long held a crush on said fiance, takes advantage of this to swoop in and drag her into assisting with her experiments.

It's admittedly kind of an uneven series, veering wildly between slice-of-life hijinks and surprisingly in-depth amounts of intrigue, and so the overall tone is a bit messy. The big issue is that its commentary on the flaws of monarchism and royal politics winds up feeling a bit undercut/incomplete, by virtue of being an incomplete adaptation that the LNs and Manga continue past, but I'm still willing to forgive all that, because the romantic development is very strong. While I understand some of the other series above that I have yet to watch or complete also don't have to hide behind subtext like older shows did, this one feels like it really takes advantage of that freedom. Despite the main plot distracting from it at times, on the whole the girls' relationship feels wonderfully central and gets a really good payoff. If you're here for gay with a little extra something on top, this is my recommendation.

-Symphogear: This is a case where I simultaneously really recommend this, while not entirely being sure if it should be on the list. While most of the others I've listed are single-cour and thus pretty quick to blast through, (even if sometimes to their own detriment, more on that later) Symphogear has five seasons' worth of content, with possibly more on the way, (there was a recent announcement of something new coming in a few years, but whether it's a new season, a spinoff, or just some unduly hyped merch or something, is yet unclear.) so is more of an undertaking. It's also a bit more rough around the edges in some spots, so my recommendation does come with disclaimers.

Premise-wise, it's kind of a weird mashup of genres; Magical girls, super robot mecha anime, and idols being the big ones. In a near-future world that's regularly afflicted by incursions from deadly entities called Noise, there are a group of girls wielding Symphogears, music-powered magitech devices that allow them to transform and fight back. However, there's a whole lot more going on beneath the surface, as the mystery of where the Noise are coming from is tied to a web of conspiracy involving alchemists, monsters, enemy symphogear wielders, and ancient sumerian myth.

It's definitely an action show first and foremost, but part of what both makes it interesting (and somewhat difficult to explain conceisely) is the way it evolves over the course of its run. The original season just started out as like, one of the wave of edgy grimdark "being magical girl is suffering" Madoka-clones that came out after Madoka, (so yanno, if you watch it, go in prepared for it to go some dark places) but it fairly quickly found its own identity and direction in being deeply, unapologetically maximalist about everything it does. Maximum edgy darkness! Maximum awesome hype! (And resultingly, maximum weaponized mood whiplash!) Maximum music! Maximum conspiracy! Maximum violence! Maximum comedy! (For better or worse, maximum fanservice!) Maximum gay! Maximum gay drama!

So like, it's just... A Lot,™ for both good and bad, and best taken at a measured pace rather than binged all at once. Also, while it's technically just subtext in its yuri until the last season, as with everything else about the show, it's so blaringly, gleefully unsubtle about that stuff that it may as well be text anyway.

So yanno, I personally like it, I think it's a great show that more people should watch, but I'll also readily admit that while it probably has at least something for everyone, it also probably has something that might turn people away, with either the plentiful fanservice, or the more oppressive grimdarkness of most of the first season being the two biggest concerns. It uh, goes some places. But, all that being said, it's still a pretty great ride on the whole? So if you think you could deal with those aspects, I do think it's worth taking a look, and the payoff is very much worth it.

And finally...

-Bloom Into You: In terms of just pure yuri, this is one of my favorites, and a pretty popular one for good reason. It hits a really nice balance between the chillaxed gentleness of most slice-of-life stuff, and the angst and drama of some other series; I feel like the best word to describe its tone is thoughtful. It's very well-written, and very sweet while still giving more to chew on. (Also helped me realize I was demiromantic, so that's also a point in its favor.)

A girl entering high school has always dreamed of and idealized romance, but after actually getting confessed to and feeling nothing about it, winds up kinda reconsidering and uncertain of what she actually wants. She meets an upperclassman who seems completely disinterested in romance and tries to connect with her over that, only for the upperclassman to fall for her instead; while aknowledging it's unrequited, she regardless asks her to enter a sort of one-way semi-romantic, semi-platonic relationship. As it goes on, and more context comes to light, she starts to realize there's a lot more emotionally complicated stuff going on, that I'll let you find for yourself.

Very very good series, but with one major flaw, that being that the anime only covers the first half of the manga and cuts off before everything can really properly resolve. They did tweak things a bit so the last episode does serve as at least something of a conclusion, but it's still just not quite there. Unless they do a second season to cover the rest, (which at present seems unfortunately unlikely) my recommendation would honestly just be to read the manga on dynasty scans, or watch the show and then read the rest. It is at least a very faithful adaptation, so I don't think you'd be missing too much if you choose the latter route. But yeah, either way, if you only do one thing off this list, this one is what I'd suggest.

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I hope this helped! Went bit overboard here, whoops ^^;

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