Let’s go, Miss Kureha! To the outside world!
I thought I’d start this with a spoiler-free review, for those of you scrolling past and wondering if you should give this strange little series a try. Hit the jump to read on, and I’ll let you know when the spoilers kick up again.
Bear hugs make everything better.
This post is coming to you on holiday, two time zones and a primary laptop away from my usual writing location, which means I’m lacking both my reaction gif archive and a whole mess of available writing time. So while this post is still plenty long on account of all the Lulu (#BestBear), I do apologize if it’s a bit sparser (and lower on terrible puns) than usual.
A picture book nestled in a memory nestled in a flashback nestled in an episode. Well. Things must be getting serious, then.
Because Yurikuma was becoming just a liiiiittle too straightforward, this week sees us jumping back and forth through time like a Gallifreyan kangaroo. To help keep everything coherent (and avoid clogging this thing with the written version of establishing shots), I’ll be using bolded cues so everyone knows where we are in time. Allons-y!
And now for something completely different…
Yurikuma has been pretty much a nonstop bear-shock horror movie experience from the word “go,” and while I was starting to settle in to that experience and finding ways to not just analyze it, but also kind of like it, I do think that after the Mitsuko Madness of last week we were sorely in need of an episode that offered us a reprieve from the harsh angles, saturated colors, and unrelenting intensity of Arashigaoka Academy. Fortunately Ikuhara must have realized that himself, because this week takes us away from the main story almost entirely and delivers a lovely, melancholy, and at times pretty darn funny fairy tale.
Oh, and speaking of—Ikuhara included a fairy tale in an anime, you guys! Everybody do a shot!
Then grab a chaser and gather ‘round, boys and grrls. It’s story time at the Severance Court.
The moment of truth.
I considered dragging out the tension like an extended drumroll (durarararara…), but instead, let’s spend the last half of the post talking references and the first half talking personal reaction, which is this: I’m sticking with Yurikuma Arashi. I wasn’t sure if I would last week, but this episode assuaged a lot of my fears and gave me hope (and some outright confirmation) that my initial readings of this show weren’t completely off the mark. There’s still plenty of time for Ikuhara to step on a land mine and blow this whole, crazy experiment to the Moon Kingdom, but it’s looking slightly less likely that that’s going to happen, at least.
The Josei Next Door 