YMMV / Yuri Kuma Arashi

• Alternate Aesop Interpretation: Interpretations of the show's ultimate message are all over the place, thanks to the muddiness caused by the show's overt use of symbolism, and the vast amount of controversial elements everywhere; it seems for every positive or negative interpretation of the show, one can spin an equally valid opposing interpretation. And that's not even getting into narrative intentions, like whether or not certain characters are intended to be sympathetic or not.
• Base-Breaking Character: Ginko. While her behavior in the earlier episodes was mostly tolerated, many grew to dislike her as it was made clear how possessive she was of Kureha. Though her backstory did redeem her in some people's eyes, many more lost faith in her after it was revealed that she let Sumika die for incredibly selfish reasons. This is not helped by the way the show more or less forgives her for her actions in later episodes and she gets little punishment for them, especially her Attempted Rape of Kureha which is played for fanservice and recalled as a fond memory.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Specifically, those male gaze-filled post-yuri approval scenes.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment
  • The infamous post-yuri approval scenes where Ginko and Lulu lick Kureha. They're supposedly Ginko and Lulu trying to get Kureha to recover her lost memories, but they're confusing (both literally and symbolically), come practically out of nowhere, never get explained, and do nothing to further the plot or character arcs.
  • Similarly, the vision Kureha has of her and Ginko exchanging a promise kiss while wrapped in ribbons, which again comes out of nowhere, isn't explained, and serves simply as a mechanism to get Kureha and Ginko together. Appropriately enough, said scene visually calls back to the post-yuri approval scenes.
• Broken Base:
  • Opinions on the anime are divided between those who think it's an artistic wonder that provides an interesting view on lesbianism in Japan, those who view it as an incomprehensible mess that merely panders to yuri fans, and those who think it merely encourages the more unfortunate or toxic aspects of the genre it's supposedly criticizing.
  • Whether or not the fanservice and sexualisation of the characters, the large amount of sex scenes and the way they are handled is mere pandering or intended to be satire of the rampant problems in the yuri genre. With the latter, you also have the argument of whether or not it works.
  • The ending. Some think it's incredibly well-done and perfectly fit the themes of the show, and some think it's an utter trainwreck that goes against said themes.
  • Many of Lulu's fans were pissed at how she more or less gets put Out of Focus and got killed off as essentially a way to get Ginko and Kureha together. The fact that the OP, first few episodes, and promotional material hinted at a One True Threesome ending that ultimately never happened doesn't help.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Despite the attempt to leave the story on an uplifting note, many people felt sordid by the fact that, in the end, Ginko and Kureha die or otherwise Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. Though it makes sense in the context of how the show is essentially a commentary on how society (specifically Japanese society) treats lesbian relationships, it still leaves a bitter taste in peoples' mouths, which isn't alleviated much thanks to the other controversial elements surrounding it.
• Fan Nickname: Lesbears or Gay Bears for the whole franchise.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Despite Kureha/Ginko being the official couple, many fans are drawn to Kureha/Sumika and Ginko/Lulu, due to the latter two couples having far more healthy interactions and overall chemistry than Kureha/Ginko (especially considering the latter did an Attempted Rape on the former which is played as sexy). This became especially apparent after the reveal that Ginko let Sumika die because she was a rival for Kureha's love.
• Growing the Beard: Consensus among those who like the anime is that it starts getting a lot better around episodes 3 to 5, with episode 3's reveal of what the Invisible Storm really is and thus the confusing puzzle pieces of symbolism starting to fall into place, episode 4's focus on characterization (and especially that of fan favourite Lulu), and episode 5's further focus on characterization, plot, and backstory.
• Memetic Mutation: Everything is going to be daijoubu. ^Explanation A line from an infamously horrid fansub of the first episode. The fandom, after reading it, took it to the extreme.
• Mind Game Ship: Most ships pairing someone with Mitsuko; this is because Mitsuko is incredibly manipulative and views everyone else as chess pieces for her goals, and has attempted to manipulate several characters throughout the story to varying degrees of success.
• Moe: Lulu, who has the most "cutesy" personality of the cast. It also helps that that she's easily one of the most sympathetic characters.
• Narm
  • The humans' terror and hatred of bears becomes a lot less believable and even silly given the cutesy designs and art style used for the bears themselves.
  • The "Shock! Bear shock!" scenes used when characters are revealed to be bears. Sometimes it actually works, though.
  • The scenes where bears get shot off the school rooftop — which involves the bears flying right off the roof whilst spinning around in the air, all the while screaming their Verbal Tic. It really ruins the drama.
  • The ending of the picture book. What is probably meant to be beautiful is kind of ruined when one realizes that it's essentially Reia drawing a children's book of her single digit-year-old daughter and bear friend kissing and getting together. And it's explicitly stated several times to be "their future". Which means that Reia was shipping two prepubescent girls together. Creepy.
  • The weird "yuri amour" voice that plays whenever things start getting heated between characters, even when it doesn't make sense. Ruins many a scene and the mood that's being built up.
• Nightmare Fuel
  • Kureha's birthday party, which involves Kaoru and the rest of the Invisible Storm systematically crushing her happiness in one of the cruelest ways possible, part of which includes burning down the flowerbed, something that was very precious and important to Kureha. Made even worse by the fact that, beforehand, the Invisible Storm had supposedly turned over a new leaf and started accepting Kureha instead of excluding her, which was all just a part of their incredibly callous manipulation. It just goes to show how horribly cruel these girls are and how far they will go in their ostracization of what they deem as evil.
  • The bears vs. humans war in episode 7, which is shown in Ikuhara's recurring black silhouettes on red style.
  • Kureha's exclusion during her childhood in Ginko's flashback. It's all kinds of horrifying that society's mentality and conditioning is at such a point that even children would be capable of beating Kureha black and red for being friends with a bear. It doesn't help that the scene is portrayed in black silhouettes on bright blood-red, overlayed with Kureha screaming and crying as the children hurt her and chant "Exclude!" over and over again.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Very much so, as to be expected of an anime that utilizes many controversial elements (social commentary; sexuality, especially in regards to fanservice and the use of rape; and a hefty amount of symbolism) to varying degrees of respect and success.
• Quirky Work: The anime is a commentary on Japanese views on lesbianism vs Yuri Genre fiction, told through the presence of shapeshifting, human-eating lesbian bears.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The first few episodes of the anime are rather slowly paced and focus more on symbolism than plot or characterization (made more egregious by the fact that many events have little impact on later plot events), but starting around episodes 3 to 4 focuses more on plot and characterization, with episode 5 being the episode when the anime really starts to show its colours.
• Strangled by the Red String
  • Kureha and Ginko. Ginko is Kureha's Forgotten Childhood Friend, but is constantly creeping and obsessing over Kureha, to the point of essentially letting Sumika get killed out of jealousy. The two in general have no actual interaction or chemistry beyond the whole "destiny" shtick, but yet the anime still treats them as destined to be. The manga, on the other hand, averts this by making Ginko into much less of a creeper (though still possessive to an extent), and giving her and Kureha an actual, healthy friendship and chemistry.
  • To a lesser extent, Uchiko and Konomi, as their bonding scene in the ending comes without any build-up whatsoever, which is not helped by the fact that the two were already very minor characters to begin with.
• Tear Jerker: Lulu's backstory, especially for people with younger siblings of their own. Her death is even worse.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Due to the high amount of death, focus on symbolism, and focus on Ginko and Kureha's relationship, leaving little room for expansion and development of the secondary characters and their stories, many have said that this trope applies to the majority of the entire cast; Lulu, Mitsuko, and Konomi in particular. See also They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot.
  • Kaoru is rather notable in that, while she is an active member and leader of the Invisible Storm (and the perpetrator as some of the worst actions of the Invisible Storm, like Kureha's birthday party), she is also in a sexual relationship with Yurika, whom she also romantically loves for "finding her among the crowd", and seems to be manipulating the Invisible Storm and using them to become an important person who won't be excluded. Unfortunately, none of this is elaborated on or explored, with Kaoru getting eaten by Yurika mere seconds after she reveals her love and motivations, and thus completely dropped and written out of the story, with Yurika never expressing anything towards her or even referring to her outside of their relationship. None of this is helped by the fact that it's implied and speculated that she's Yurika's Teacher's Pet given her attire and their relationship and that Yurika found her because of her physical resemblance to her adoptive father, and that the lack of exploration on Kaoru's character also makes Yurika's character suffer by extension.
  • Uchiko Ai is a reoccurring minor character who is part of the Invisible Storm, who gets a notable part in the story as the manager of the anti-bear beam cannon, and as a person who defects from the Invisible Storm after the events of the story and forms a relationship with the bear Konomi, who was also the bear used to power the cannon. All of this makes for an incredibly interesting character, conflict, and plot, and would certainly add to the show's messages of homosexuality, homophobia, and finding oneself — but unfortunately, Uchiko gets few notable lines or scenes and basically zero attention from the show, and her ending scene with her defecting and finding Konomi is barely built-up to or foreshadowed in any way.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Quite a few, for the same reasons as listed in They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character.
  • Mitsuko and Konomi could have been a fascinating opportunity to explore an abusive relationship and create a contrast to Ginko and Lulu's friendship, not to mention the characters themselves. Instead, Konomi is killed off before anything meaningful can be done with her, with Mitsuko proceeding to not care in the slightest and then dying herself the episode right after Konomi's death. While both do end up coming back later in the show, Mitsuko ends up as a mere symbolic extension of Ginko's desire to eat Kureha, and Konomi as a background character stripped of all personality and agency, who never says more than "Nasty!". The show also never explains the full extent of their relationship or backgrounds.
    • In a similar vein, Mitsuko's manipulation and rape of Ginko, which is used to symbolize the conflict between Ginko's desire to eat Kureha and her love for Kureha; a conflict which many people feel is weak and doesn't go anywhere, and thus makes the conflict and the characters suffer for it.
  • Sumika being a part of Lady Kumaria, which is never explained. There's also the fact that she apparently knew she was going to disappear or otherwise leave Kureha one day, which (though it may connect to the first reason) is also never explained.
  • During the lead-in to the series, the staff dropped a small hint that Reia, Kureha's Missing Mom, might be alive. Nothing of the sort happens in the series proper.
  • Episode 9 had the possibility of a conflict between Yurika and the desire-crazed Ginko during Yurika's attempted rape of Kureha at the flowerbed. Instead, we get Yurika unceremoniously killed by the Invisible Storm, with Ginko inexplicably not appearing until the end of episode 10 despite the fact that she was shown up and about around, as well as next to the flowerbed gate, at the time of Yurika's attack.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Quite a lot of people have felt this way about the series due to the high death count and how unsympathetic the majority of the characters are, which results in making it difficult to really care about the characters or what happens to them.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Despite the show's attempts to paint them as unapologetically evil, many have pointed out that the Invisible Storm's acts were to see which girls were bears, who were murdering their friends and classmates. This had led some to point out further that their actions on Kureha were technically justified (if extreme at times), since Kureha was letting Ginko and Lulu live at her place.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • The bears in general. As the story goes on, the show attempts to paint them as the victims of homophobia and persecution from humans; problem is, from what few glimpses of the bears world that we see, they're just as bad or worse than the humans (creating Child Soldiers, for example). Not helping matters is that all the bears seen (with the exceptions of Lulu, Milne, and arguably Ginko) are shown to be uncaring assholes at best and complete sociopaths at worst, never mind that Lulu and Ginko, the "good" characters, are still serial killers themselves.
  • Ginko. Even with her backstory and the fact that she does regret Sumika's death, she's otherwise unhealthily obsessed with Kureha, creepy and stalkerish, an attempted rapist, an unapologetic murderer with much blood on her hands, and she let Sumika die for incredibly selfish reasons, mainly her jealousy. None of this is made any better by the fact that she gets little repercussion for her actions and then outright forgiven in later episodes, and is paired up with the very girl she tried to rape.
  • Yurika. For all the show tries to give her sympathy and even outright forgives her in the end, she's still an unapologetic murderer who killed Reia out of jealousy and possessiveness, and targeted and isolated Reia's underage daughter in preparation to rape and possibly murder her when she turned seventeen, again out of jealousy and possessiveness. And, like all the other bears, she's apparently murdered many other girls off-screen as well.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Little Girls?: The series has a cute and brightly-colored art style, and some of the characters are really bears disguised as human girls, with their bear forms looking more like cute teddy bears than real bears. However, the anime is largely about lesbians dealing with a homophobic society, and it contains some violence and quite a bit of nudity and sexual themes; the opening alone revels in sensual imagery.
• The Woobie
  • It's hard not to feel sorry for Kureha, given all the bullying, exclusion, and torment she goes through; never mind all the attempts at rape and murder that she has been the target of, nor the death of her closest friend and lover right at the beginning of the anime.
  • Lulu. She had her status as the beloved princess practically stolen from her when her little brother was born, and took to frequently abusing him to cope, becoming completely guilt-ridden after he died, realizing that she loved him after all. Furthermore, she fell in love with someone who was already loving someone else, and could only help from the sidelines with the knowledge that her love for Ginko would never be reciprocated. Her death is considered by many to be the saddest moment in the series. Even in the manga, she doesn't get much leniency: she, as a maid, was sent away for falling in love with the princess Ginko, and in the present feels abandoned and hated by everyone, thinking it would be better if she disappeared, but continues on anyway because of her love for Ginko.