Girls' love / Yuri

Sorry for the rant, but looks like I am the only guy who really hates Symphogear. It had everything I wanted from an anime: mix or action, more serious take on magical girls, music and a bit of GL. It also had decent production and 2 of my favourite seiyuu/singers in the main cast. But the plot was so bad for me (you know I hate generic battle shounens and it turned out in some bad case of one).

As for Izetta, it was probably even more on the edge than Euthonium in terms of the baiting.

How? The charactera never got with giys, unlike Euphonium.

See, I don't consider "hinted to be together" at the end to be bait (see: Izetta, Lycoris Recoil S1, Aquatope I guess). While it's a shame that more series don't feel like they can get away with a Big Damn Kiss, if the characterization and portrayal is consistent, then what you have is a story with an implied romantic ending.

Bait is when a show spends most of its runtime building up on a homoromantic dynamic and then suddenly gives the characters straight partners at the very end (see: Hanasaku Iroha, Love Lab, Euphonium, Amanchu). "We'll always be together," said while holding hands, is not bait just because they didn't kiss; bait is doing that and then in the next scene going "oh wow, random third wheel character who's a guy, you also have feelings for the second female lead? You can have her, your straight love is very different from mine" (fuck you Amanchu). Basically, I'm not upset by shows that don't do a big kiss confirmation; I'm upset by shows that do the Charlie Brown football switch on you.

For the record, I also didn't like what I saw of Symphogear, and from what I've heard it's a pretty prime example of wanting to have your cake (GL undertones) and eat it too (plenty of those "third party" yuri pictures where two women are looking at the implied male viewer for him to join them).

Edited by RedSavant on Mar 23rd 2023 at 5:49:44 AM

It does completely avoid any potential straight shipping, though.

Like, after five seasons, the grand total of remaining male characters with any presence:
- One character's father
- Everyone's effective father figure
- Tsubasa's manager
- One of the bridge crew whose only real dynamic is with another person on the bridge crew.

It's one of those really weird disconnects between the promo art and any of the stuff in the anime. Or even most of the art in the mobile game. Or the character image songs.

It's definitely under that heading. Way more than LycoReco, even. This is what it ends on. xD

The plot is super cheesy and G and GX both have big writing issues (G seemed to have the writers split into two camps on tone and they kept fighting each other, GX just got really formulaic), but eh. I wasn't in it for novel, grounded, sane plotlines.

Edited by RainehDaze on Mar 23rd 2023 at 1:05:54 PM

I'm just gonna say I'm over thirty and have been burned WAY TOO MANY TIMES to trust any bullshit "Really strong hints" mmmkay.

"Obviously queer" characters swerving into nonsensical heterosexual relationships (Or just, y'now, dying) happened 100% of the time not too long ago. I absolutely refuse to accept half measures at this point.

That's your prerogative, but unless you're planning to get into the industry yourself and change that, all you're doing is cutting yourself off from plenty of good, solid stories with good, solid queer characters because they don't feature a kiss.

Again, that's entirely your own choice and your right. But you're cutting yourself off from shows like Sora no Woto, Princess Connect, Sabikui Bisco, Uma Musume, LycoReco, Otherside Picnic (not the anime)... Some very solid shows with strong queer subplots.

Edited by RedSavant on Mar 23rd 2023 at 11:06:47 AM

And tbf, how many hetero anime couples kiss nowadays aside from the ocassional romcom? I don't recall Kirito and Asuna ever sharing a kiss on screen.

For what it's worth, I definitely do agree that it would be great to see more shows being as obvious about it as, say, MagiRevo. But I also don't think it helps at all to demand that every queer show adhere to one single standard, or to take the view that a show doing something other than that standard is failing by that standard rubric instead of doing its own thing.

Look, I'm not saying Izetta or Aquatope are groundbreaking romances; they're not, and there absolutely loads of room for improvement. I just think there's not much use in demanding that all queer love stories look the same way.

Doesn't help that holding off from Otherside Picnic until there is something blatant is just awkward because it's an ongoing LN series and Sorawo's lack of understanding herself is pretty important.

I should get volume 7.

I don't need a kiss, but I do need some kind of confirmation or really strong hinting to be happy. This doesn't necessarily apply to pure bait, either, because I'm a bit dissatisfied with Korra as well. Despite the relationship being canon, it's so incredibly vague I wouldn't have noticed if people hadn't told me otherwise.

That being said, I just try not to read series where it gives off a 'this is bait' feeling. And if a series is ambiguous I decide that it's actually spineless and they're probably straight.

Not to take away from the greater point, but Otherside Picnic has had multiple kisses at this point, despite Sorawo being as dense as a black hole.

I can't get upset at the Princess Connect anime not going farther because it me to comes across as a situation where they are literally not allowed to make Pecorine and Karyl official because of the male self-insert gatcha, so they are toeing the line and making things as romantic as possible within those constraints.

That's true, but if that was a hypothetical reader's criterion to continue past volume 1, they would have dropped it. The anime was just bad in general so no need to discuss it, really.

And I agree on Princess Connect, sadly. It's a shame; the anime did a great job selling their relationship, and then everything I see of the game is "what if we kissed and got married, Player-kun? Haha, unless..."

I dunno how anyone can suggest Symphogear of all shows is bait?

It's gayer than Paris in the spring.

We'll start with Miku being incredibly morose - crying, wailing, unable to keep standing - at Hibiki's death in the very first scene. In episode 2 Hibiki declares Miku as the sunshine of her life and the two share the top bunk of a twin-sized bunk bed. It can't get much more blatant than that unless you want to see them eating at the Y. And their romance is one of the central pillars of the show, enough that cast and crew refer to Miku as "Hibiki's wife."

Just to hammer it home, we see that Tsubasa and Kanade were equally codependent. And Tsubasa is still in mourning two years after Kanade's death. This one is pretty clear, though slightly less explicitly spelled out compared to the other two.

Then, just in case you missed it, Kirika and Shirabe hit you over the head with a hammer, repeatedly, that they are a lesbian Battle Couple, so close they can complete each other's thoughts.

The only 'bait'-y thing would be Maria and Tsubasa, which is hinted at, but fans make more of than the show really does.

Fans also pair Chris as a third member of any of the above, though given her backstory (repeated sexual abuse by both Val Verde gangsters and later Fine from the time she was kidnapped as a small child until escaping from Fine at 16.), I'd argue she's not really interested in any kind of relationship.

You have a trio of canon lesbian couples here, its not bait whatsoever.

Edited by ScrewySqrl on Mar 24th 2023 at 1:30:02 PM

I mean, the real reason that it's kind of impossible to call Symphogear bait is that resolving the final battle in the series (and the overarching plot—both in story and characterisation-wise—itself) comes down to◊ these◊ four◊ lines◊.

That's not subtext, that's just text-text. You're quibbling over phrasing after that.

Edited by RainehDaze on Mar 24th 2023 at 5:44:51 PM

Agreed. My point above is that level of not-subtext is established in the first two episodes, and only built up over the remaining 63 to get to those lines, because "Miku is my sunshine ... [by her side] is the warmest place I know" is apparently too subtle for some fanboys.

Edited by ScrewySqrl on Mar 24th 2023 at 3:08:45 PM

I personally still consider anything like this as a hard bait. We have no kissing, no actual relationships, just subtext and not to ambigous phrases. We ourselves can think anything based on the level of our "yuri-googles" but author can always swing the kanon either way with such approach.

There's a complete lack of ambiguity on Miku's side (courtesy both of her song in G—a diegetic one, because this is Symphogear—and the explanation of where the words come from), and Hibiki's character arc in XV can literally be summed up as 'work out how I actually feel'.

'Everything is bait unless it is spelled out in plain text' would mean that a lot of stories no longer make sense.

And 'the writers could pull a fast one and change things whenever they like' also applies to things that are even that level of explicit. If they want to, writers can rewrite and invalidate anything. It's not limited to subtext.

I do think its still fine to be annoyed by that very very thin line of plausible deniability.

I enjoyed Symphogear myself for the most part - but I was a little annoyed with the cut off before the love confession at the end. Because there's no reason to do it aside from keeping that deniability.

Sure, but it's more explicit and involved than many actual plots. 'But someone else could randomly be written in' is not specifically restricted to yuri; calling it bait on that is a bit overzealous.

I haven't and don't intend to watch Symphogear, but I do understand feeling iffy about it given the marketing. Even if the creative and marketing teams are clearly talking past each other, they're still putting out goods that lean on that line of plausible deniability. Fair impression or not, it's the one people are going to get.

I'm not sure that's applicable to saying that the way it ends still counts as bait.

Like, the narrative outright doesn't work if you approach it from another angle. And 'the writers didn't write this specific textual thing' doesn't change much, writers can retcon all they want.

(And I'm just ignoring the mobile game and what that likes to do with the card art, that's somehow even less ambiguous.)

Right, I think it's important to engage with what the text itself says and, for lack of a better phrase, believe it means what it's saying. But I can also understand having a sour taste in your mouth when it's combined with marketing that seems intent on countering what the text is saying.

I guess, but the Symphogear marketing is something I've only had peripheral awareness of. I watched S1 on recommendation by a friend, then I think G later. As for GX onwards (probably? I know AXZ and XV) I watched it as it was airing and... well, not like I have much exposure to magazine promo pics. The only thing I ever super paid attention to was the XV key visual, since I got the wall scroll for that one. Which doesn't fall under that category.◊

And that reminds me that there was an event in the mobile game that was basically an excuse for this picture.◊

It's an attitude that feeds into other things; I generally only come across marketing materials after I'm already interested, so I don't really put much stock in how they depict anything.

Edited by RainehDaze on Mar 24th 2023 at 4:36:18 PM

If the Symphogear marketing was trying to counter the very lesbian narratives of Hibiki/Miku and Shirabe/Kirika, we wouldn't have had scenes like the XDU marriage proposal linked above

Edited by ScrewySqrl on Mar 28th 2023 at 1:50:03 PM

I've said it before, they want it both ways.

They want to cultivate the crowd of people that cheer on a yuri pairing while also having a thin veneer of deniability. It doesn't matter if it's as thin and flimsy as a sheet of cellophane, as long as it's there they can only ever use implications and subtext.

There could be a few reasons for it; not overtly challenging social norms, trying to cultivate the waifu worshipping heteronormatives, or different writers having different ideas. But the fact that it's there is just frustrating.

BTW the Yurimemes subreddit is also having a meltdown over how explicit something has to be to be considered Yuri so it seems the fandom as a whole is in argument mode.