I think asking what any one symbol means in an Ikuhara show isn't a great idea, because he'll often use elements associated with different symbols in different ways. However, some things to note:
Yuri = Lily. Lilies are a traditional symbol of purity and innocence in much of the world. They are also common in funeral bouquets, linking them to mourning and death as well. In the 70's the editor of a Japanese magazine for homosexual men began to refer to their homosexual female readers as "the lily tribe" linking lesbianism with the term yuri. The term does NOT mean lesbian though; Japan doesn't have an explicit term for female homosexuals, yuri is just another name for the Girl Love genre, fictional depictions of what female-on-female love is like. Lillies as a species usually have fairly prominent pistils (the exterior female reproductive organ in flowers), which may have contributed to the terminology choice.
Kuma = Bear. I'll let Ikuhara explain this one:
Q: What was the reasoning behind your use of bears in the story?
A: In reality, bears are creatures that absolutely must not intrude into the human world. When they do intrude, they make us fear for our lives. And yet, for a very long time, humans have also created teddy bears, and bear mascot characters, and they’re adored by many. I wanted to express the idea of that gap [between reality and fantasy].
There have been plenty of other shows in the past that have depicted terrifying grizzly bears, and there have been plenty of other shows that depicted adorable teddy bear types. I thought that depicting both ideas at the same time would be interesting.
Bears are creatures where we have a dual perception of them: how we imagine them and how we see real life ones. Lesbian imagery is popular in media, but the actual behavior of real life lesbians and how the public reacts to that is another story. A homophone for kuma (pronounced with a slightly different tone) also can mean darkness; not evil, but something hidden in a dark corner.
Arashi = Storm. Social pressure, that invisible thing surrounding us that tries to exert influence on how we behave. Arashi can also mean a troublemaker, someone who messes up things for fun (like a storm coming through.) The "kuma arashi" was a seven hour storm that hit Hokkaido in December 1915, immediately after the Sankebetsu Incident while they were trying to drag the corpse of the bear back to the village.
Yurikagome = Black-Headed Gull. The birds whose image shows up throughout the show (they are actually labeled as this species in the opening). This represents the members of the storm. They are often shown around the members but absent from Ginko, Lulu, and Kureha. Every time those three go up or down the spiral staircase, the birds in the lattice work are pointed in the opposite direction, representing conflict between them. Note that the Escher-esque background of the birds and lillies on the wall of Yuriika's office and the room where the wake was held and the fact the bird has yuri is in its name, hinting that perhaps some of them may indeed be the very thing they oppose.
Hako = Box. A recurring element in Ikuhara's work, the box represents comfort, security, but ultimately imprisonment. People put things in boxes to protect them from kegare (Shinto term for a state of uncleanliness), including themselves. Japan as a society has a very strong sense of compartmentalization, and ultimately it stifles personal autonomy and hurts those people most vulnerable. Only by going outside of our boxes can we grow into better people.
Other things like the honey (Lulu's Promise Kiss), the Severance court (a decidely masculine group dictating what is deemed acceptable deviance from normal behavior), Kumaria (Kuma + Maria, representing a higher power that society can only assume to know the motivations and desires of), the recurring horror movie references, and the use of the constant construction of the wall (displayed in a cold blue) contrasted against the pink-red school roof (which makes a pink triangle in a green circle, an international LGBT symbol) is stuff I think has a meaning that either is still to be touched on in the last episode or is just sort of there and not developed as much as those.
Of course that's not everything, and might be way off base in some of those assumptions. However, if any of those dynamics help you get a better appreciation of the series, by all means enjoy. |
