When I found out this show was going to be a yuri premise I was cautious (I had lost all hope after some of the "girls cant love girls" BS was 'fixed' with horrid crap like sakura trick----which i dropped---and am probably too harsh on)
Then I found out a woman who wrote a very cute comic about being a lesbian in Japan (a comic I really like) had written it. Less cautious.
So I went in with high hopes and man...I was extremely dissapointed with yuri kuma arashi...
Firstly the good stuff about this show: The color design, the opening theme, the scenery art, the prop design, the character designs, even the sound design was pretty good.
But there's nothing else, this show left me asking the question "what is this about?" for every. single. episode. By episode 5 that question had turned into "why should I care?"
This show ended up defining "I'm not mad, just dissapointed."
Story:
There is a story but its mediocre at best, it throws ideas and things the staff thought were themes at all ends to the point where the show believes the viewer is stupid. NOT ONCE have I ever taken poor directing personally but the idea that /their/ ideas can only be understood after pounding them into my skull five hundred times is ludicrous, and will piss anyone off if you do it for twelve straight episodes.
In addition the twists the show does have are not foreshadowed (the "kuma shock" moments mostly) unless you consider given it away a minute into the episode 'foreshadowing', this creates a terrible unbalance in the feeling of an episode.
The overarching story (a separation of worlds/races conquered by love) is not something easy to mess up, yet they did. It was hard to root for these characters an they only were weaved into the story to TELL the story, the writer wanted so badly to spout their meaningless opinions and dialogue to the point were the characters are only vessels for the themes, not characters. It is my belief that when you take a character out of the story the character should be in tact and the world should be in tact but they're so interdependent the quality of both is ruined.
I will also say that there is nothing that can redeem this story, its so badly beaten the last two episodes will do nothing to change that or remedy that.
Yuri Premise:
Did you want actual relationships between girls? TOO BAD! The "love interest" dies in the first god damn episode (maybe second, who cares shes dead as a door nail.) Don't worry you won't feel anything though, because the girl was a moe blob and the main character barely felt anything about it either. If you came for yuri fanservice there is some of that. Otherwise the "new love interest" a childhood friend whom the main character is remembering is both condemned for being a murderer and asking you to sympathize with her in the very same episode. Look I get that it's anime but you have to give me more then five minutes to process that she aided in the death of the aforementioned love interest because she was...jealous...
Yes there are BG relationships mainly of purely sexual nature or the tragic i love her but she friendzoned me story line
Characters:
I like what was /attempted/ but these are some of the most lack luster, disgusting, useless, and I suppose over all /pathetic/ characters I've ever seen. There is NOTHING that makes these characters comprehend-able, the bears whom could be on different moral levels are made out to be characters who I should feel things for-yet they devour others on impulse and have no thoughts...about anything...that isn't a purely emotional obsession. But the thing is...the humans are like this too, the main character has absolutely no personality and reacts to grieving in the most unrealistic way possible. The characters are shells with nothing in them but a goal and a quirk, they are completely hollow and I finally dropped the show when I realized I can't root for characters who have not been respected by their creators who only wanted to force feed their viewers with a pretentious story-line and cute-service.
(also just fuck the bear designs and the gao gao thing)
(not that that's viable for the review just...I hATE)
