I often ponder the appeal of yuri. Is it the forbidden, exotic allure of a pair of pining maidens, begging to be fetishized and capitalized upon by the industry? On some level, yes – but making that claim would be akin to claiming that all romanticized love stories with attractive females exist solely for the lonely fan.
Yuri, like all settings and devices and what have you, is simply a premise. It’s something that can enhance a story if used effectively, something that can potentially add that extra push to cross the line between good and great. Recently, one such series stirs warmly in my memory as I recall it: Aoi Hana, a warm love story about crying lesbians.
Aoi Hana is, for lack of a better word, subtle. It interests me because subtlety is something that we often see in anime, from ambiguous symbolism to succinct dialogue. While that does come off as a bit of a blanket statement, I believe we’ve all seen our fair share of vague romance and it’s-about-something-even-though-it’s-about-nothing stories to know that a director who whispers rather than yells is not uncommon in the medium.
Coming back to the topic at hand, Aoi Hana seems like a perfect example of subtlety in anime. Furthermore, it’s not a bad example of subtlety in romance. Think back to your reaction to the sight of Kyouko’s tears during her discussion with Akira; as Baka-Raptor said, the lesbians of Matsuoka and Fujigaya cry about mostly insignificant things, and the rest of the cast cries when the see the first batch crying. It sounds like your typical melodramatic high school waterworks, bound to end without a shred of originality short of a Nice Boat bombshell.
But I can’t say that Aoi Hana is unoriginal.
It isn’t groundbreaking, I’ll give you that much. We’ve all seen the show before, and many of us have seen it three or four times: a group of high school girls talk and have fun and do girlish things and stop just short of doing the things they would need an OVA for. The show falls more or less perfectly into this category, minus the fanservice, but it’s the minor details that genre cannot account for. It’s the minor details that are overlooked by the one-paragraph synopses and brief episodic summaries.
Really, it’s the minor details that make the show great.
[kl]
Subtlety. What is subtlety? And what does it have to do with romance?
Unless you want to play the semantic card, I’m sure you know where I’m going with this. Subtlety in romance anime can be found across the board, from the bittersweet conclusion of Yuta Takemoto’s bike ride to the unspoken meaning behind Tsukimiya Ayu’s hairbands. While the latter may not have been entirely unspoken, I think the point is clear: many romance anime rely on vague symbolism and roundabout dialogue to convey emotions and feelings, rather than a straight and to-the-point confession or a linear monologue. It’s this ambiguity in the characters’ actions that makes it intriguing to observe them, and when they narrate their feelings as they feel them rather than as they would write them, it heightens the viewer’s ability to relate and connect.
Aoi Hana is no exception to this. Remember the crying scene? Crying over a lost love is not entirely subtle, but when the words associated with that heartbreak are replaced by a simple but meaningful stream of tears, the audience feels an emotional bond before they get the chance to think it.
This is why I believe that the show is all about the subtlety – or to be more precise and less subtle about it, it’s about the presentation. The how, not the why. Everything about the show is soft, gentle, from the pastel colouring to the instrumental lead-in for the OP and ED. It works its way into the dialogue and story – Yasuko’s wistful gaze at her first love and his bride, Fumi’s memory of her library encounter prompted by the gentle breeze from the open window. The setting helps this, too: remember what I was saying about yuri as a setting and device rather than a genre? The purity and innocence that are stereotypically associated with shoujo-ai fits the show perfectly; not because it’s a pandering Strawberry Panic knockoff, but because it’s a humble story of an innocent first love. Nothing more, nothing less.
An unspoken yet warming show of affection – the epitome of yuri as a device.
Aoi Hana will always be ahead of the pack in my view, and it’ll always hold something over the classics like MariMite and Kannazuki no Miko - although in keeping with my statement of yuri not being a genre, a more apt comparison would be Hatsukoi Limited or Nanatsuiro Drops. Though the summer season had many a gem to uncover and savor, it isn’t an understatement for me to claim that this emotionally ambiguous first-love story will remain in my memory for years to come: not because it was spectacular, or even particularly good, but because it succeeded in telling a delicate story in such subtle, poetic way.
~ ETERNAL
つづく
