My overall thoughts on Yuri Kuma Arashi

The Fall anime season has ended, and so has 2014. With a new year comes a new season, and of course, with a new season comes new anime. I am actually quite excited for this season, as anime I've been looking forward to, Dog Days'' and Kantai Collection, will be airing this season. I'm also excited to finally catch up to the latest episode of Cross Ange, an anime I've come to love very much. This article isn't about any of those three anime, though. It is an anime that is also airing this season, one that I promised myself I wouldn't watch, but I ended up watching anyway.


Yuri Kuma Arashi.

In a world where bears and humans are eternally at war with each other, there live two girls named Kureha and Sumika. They are best friends as well as....lovers. Yeah, this is a yuri anime. Weirdly enough, a straight girl like me likes yuri anime most of the time, with Sakura Trick, another yuri anime, to be my favorite anime from last year, and my favorite yuri anime overall. Moving on. Apparently, there is a flower bed that is so important to Kureha and Sumika, but then, BAM! The flower bed is destroyed, apparently by bears. There are two girls, whose names I have forgotten, who have transferred into their class in the first episode, and those two girls are actually bears who want nothing more, nothing less than to eat humans.

Yuri Kuma Arashi is created and directed by Kunihiko Ikuhara, who was also behind Revolutionary Girl Utena and Mawaru  Penguindrum. I haven't watched Utena yet, so I can't state my opinion on that; however, despite the fact that I haven't finished it yet, I really like Penguindrum. So what about this series?

When the anime was announced, I immediately searched for the manga and found that the first chapter was available. I started reading it.....and even if there are more chapters available now, I don't care. I strongly disliked the Yuri Kuma Arashi manga, and that was when I made a promise with myself that when the anime came out, I would not watch it. I made it known on forums of websites such as MAL, Anime-Planet, and ANN. (Actually, with Anime-Planet, I just included this anime in a list of anime I would never watch.) I'm a real promise-breaker, aren't I? After all, earlier today, when I saw that the first episode was out, I got curious. I then thought to myself, "Hey, maybe the anime is better than the manga!"

Now, a little not-really-seemingly-necessary-to-say-but-you'll-see-why-it's-necessary kind of thing. One day, at my local library, I found a copy of the first volume of a manga called Nabari no Ou. I tried to read it, but I didn't even get past the second chapter before I decided, "You know what? Screw it." It was the first manga I ever dropped. Nearly a year later, I started to watch the anime. As soon as I was done with the first episode, though, I decided, "You know what? Nabari no Ou and I are obviously not a good match, so screw this, too." It wasn't the first anime I ever dropped (I think that was Naruto Shippuden), but who cares? I found the anime to kind of be worse than the manga.

I mentioned earlier that saying that would be proven necessary later. So how was mentioning my history with Nabari no Ou necessary, exactly? Well, my history with that anime is dangerously similar to my history with Yuri Kuma Arashi. That is because when I watched the first episode of the anime, I found it to be more ridiculous than the manga. As far as I was seeing, the plot didn't look like it was going to go anywhere, not to mention that all of the characters are annoying, especially the bear girls whose names, once again, I have forgotten. The art and the sound of it were okay, I guess, but everything else is just..... UGH. What could have stopped me from dropping it was the yuri elements, and it definitely delivered. However, I am aware that the fact that an overall genre I like can't stop me from hating an anime from that genre. My least favorite anime is Kono Aozora ni Yakusoku wo, which is a harem anime, and harem is one of my favorite genres!

So yeah, overall, I did not like Yuri Kuma Arashi. Sorry, Ikuhara, but this time, you failed. I'd only recommend it to the people who want to watch everything that has lesbians in it. The rest of you? Skip it. Skip it as it's airing, and keep skipping it even after it finishes airing. It's not worth your time.

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