What They Say:
One day an asteroid hits the earth and makes all the bears on the planet attack humans. In response humans put up a giant wall and have managed to keep them out until a couple of them decide to disguise themselves as humans and sneak in. Two girls named, Kureha and Sumika are lovers and Kureha despises bears, but when Sumika disappears one day, Kureha has to come face to face with them in order to save her.
The Review:
Content (warning as portions of this review may contain spoilers):
It’s time for round two of Yurikuma as Ikuhara’s brand of simultaneous brilliance and weirdness continues. Although, where the opener seemed more devoted to Ikuhara displaying the extremely sexual nature of the show into everyone’s heads, this week’s dives a bit more into the meat of things and starts to flesh out the story and metaphors a bit more. Of course that doesn’t make any of what happens less weird.
So where things left off last, the student council president Mitsuko stumbled upon the bear girls eating someone and takes it upon herself to protect Kureha from them. Kureha on the other hand, is still struggling to get over Sumika’s death and hasn’t realized who the bear girls really are. They’re still interested in eating her and try to barge into her house to do so but get interrupted by Mitsuko.
Meanwhile one of the other girls at the school is jealous of Mitsuko paying so much attention to Kureha and turns into a bear deciding to eat her. Kureha gets another call telling her to “prove her love” and tries to kill the new bear but ends up getting sent to another Yuri Trial and “eaten” again by Ginko and Lulu. Mitsuko ends up killing the new bear and helping out Kureha, but it turns out she’s secretly interested in eating Kureha herself, and was the one who actually ate Sumika.
This week’s episode is a bit less of a doozy that the first one but it certainly isn’t any less crazy on Ikuhara’s part. The sexuality even more off the charts than the last time and pretty much all of it demonstrates a sense of perverseness. Though it’s pretty much thanks to it, that some of the metaphors have a bit more clarity. The bears being representative of sexual desire was mostly clear from the get go, but this episode pretty much hammers it in since notably all of the lustful girls in this episode turned out to be one. Although whether or not the two new bears in the episode were bears from the get go is kind of hard to say, but if not it opens up a pretty interesting avenue for the series to take if a lot more of the girls turn out to be one.
The invisibility metaphor also seems to be a bit more clear as Mitsuko’s remark about the jealous girl at the end suggests it’s in reference to suppressing desire and that the bears are interested in Kureha because she doesn’t. It makes the nature of the Yuri Trials interesting if it’s Ikuhara debating over the two, and it’s pretty much in line with some of the themes in his other works. Though as it’s obvious which he leans towards, where exactly he’ll go with it is the biggest question.
Beyond the themes being clearer though, the episode also worked better on a basic storytelling level than the first one. Kureha’s character gets a little bit more fleshed out thanks to Sumika’s absence and her interactions with the bear girls are pretty fun as she starts to befriend them, which probably won’t end well whenever she finds out what they actually are. Mitsuko’s manipulation of Kureha on the other hand isn’t too unexpected a twist (you can smell it a mile away with Ikuhara) but her being a bear isn’t and it should be interesting to see how long she can keep it up for.
In Summary:
Yurikuma’s second episode manages to improve on the first as both the themes and the story start to have a bit more clarity. There’s a lot of potential set up to be had here if more of the girls turn out to actually be bears and it seems like there’ll be a lot more to Mitsuko’s character than it first appeared. It’s still hard to say where Ikuhara’s taking everything, but his methods are becoming more apparent, and the show’s all the better for it.
Grade: A
Streamed By: Funimation, Hulu
