It’s hard to pin down what makes a series like Yuri Kuma work. After all, the plot doesn’t make sense on a literal level and conversations quickly devolve into abstract lines that border on pretension.
Usually, this would be the kind of story I’d hate, but Yuri Kuma is so ridiculously over-the-top that it’s endearing instead.
That’s not to say I’d classify it as a comedy. Don’t get me wrong, Yuri Kuma did make me laugh, but I’d say for the majority of the episode I felt unnerved. The bears were so adorable, but they were vicious man-eating beasts that were capable of overcoming humanity’s most clever defenses. It was the disconnect between how they were presented and what they really were that got to me.
Oddly enough, it was my own reaction that made me laugh. I mean, this anime’s about lesbian bears that eat humans. Try explaining to your friends that a story with such a ridiculous premise scared you.
To be clear, I’m confident Yuri Kuma was trying to get this reaction from me. The score is perfect for an anime that’s trying to be comedically scary and you don’t put in something like that trial scene if you’re not trying to get your viewers to laugh at least once. When you think about it, being trapped in the same school as a man-eating beast is a classic horror movie plot line. It’s just never been presented like this before.
Being an Ikuhara work, Yuri Kuma is dripping with symbolism and metaphors. While I have precisely zero ideas what any of it is supposed to mean (it relates to sex, but how?), I’m confident that it’s all going to come together in a satisfying manner. Even if this stuff about tone and comedic scares is just a hallucination on my part, trying to piece together Ikuhara’s message is going to be fun.
Mo[r]e Anime 