Content Warning: Discussion of queer/transphobia (including slurs), online and workplace harassment, grooming, systemic violence
Spoilers for Yurikuma Arashi, referenced spoilers for Puella Magi Madoka Magica
“This is the nature of systems: the moment you reject them, you are forced to realize that they’re the very ground you’re standing on.”
–Ikuhara Kunihiko
Two bears are presented with a choice: will you be invisible, or will you eat humans? They look like teddy bears, and they are on trial. Two girl bears–two lesbian girls–Ginko and Lily, standing before three male judges deciding whether or not they should have the right to exist. In order to have their love approved, they declare: they will eat humans. They transform, taking on human form as they don hypersexualized bear girl outfits, and they enter the world of the school.
Yurikuma Arashi places this strange set-piece towards the middle of its first three episodes. It exemplifies the show’s style, told as it is in enigmatic parables. Ostensibly, Yurikuma is about a human girl named Kureha seeking answers about the deaths of her mother and girlfriend while getting into a love triangle involving the two bears who have infiltrated her school disguised as humans.
However, everything in Yurikuma Arashi is more symbol than literal representation, and I have often mulled over its meaning as I’ve navigated entering the teaching profession as a nonbinary Chinese person. Like the bears, I’ve often asked myself: what do I sacrifice to be allowed to exist within the school?
