Yuri/Shoujo ai ala OG

After reading a great post on Sono Hanabira by fellow yuri nation member, @fkeroge, I decided to talk about something similar…not exactly an in depth description or anything, just how I got into the wonderful world of Girls’ Love in the first place. Think of it as a mini-guide disguised as a pseudo biography chapter.

The Beginning:

I’d love to see a future yuri show actually have this ending.

It all started when I was 8 years old. One night when my parents were at work and I was at home with grandpa, I turned to channel 26 and saw the Howard Stern Show. That evening, the guests were two women, a 20+ year old spouse and her mother in law. Long story short, the conversation somehow led to Howard asking them to kiss each other…which they did. I didn’t say anything, I just stared. I was young so I took it for what it was. Another episode, this time my parents were watching the show with me (in another room), there was this webcam session of sorts involving a college girls sorority house. You can pretty much guess what went on there. (The shower scene was especially stimulating. For some reason the episode was repeated 3 times during the Howard Stern Show’s run on E! Entertainment Network before it moved to Sirius satellite PPV due to him being unsatisfied with the lack of “freedom” he had on the show.

Next, I went on vacation with my aunt to Barranquilla, Colombia to visit some relatives. One night while watching TV (alone) while the folks were mingling in the dining room, there was a movie on called “Tech Me”. (To this day I still can’t find the movie online). There was one completely random scene, that had two girls on a bed, dressed in white, suddenly start making out. It made no sense to me but I didn’t care.

Yuri:

High School: Ah yes, Strawberry Panic! This is the show that I officially labeled as the beginner’s guide to Yuri/Shoujo-ai. Almost every yuri fan I know started their path to becoming members of the yuri nation with this show. If anyone who’s curious about SA/Y, this show is a good place to start. This show, along with Maria-sama ga Miteru is where I started noticing a common trend in SA/Y anime, most of them take place in a catholic all girls school. A majority of them have this familiar, now traditional setting. It’s funny now that I think about it, a school full of girls, who are educated in both life values and the word of our almighty creator; get the spice inside them to burn for one another. I don’t mind. Other shows I saw with yuri in it before the “big one”, were Love Hina (Mitsumi Otohime) and Girls Bravo (Kosame). I was still only intrigued by the yuri aspect of things, but that was soon to change.

Shoujo-ai (I don’t use this term anymore but there are other Western fans who still do):

Kannazuki no Miko: The pinnacle of shoujo-ai in my eyes. I haven’t watched Revolutionary Girl Utena at that time, so KnM was the 1st of the two I discovered. To this day, it is one of the best Shoujo-ai shows I had ever seen in my life. It’s thanks to this show that my passion for Girls’ Love grew from a male fetish to a passion/appreciation of tales involving women falling in love with one another. The difficult journey, the many trials and tribulations both women must endure before they reach their final destination where they’ll either be together at last or separated by unfortunate events.

Fav yuri harem queen: Iono-sama, from “Iono the fanatics”: She has her own yuri empire and scientists who have successfully created the solution that “they” have been searching all their lives for. She’s twice as persistent as other yuri harem queens, twice as powerful, twice as sophisticated, and twice as loony, yet intelligent.

When it comes to yuri, all-girl harems CAN work if done properly and at the right time.

Keep in mind that this is all fiction and should in no part become realistic aspirations for any woman; creating her own all-girl harem I mean.

Yuri H:

Here’s a guide to all the Grada A quality yuri H scenes you need in case you’re interested.

http://www.shoujoai.com/forum/topic_show.pl?tid=36702

Yuri H…simple enough: I used to like both hetero and Yuri H but as time passed my taste for het-H became less and less, until I developed an allergy to all winkies, excluding my own. It’s been yuri H ever since, when I’m in the mood that is. I don’t watch yuri H on a daily basis, it’s just an occasional thing when I’m “feeling the heat”.

The Dark Ages: This is the phrase I use to refer to media depicting the classic archetypical stereotype or fate for lesbian characters. These include:

-They’re rebels who cross-dress as guys (and some still do of course).

-They are always the psychotic antagonist.

-They end up in a relationship with another woman, but are killed later on.

-The rare one is that they’re reverted back to the winky.

These movies have been quite common in the past all the way to the mid 90’s. Live-Action media still pulls a dark aged theme lesbian film these days. It was quite difficult finding a form of media (cartoon, anime, movie, manga, comic, etc.) that had a happy ending for lesbian characters, outside of porno but those don’t count. Even yuri H followed this trend. Now the curse has been somewhat lifted these days but there are some shows where the curse continues to haunt “the nation” every now and then.

I don’t think Princess Resurrection has any legit yuri in it.

So why exactly do I like Shoujo-ai to begin with? Because they’re often given a romantic development that can sometimes exceed hetero romance. By this, I don’t mean that there aren’t het romances that aren’t as impact worthy, because there ARE. My point is that the romance between two women amazes and mystifies me, at least the ones on screen. I don’t know how it goes in real life, scratch the “coming out of the closet”, meet the parents and acceptance phases, but when it comes to media (usually animated or manga form) when the lesbian character isn’t a joke meant to mock homosexuality or the victim of the dark ages trend (A period in time when lesbians often ended their relationships prematurely, were insane psychopaths or were killed off for shock value), they usually have an interesting romantic story to watch. In short, yuri romance makes me go doki doki more than any other romance on television or books…most of the time