I thought it had a connection to the yuri icon that is Marimite, even if the actual lesbian content there is quite low.

On a wider scale it occurred to me that both Christianity and lesbianism are used as fetishes and for the sake of pure aesthetic appeal in Japanese media, especially in manga/anime. The usage of Christian iconography simply for the sake of coolness is so rampant that it barely needs mentioning but there is a lot 'cool' bait-and-switch lesbians whose sole purpose is to engage the fantasies of a mostly male audience. Actual yuri not so much but highly ecchi anime is full of girls who go beyond skinship with one another just to appeal to the audience.
It was been a while since I watched Yurikuma but I am reminded of that scene where the Judge Bear is looking at girls making out through a telescope and feeding coins into it, a more literal case of 'male gaze' could hardly be conceived.

It's almost as if both Christianity at its most shallow, with its plethora of crosses, haunting chanting, decadent cathedrals and the lot is receiving the same treatment as faux lesbianism with all the blushing school girls that tend to do little else but blush and act coy: both are boiled down to being edgy, attractive and ultimately with no actual substance.

Yurikuma would then be bringing attention and subverting this attitude as in the end the girls do end up together as an actual couple and the Christianity surrogate of Kumalia turns out to be very real and not just postering for the sake of fancy imagery.

Last edited by Nocturnalux (04-02-2016 09:32:22 PM)

I attended Catholic schools most my life, complete with palatial buildings that are a century old, sprawling gardens dotted with virgin Mary statues and built-in churches. So I always feel bemused whenever I encounter this pop-Catholicism, for lack of a better word. My schools were all co-ed but had been all girls for most of their long history. There also used to have a uniform that was abolished because no-one was interested in wearing it and because it was absurdly expensive. The middle school-high school divisions were surprisingly liberal in certain areas, namely homosexuality so something like Yurikuma was doubly interesting to me even if as a whole I was not all that impressed by it. But all those stained glass sequences almost gave me flashbacks.

By the way, if you're interested in Christianity in Japan I highly recommend the novel Silence by Endo Shusaku. The author was a Catholic and knew his doctrine, enough to flesh out a Portuguese priest in the 17th century in a very believable way. It is also historically accurate and disturbingly hopeless in its portrayal of oppression.