Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re embarking on a brand new adventure, as we check out the first episode of Yuri is My Job! I doubt I need to explain to any of my readers that “yuri” generally refers to lesbian romance in anime or manga. Yuri has a long and storied tradition in these fields, with the early 20th century Class S dramas that were often focused on all-girl schools informing the works of the Year 24 Group in the 1970s, including such enduring classics as Riyoko Ikeda’s Dear Brother. These stories influenced the next generations in turn, with ‘90s highlights like Maria Watches Over Us and Revolutionary Girl Utena paving the way for modern, somewhat more grounded stories like Bloom Into You or Adachi and Shimamura, as well as lighter romcoms like The Demon Girl Next Door.
Anime and manga have often been a haven for society’s outsiders, realizing the hopes and aspirations that would invite censure in a rigid, conservative culture. And even as we’ve begun to break the shackles publicly inhibiting expressions of homosexual love, yuri dramas have continued to evolve with the times, even hopping aboard the isekai boom through stories like I’m In Love With The Villainess. Yuri is My Job seems to fit neatly within the modern self-aware paradigm, with its genre-savvy title and heroine whose name is literally Hime, meaning “princess.” It apparently takes place at a cafe themed after those classic Class S dramas, making me curious as to both how it might comment on genre convention, and how it will express earnest character drama in its own right. Let’s find out!
Episode 1
Scanning the key staff, the first thing that pops out to me is that series composer Naoki Hayashi wrote the scripts for the second half of Flip Flappers, which is one of the best gay romances and also just generally best shows of the last decade. So that’s a good sign!
We open on some Class S aesthetic staples: tea being served, school uniforms, and a cross implying we’re at a Catholic all-girls school
The OP implies some immediate tension between our light-hearted Hime and her tall, imposing coworker. Their height gap is very powerful
It also seems like we’ll be delving into conflicts prompted by their true feelings versus their professional personas, which seems like a rich vein of drama. The stories this show is drawing on often emphasized the difference between our public and private faces in hostile school environments, so transposing that to professional performance seems like a natural twist
And of course, we end on a field of lilies, a backdrop depicting a boarding school in the German countryside, and a bow before the curtain falls. Really drawing attention to their “performance” of this genre, which will presumably facilitate a critique of love as it is dramatically imagined versus love as it is actually experienced
We open the episode proper in the big city, with students gossiping about Shiraki-san, the cute and composed new first-year student
Hime Shiraki’s graceful, mild-mannered performance charms her classmates instantly
She relishes admitting it’s all a facade, and that she’s worked hard to cultivate this affectation
Her dream is to hook a millionaire and marry her way into high society. You get ‘em, girl
Seems deliberate that the idea of marrying a man is framed in purely mercenary terms. She already can’t imagine actually falling in love with a man
A wider shot reveals the blue-haired girl from the OP in her class. Given her look of despair in the OP, I’d assume this girl has known and loved Hime for a long time
“Hime-chan looks just like this shoujo manga character!” Even before she reaches the cafe, her affectation is already a performance guided by classic manga
Quite a rich color palette for this production. External scenes are lit in an array of pastel hues, evoking a bright spring feeling that’s ideal for the beginning of the Japanese school year
Hah, love this playful cutaway screen as she stumbles into another girl, like a pinwheel emanating from the center screen
The girl she bumps into has an instantly recognizable voice – it’s Yukari Tamura, the voice of Nanoha, though she’s here evoking a more childish tone evocative of her Rika Higarashi performance
Hime offers a false offer of support in condolence, but this girl Mai takes her at her word
Hime immediately calls out the kabedon attack of Mai’s gyaru friend. I suppose she’d know all this stuff if she’s modeling her persona after shoujo manga
The gyaru’s name is Sumika
They work at Cafe Liebe, which means “love” in German. Emphasizing the European boarding school settings of so many yuri forebears
Hime is asked to meet in the back, and thus earns her private meet-cute with her tall coworker
Very charming how her affectation isn’t quite natural, thus she’s always stopping and restarting her introductions in Proper Hime Form
Hime is instantly intimidated by this girl, who seems to naturally embody the grace that Hime puts on as a performance. Definitely some potential for genre interrogation there; in general, this premise seems perfectly calibrated to explore why we put on performances of selfhood, and how those performances either echo or conceal authentic aspects of our identity. After all, much of growing or changing as a person is simply willfully embodying new behaviors until those behaviors come naturally. “Just be yourself” can be a liberating directive when you’re forcing yourself to put on an inauthentic persona, but it can also be a way of excusing bad behavior rather than working to change it and growing as a person
“Nyanyazon” is a very good fake Amazon
Apparently the tall girl’s name is Mitsuki Ayanokouji
They all dress as students at the fictional Liebe Girls’ Academy
Nice energetic character acting as Hime’s feigned stomach ache is countered by Mai’s feigned wrist injury
Mitsuki’s first performed lines are of course accompanied by a glimmering fringe of roses, echoing the lush adornments frequently accompanying such lines in shoujo manga. I feel like Osamu Dezaki remains the king of echoing such aesthetic melodrama in animation, though obviously directors like Kunihiko Ikuhara and Shinichi Omata have walked in his storied footsteps
“Perhaps you should ask your heart that question?” A line also accompanied by lilies, symbols of love and purity that are frequently also connected to yuri romance
Sumika’s usual gyaru fashion sense and blunt affectation make her performance here feel all the more stark. It’s an interesting contrast, and seems to naturally imply that while classic yuri manga was a sanctuary for socially sanctioned emotions, it too came with its own attendant rules and expectations, specific personalities and archetypes that were once audacious and transgressive, but have at a certain point become limiting genre conventions in their own right
I’d be delighted if this show continues to explore that point, investigating how this fake school’s expectations can be a safe space for articulating feelings you’re not allowed to express in ordinary life, but how the forms of behavior expected here are also ultimately limiting in their own way, thus necessitating rising beyond genre convention into an authentic expression of personal feelings
“Nobody talks like this outside of shojo manga!” Hime herself immediately critiques the formalized, inauthentic nature of this dialogue. Of course, your affectation need not be authentic for the feelings expressed to be real
“I’m acting cute to score a rich husband, not to show off in an embarrassing costume at some weird cafe!” The clear connection between this cafe and her own performance immediately discomforts her. It’s as if this place is making a mockery of her dream, forcing her to question the legitimacy of her normal affectation
“They’re totally missing the point! Acting shy is part of the facade, like everything else!” What’s worse, both the customers and her fellow employees aren’t even impressed by her performance. She clearly feels like she’s above fully committing to this performance; the person she attempts to represent as Hime is not a person she internally respects, and she takes pleasure in “fooling” everyone with such an obvious ploy
Mitsuki encourages her towards a self-introduction, but seems shocked when Hime refers to her as “Onee-sama,” and scolds her for it after their shift
Love Hime’s rough-sketched interpretations of their different personas
Apparently Mai’s arm is broken, so Hime will be filling in for the time being. Back at school, we learn that Hime was actually in a club with the blue-haired girl
What is it about blue hair and romantically doomed childhood friend characters? Rei Ayanami is sort of the textbook “blue-haired, non-threatening, childhood-reminiscent love interest who will ultimately fall by the wayside,” but I wonder if there are other progenitors
Her name is Kanoko. She knows about Hime’s facade, and Hime seems to speak freely with her
Mai says that they can “fix” Hime referring to Mitsuki as Onee-sama by making them “Schwestern,” a pair complete with matching crosses
“It’s a word used when an upperclassman and an underclassman make an oath to form a special, sister-like bond.” A classic dynamic of the Class S stories we’re drawing on here, with the upperclassman drawing the underclassman into a mysterious world of intimacy and adulthood
Interesting conceit of them reading and reacting to the comments of cafe attendees, essentially adjusting their performances to fulfill the expectations of their audience. Another way of emphasizing how these particular forms of behavior can actually be quite limiting, even if they were originally conceived as a form of liberation. A narrative of rebelling against social convention has now become its own convention
“I really want you two to decide. I’ll leave the kreuz with you until you do.”
“We have no idea if she’ll behave properly at the salon.” Yeah, this is excellent. Drawn from stories that were all about hiding forbidden love, Mitsuki now doubts Hime’s ability to properly obey the prescribed forms of articulating that allegedly transgressive romance. A natural critique of how the conventions of genre romance can become their own form of cage, flattening the complexity of human interaction into specific stylized expressions of emotion
More excellent fluid animation as Mitsuki storms out, incensed at the idea of having to cover for all of Hime’s mistakes
Mitsuki’s rejection briefly reminds Hime of earlier years, when her own facade was critiqued by her fellow students as obviously artificial. Audiences want to be lied to, but they will hate you if you don’t make them believe in the lie
Oh man, this is so good. Mitsuki’s frustrations are then immediately turned into fuel for her performance, with the next stage of her argument taking place in front of their guests. Mitsuki might be struggling, but there’s no reason she can’t use that struggle for Content
Impressive panning cut transposing the cafe against the imagined academy, as Hime fully commits to this performance for the first time
Hime’s obliviousness to these genre conventions are making her seem far bolder than she intends, as she outright challenges Mitsuki for not accepting her kreuz
For browbeating Mitsuki into accepting the pairing, Hime earns Mitsuki’s deepest loathing
And Done
Whew, what a rich first episode! So much to dive into here in terms of the relationships between our public and private selves, as well as how those identities can be influenced by the expectations of either media convention or a wider audience. Contrasting Hime’s personal facade against her professional performance is already yielding some compelling character interrogation, while that discussion regarding the nature of yuri pairs served as a graceful commentary on the awkward relationship between media as transgressive liberation versus media as trope-driven validation. This text is working on all sorts of levels, and I’m eager to explore them further!
This article was made possible by reader support. Thank you all for all that you do.
