Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I thought we’d check back in on Hime’s part-time adventures, as we explore the second episode of Yuri is My Job! Having forcibly established a “Schwestern” bond of sisterhood with her coworker Mitsuki, Hime has solidified her place in the cafe’s kayfabe dynamic while simultaneously earning the enmity of Mitsuki herself. Though Hime is accustomed to performance, she has little fluency with the unspoken rules of engagement here, and seems poised to trample over any number of sacred traditions in her acclamation to life at Liebe Academy.
Of course, tangled as it is, that’s only the first layer of drama we’re dealing with here. Through its transposing of Class S traditions to this maid cafe-reminiscent venue, Yuri is My Job! is also naturally interrogating how the aesthetics of personal liberation can themselves become a new kind of limiting convention, as well as how performances of selfhood can either mask or facilitate emotional sincerity both in fiction and our own lives. Can these genre-born rituals convey genuine personal truths, offering vectors for feelings that must otherwise remain unspoken? And how does that hope square with the expectations of the audience, their insistence on performances that abide by strict models of personal expression? This show’s concerns stretch beyond the specific confines of Cafe Liebe’s performances, exploring the new realities of intimacy in an age where confessions are also Content, and finding a perfect vehicle for the universal in the specificity of the yuri boarding school’s narrative conventions. It’s a fascinating stew, so let’s not waste any more time talking around it, and get right into the action!
Episode 2
Welp, I guess we can now explain that “Schwestern in Liebe!” subtitle
And we’ll obviously be digging into the middle school memories that have informed Hime and Mitsuki’s current attitudes, as this pan around their younger selves promises
Even the OP makes it clear that Kanoko is doomed to become the abandoned childhood friend
We open on Kanoko and Hime enjoying an afternoon outing together, Kanoko practically glowing with lesbian longing
Kanoko’s friendship is already useful in terms of offering a baseline of Hime behavior, when she’s not performing for either her classmates or customers
The composite here is sadly not great; the characters don’t really look like they inhabit their CG backdrops, instead appearing like stickers pasted upon them
At work, Mai tells her not to inform anyone she works here
“Reality is an obstacle when it comes to maintaining the school’s atmosphere. If your friends from school came by just to mess around, it would ruin everything, right?” Her words emphasize how complete this illusion is intended to be, the profound amount of additional labor involved in maintaining this fantasy for the audience’s benefit, above and beyond their duties as waitresses. This in turn echoes one of the frustrating assumptions of our digital age, wherein we are expected to always be selling ourselves as a carefully composed product
And of course, that just makes the allegedly confessional, intimate nature of these performances all the more ironic. Their performances of their “unguarded” selves are actually them at their most fabricated, whereas offering a simple, sincere “jeez, when does my shift end” would shatter the illusion of intimacy they are selling
Speaking of false intimacy, back at school, Kanoko freezes when she’s asked what Hime was like in middle school, straight-up ignoring her questioners until Hime intervenes to provide the desired answer. She can’t maintain Hime’s kayfabe, but she also won’t betray her friend’s performance, and as a result she sacrifices her own opportunity to earnestly bond with her classmates
“You have to assert your feelings or you’ll get pushed around,” Hime tells her. Kanoko has a hard enough time just expressing her authentic emotions, much less juggling three performances at once. Though of course, performance can actually be a way to formalize social interaction such that it makes logical sense, and is thus less intimidating or confusing. Ritual can be a comfort to those who see unprompted social interactions as too chaotic, or too likely to result in abandonment when you attempt to reveal your true self. I imagine Kanoko will find some comfort in that once she joins the cafe
It’s precisely these ambiguities that makes these topics so unresolvable, and thus so interesting. Genre-derived tropes can be a way of hiding your authentic feelings, but they can also be a way of seeking common ground with others, of developing a language of mutual understanding
“You get like this even with me sometimes!” Hime is pretty dense herself
Oh my god. Kanoko has an entire collection of candid Hime photos that she scrolls to cheer herself up. GIRL
“And they’re making me act like a cute student in the middle of all of this…” The term “emotional labor” has had a rough go of it in recent years, but this is the actual essence of it: being forced to perform the happy servant for customers, a massive further imposition on top of your actual job
Kanoko then shows up at Cafe Liebe, having presumably tailed Hime there
“Please treat her like you would a stranger.” The performance of intimacy offered by Liebe demands disavowing any actual real-world intimacy. It feels a lot like idol culture, where genuine humanity is often treated as a betrayal of the fans’ expectations. Of course, in our modern age, basically any creator is expected to also be a product themselves; stan culture was really just the prelude to a full media environment defined by unfettered access to public figures, who are expected to act like your personal friends
As Kanoko seeks to learn more about her actual friend’s interests, Hime is forced to act like she doesn’t know her. The demand for a specific performance inhibits our ability to genuinely connect with each other
“Please read the room! It’s an act!” To Kanoko, who already struggles with social interactions, Hime’s performance of course seems like a rejection
Hah! And of course, Kanoko is intimidated by Hime’s apparent intimacy with Mitsuki, even though that’s all an act. Just like with in her normal daily interactions, Kanoko’s lack of familiarity with the assumed script makes everything seem too intimidating
As Kanoko flounders, Mai sees potential in her aura and this overall dynamic, and fetches another uniform
In contrast with Kanoko, Hime has no problem calling her cute in her new uniform
Though they both understand the words they’re saying, they’re nonetheless not speaking in a common language. To Hime, “cute” is a tossed-off descriptor of little significance – to Kanoko, it is everything. Given such vast gulfs in understanding, it’s easy to see why we flock to formalized codes of behavior drawn from fiction in order to truly comprehend each other
Hime cannot understand why Kanoko would actively want to work here, failing to see either what this formalized venue offers for Kanoko, or how Kanoko feels about her
Funny how Hime affirming she’s performing her facade here actually comforts Kanoko, and she responds “you’re still the Hime I know!” An affirmation of performance actually assures her that her friend is still the same person – it is the performance that is most “real” to her understanding of Hime
Kanoko is also relieved to learn that Mitsuki actually doesn’t like Hime at all
Hime and Kanoko are then tasked with shadowing their senpais and learning to take orders. Interesting seeing Hime’s reactions here – even though she’s used to performance, her affectation is generally for her own benefit, rather than for the satisfaction of an audience like this
God, so much bonus labor goes into just taking a simple order at this place. What a stressful job!
As expected, Kanoko is better able to express her fondness for Hime within the guise of their Liebe Girls’ Academy characters, and the audience actually loves it
Hime then runs into a new problem: all of their goddamn menu items are in German
Here at Cafe Liebe, Kanoko’s shyness is actually applauded as acting true to a specific character archetype
We get one of those infrequent flourishes of fluid, weighted character acting as Mitsuki drags Hime back to the staff room
The two share a moment of genuine intimacy as Hime thanks Mitsuki for covering her. And then Kanoko marches in, newly disoriented regarding the relationship between the two of them
And Done
Thus things only get worse for our poor Hime, who is now being judged on her performance not just by her customers and coworkers, but also by the one sincere friend who knows her best. Kanoko joining the Cafe Liebe staff means Hime has basically no neutral territory anymore, no part of her life that isn’t mediated in one way or another by the demands of a given audience. And with Kanoko falling so naturally into the timid underclassman archetype, Hime is feeling all the more pressure to live up to this ritualized performance of intimacy. Dazzling the crowd was fun and even liberating when it was an active choice, but now Hime’s every step must meet the approval of a harshly critical audience. When you live to please everyone, what is left of your private self?
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