Oh, umbrellas – you dirty scourge, you.

Once upon a time, the umbrella was a sweet symbol, used sparingly in anime to denote the sweet affections young people often hold for one another. Umbrella scenes either occurred to move character relationships forward, or were imagined in the minds of young men and women pursuing another young man or woman. It was a trope that we could live with, because of how small it was, and of how universal its appeal was – how many of us haven’t imagined such a scene for ourselves?

But no more! That has all, sadly, changed – now the umbrella operates as a harbinger of doom and boredom, particularly for those watching a yuri title.

This isn’t to say that the umbrella cannot be properly utilized within a yuri title – there is certainly a right way to go about it. Yumi’s umbrella operates as a crucial part of the plot of the latter half of Maria-sama ga Miteru~Haru~, and never becomes a point of boredom for the viewer. The umbrella in this case avoids this predicament by not hijacking the plot itself, instead reinforcing the events that are already occurring – namely that Yumi is worn down by Sachiko’s emotional distance, along with Touko’s belligerence, and the disappearance of her umbrella on a rainy day as she shops is merely the last straw for the young woman – this is a situation we can all relate to, where something seemingly minor simply stacks the deck against us too high and we take a fall. This use of the umbrella in the storyline earns a check-plus, and should operate as the standard to which other shows aspire whenever they whip out the umbrellas.

Unfortunately, Marimite is probably the reason we’ve ended up with as many dishwater-dull uses of it in yuri anime since.

For example, Strawberry Panic – if you’ve seen it, you know the umbrella episode. This episode was a mind-numbing affair, with the young ladies spending the entire episode trying to first figure out who lent one of the girls an umbrella, and then to determine who took another of the girls umbrella. There is no plot movement. There is no change in relationships. One character is introduced, but she contributes absolutely nothing ever to the story at all. Instead, we watch a bunch of girls acting out an Encyclopedia Brown-type adventure with none of the charm. Yawn. It’s as if they were so desperate to include the umbrella since it was part of the successful Maria-sama ga Miteru that they figured they could jam it into the storyline however they pleased and still get the same results.

Moving along, we find ourselves at the Candy Boy ONA. This series also features an umbrella episode, with similarly disastrous results as Strawberry Panic – the difference here is that the viewer only had to put up with a scant ten minutes or so of it as opposed to the twenty minutes in SP. Basically, it rains one day, but both the sisters have forgotten their umbrellas, much to the chagrin of the elder, who had been looking forward to sharing an umbrella with her younger sister. They end up having to share with a girl who has a crush on the younger sister after the elder sister scrambles around a bit trying to desperately locate one. It is just as boring as it sounds.

What do these two botched efforts share? They try to use the umbrella as the sole propellant in the plot of the episode in question, when truly the umbrella works best when used as a reinforcer to larger plot structures.

So what can we do to alter this dastardly arc of fate? Go forth and take back the umbrella, by force if necessary! You can save our yuri titles from the mistakes of these titles and others unmentioned, but only if you act now! Banzai!

Edit by Yamcha: Yuri for great justice!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 5:49 pm and is filed under Articles, Rants.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.