The boxes held within the academy plays on the idea that words are kept valuable and secretive by a tight leash.  Ideals and concepts are contained within individuality–  where language is somewhat being disillusioned on Earth.  Humans rules when a bear has broken through the barrier pays respect to this.  From what we have seen of Kumalia it is suspected its a world untarnished by adult desires.  If I recall we don’t see any adult characters in Lulu’s kingdom.  On the other side of the Severance Wall is a bizarre place where bears consume humans for survival and sexual pleasure.  Prince Mirun and Lulu represent all the innocence needed to get where we are here–  a distorted world that looks for reasons in singling out students that don’t belong.

Ginko had a chance to stop Mitsuko from killing Sumika but she didn’t, she chose out of one simple notion:  jealousy.  For all the bears we’ve seen in this series they seem to show quite a strong affection towards Kureha.  Sumika and Kureha present an innocent love and everyone seems to be after them for feeling this way.  Ginko wants exactly what they shared and I’m glad the writers decided on showing us that Kureha and Ginko knew each other as kids after the fact to tie the bond of true love between the three of them.

Kunihiko Ikuhara doesn’t label the sexuality of this show with a phrase or term throughout the story–  smart move.  With this episode we see the divide that separates man [for the show’s sake–  women] from bears more closely.  Mitsuko is very much dead I like how the inner sanctum of the garden represents a place between life and death.  It’s Ikuhara’s version of Death Parade‘s QuinDecim!  It’s fantastic during that entire scene because Mitsuko embraces her femininity just as every other girl, bear and males have throughout even though she’s lost and Ginko is on the edge of it.

This episode focuses a lot on this point–  Yurika acts as a double-entendre piece in this really well.  Her final meal is out of her animalistic desires to feed her hunger and secondly she wants to indulge literally [this acts as a sexual metaphor: plucking the lily of a girl] in the very person that took Reira away from her.  To Reira, Kureha is her promise kiss, the love she doesn’t want to back down from and Yurika will do anything to remove that idea out of existence.  I like how subtle and easy her death is–  Kureha is saved by her classmates.  The kuma shock sequence shows up again:  red background against a black silhouette provides a fleeting moment of death for Yurika.  The last moment she sees is Kureha looking like Reira.  Really detailed animation!

The flower garden that we’ve seen so prevalent in Yuri Kuma finally peeks its head here as the Door of Friendship.  This resonates to Reira’s storybook about the Moon Girl and Forest Girl having to shoot themselves in the mirror to embrace the love they don’t want to back down from quite well.  The Door of Friendship that is deeply hidden inside the garden alludes to the idea that there is some kind of afterlife for bears.  The intimate moments between Mitsuko and Ginko depict how a bear manipulates another bear/human for their own selfish gains. I’m curious to see how Ginko is going to act after leaving this place of darkness.

I’ve seen this episode twice now and I have to say its great how visually different the garden is from the inside compared to the outside of it.  The garden is beautiful and rays of sunlight shine down portraying how people come together regardless of the Invisible Storm.  The inside is dark, a bed is shown and its all colors of pink and black–  a lot of what we’ve seen from Ikuhara’s previous work in Revolutionary Girl Utena.  This depicts a ton of themes at the surface:  temptation,  twisted friendships and all the sexual desires that come with it.  What a fantastic episode!

What a funny scene where the judges are peeping at the girls embracing each other.  Very candid for Life Sexy to be the one staring at them.  Sex above all else haha!  All of this has been very peculiar.  It happens to be these small details–  comedic or not–  that push the idea of sexual identity into focus.

OVERALL IMPRESSION: 9/10

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