Yurikuma Arashi – What’s Up with the Bee in Episode 04?

Wow, what an episode! Because the previous three episodes had established so many of the ideas, concepts, themes, metaphors, and symbols, this episode was able to take all of those things and, by presenting many of them in a very different way and in a very different context, shed some light on where the show is going with all of this in a broader sense. I’m sure it will still be about lesbians, sexuality, and how those things are treated and viewed in society, but this episode brought to the fore some of the more subtle ideas about how we view each other and how society affects those views that have popped up here and there in the previous episodes.

Even though I have to cover many of the more general ideas and themes in the episode in order for the more specific ones to be fully coherent and understandable, since this piece is only about those things, I’m not going to talk much at all about the other parts of the episode. There are some excellent rundowns of the episode as a whole (and of the previous episodes) that you can find on Wrong Every Time (much thanks to Bobduh for prompting me to write this!; there’s also some great stuff in the comments on his articles) and on Gabriella Ekens’s review for Anime News Network.

As this is an analysis, it will not be spoiler-free.