The early summer season of anime has been lame in general, with only a few exceptions, and absolutely *abysmal* as far as Yuri goes.

As I see it, there are exactly two anime with anything approaching real Yuri, and of those I find one so repulsive I simply cannot bring myself to discuss it with any semblance of objectivity. (I will leave it for a later vitriolic rant.) Which leaves us with Gokujou Seitokai.

Thankfully, Gokujou Seitokai is a lot of fun, as well as having at least a little meat for the yuri fan to chew on.

The plot, to quote several wise people, is “about girls at a girls school with girls.” I think that sums it up nicely, myself. ^_^

Miyagami Gakuen is yet another exclusive all-girl elevator school – only there is nothing like 1920’s comportment here! Instead we have a special super highest power student council that runs the school, with a covert operations squad complete with ninja, an assault squad complete with serious heavy-duty nuclear weaponry…and of course, pretty girls.

In the beginning we meet space cadet Randou Rino, a young lady with a deficient frontal lobe and a bizarre, trash-talking puppet attached to her hand. Randou has been sent to this school by the mysterious Mr. Poppet, a penpal of some kind. Of course she ends up joining the Gokujou Seitokai, which is run by the head of the school, the lovely and gentle and a little cracked, Jinguuji Kanade. Kanade is the idol of the school, so there’s a lot of jealousy when she begins to favor Rino. (We eventually learn that there is some connection between Rinou and Kanade, but by episode 14, we have not learned the exact nature of this connection. All we know is that Kanade is definitely, consciously acting as surrogate mother/big sister for orphaned Rino.)

We also learn that the puppet, Pu-chan, is not at ALL what he seems. The obvious gag about Pu-chan being Rino’s alter ego is just…wrong. Let’s put it this way – in the big curry battle episode, we learn that in the past, Pu-chan had an affair with an Indian woman. Not your average puppet, trust me.

So…yuri?

In the beginning there is a really funny episode about rumors of Rino and Kanade having some kind of affair. “Paya-paya” was not in any of the the slang onomotopeia books or lists that I could find before this episode, but I bet it’s in them now. ^_^

Look! I just found this on the Urban Dictionary:
payapaya
Japanese slang for some kind of interpersonal contact, possibly sex. Popularized (to north american anime fans) in Gokujou Seitokai episode 3.
“The president was seen in Rino’s room, they were doing payapaya!”

See?

For me the least likely, yet most interesting, yuri couple would have to be the two Vice Presidents of the Gokujou Seitokai, Nanaho (Assault) and Kuon (Covert.) Really, there’s NO sign of anything between them. I’m making it up, pretty much. But they’d make a great couple and I have Kato/Inspector Clouseau-like scenes of bedroom assault in my head between the two of them that I simply cannot rid myself of. ^_^

We are introduced to an exceptionally strong shinyuu/intense friendship between Rein and Sayuri, which is easy enough to see as something more. It wouldn’t be a stretch to call them a couple.

And plenty of folks have interpreted Nanaho’s feverish devotion to Kanade as love, which it certainly is. I’m not sure it’s desire, but I’ll leave that question to the philosophers.

The one genuine full-blown babydyke character is Izumi Kaori. In the beginning we are led to believe that she is the typical obnoxious overachieving ojou-sama, but pretty quickly we learn that she’s nothing of the sort. In fact, she’s probably the most well-developed character so far and has turned out to be quite intelligent and admirable. Her overt crush on Kanade apparently stems from Kanade’s kindness and generosity in Kaori’s past, but when we get scenes of Kaori imagining herself and Kanade “doing things that she doesn’t know about because she’s a pure maiden” it kind of blows the purity bit right off. ;-) So she’s probably the only “real” lesbian in the bunch.

Ratings:
Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 6

Overall – 7

Lots of fun, good as brain candy, Gokujou Seitokai is a pleasant, but seriously unserious addition to the yuri collection. It has been licensed by ADV and is being released as Best Student Council.