If you hang around in Yuri spaces long enough, you’ll discover that an inordinately large amount of early Yuri takes place in private schools for young women from the upper classes. There are several good reasons for this. One, by putting the story in a place or time or status level that is unreachable by the average reader, the story is given an exoticism, and therefore freedom to explore outside the mores of Japanese society. This story happened “over there” and “at that time,” so our rules do not apply.

Also, as James Welker explores in his book Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls‘ Comics Artists and Fans, that exoticimsm adds legitimacy by the connection to high art of the 20th century through cinema, literature and drama. This second piece was a new thought to me, but when James mentioned this in his book lecture at NYU, it opened a whole new field of perspective for me. Of course artists and writers of the Japanese new wave were reaching over towards their literary, artistic and cinematic peers in Europe and America.

This perspective is shockingly relevant for this season’s girl band comedy-drama, Rock Is A Lady’s Modesty, currently streaming on HIDIVE. Especially as I am reading Ada Palmer’s book, Inventing The Renaissance, in which she makes a strong case for “legitimacy” as a kind of currency among the elite.

We are swept up in the life of Suzunomiya Lilisa, a first-year at Oshin Girls’ Academy. She is admired by the students that surround her, for her grace and refinement, bu this is a façade, as Lililsa is a Suzunomiya by marriage and is working on faking her way into legitimacy to make her mother’s life easier. When she finds a guitar pick that was dropped by the equally refined and graceful Kurogane Otoha, Lilisa is sucked back into her previous life of hard rock, competing with Otoha for supremacy in music.

If this story sounds intense, well, it is, but it is also very funny, as both Lilisa and Otoha are vulgar at one another, as they seek to dominate the other in an abandoned music room, drum versus guitar, but the very essence of polite society in other ways. Their Keigo is polished and perfect. We have had discussions here on Okazu about the status of elite families in Japanese entertainment being communicated by the number of syllables in their family name. 3-4 syllables is pretty common. Lilisa’s family is a clearly superior 5-syllable family. When we meet the Student Council President, we are meant to understand that Fujimurasaki Yukari, with her impressive 6-syllable name puts her way above even Lilisa’s family’s elite status. We all had a good laugh about it.

I admit to having been disappointed by some of the music in last year’s girl band stories, but Band-Maid puts down some strong work in that department for this anime. The music is good and hard, which aptly fits the story.  The music scenes are animated with CGI, which not everyone liked, but I think it’s fine here, because, more importantly, what we see them playing is what is being played. That is always important to me, that it’s not just generic wiggling of fingers.

Yuri fans might expect that a story set in an elite private girls’ school might have something of interest, and indeed, there is. Otoha’s behavior towards Lilisa rides a boundary of shameless macking designed to excite the girls around them into absolute tizzys…which is exactly what happens. Lilisa is not above noting how beautiful Otoha is and their first meeting is wrapped in a haze of “fated meeting of one’s eternal partner in front of Maria-sama,” or something similar.

Ratings:

Art – 7 More funny than good, and YMMV on the CGI, but it works
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Service –  Otoha does it all on purpose
Yuri – 4

Overall – 9

With two episodes having aired, I am an enthusiastic fan of the mashup of Class S school vs commoner sensibility, Yuri service and rock and roll that Rock Is A Lady’s Modesty is offering up.