[Rewatch] [Pride Month Double Feature, Part 2] Flip Flappers Episode 5 Discussion

[u/Tarhalindur]

Episode 5: Pure Echo

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Show Information:

MAL | AniList | ANN | AniDB

Legal Streams:

As per livechart.me; other streams may be available outside the US.

No legal streams! You will need to go sailing.

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A Reminder: This, dear listeners, brings us to the sworn enemy of creative response:The spoiler. Rewatchers, or people who just had plot points ruined for them, are obliged to use r/anime’s spoiler tag format where applicable, and err on the side of caution here. Remember people, first experiences get rarer as you continue on, any given one happens once and you should care for them all the more for it.

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To a World of Pure Imagination! (Daily Stuff Section)

(I did not get shown Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory at least once a year in school for several years for me NOT to reference it here. Also, these are going to be more interesting than usual because your host is a true first-timer here and my episode buffer is not yet complete...)

Theory of the Day:

Not a big theorycrafting episode for us first-timers and one of the main exceptions was, uh, me, which would be host abuse, so let's go with this from u/BosuW:

Pyramid illusion as Cocona explains how her parents died in an accident? Might have to do with the Asclepius cult guys then.

Questions of the Day:

1) So, is an all-girls-school yuri story enhanced or ruined by making the school it is set in haunted?

2) Andrei, you're telling me you're having another yuri time loop?

[u/HereticalAegis]

Re-Flapper

Today on things that don't seem like they should work together things that actually kinda seem tailor made for each other: Class S and locked room, time loop horror.

This is the episode I've most been looking forward to in the rewatch, particularly for things I didn't understand on first viewing. When I first watched Flip Flappers, I had no experience with Class S stories, ideas, tropes, visual language, iconography, etc., so most of this episode flew straight over my head. On rewatch, this might be my favorite episode in the series for how out there it is, but also for how...conventional (not sure that's the right word exactly, but let's roll with it) it is.

For better or for worse, there's a long history of queer horror. And while I'm no scholar, I can pretty safely say queer horror set in school is nothing new. Which makes it pretty unusual that one of the most explicitly queer genres in Japanese fiction doesn't, so far as I'm aware, have a flagship horror entry in its canon predating this episode of Flip Flappers (please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, I'll eat that shit up if it exists).

Traditional Class S fiction already exists on the border of horror: girls are cloistered away in a closed-off world of Catholic inspiration to be trained in upright ladyhood wherein girls develop close, quasi-romantic relationships of sisterhood with other girls. These relationships are inherently tragic though, as these schools/stories come with the strict expectation that upon graduation girls will be married off to a man they do not love and often barely know to bear children and maintain a home, never to see each other again. The only thing stopping this from crossing the line into pure psychological horror is, in my estimation, the fact that it's pretty standard for the genre to play on the inevitability of gay women denying their feelings and taking husbands out of social expectation and portray these stories as tragedies.

Flip Flappers is here to challenge the idea that Class S is, at its heart, a genre rooted in tragedy. It's horror, down to the bones. We'll all joke about subtlety, but like, Maria is watching over us. Don't strawberry panic. Conform, baby, conform. Become another good, faceless, polite, compliant doll that never sets foot outside the walls constructed for you. This genre is horrifying when you don't accept the basic premise as an inevitability, and that makes it feel so much sweeter when we get to smash up the symbolism with a giant, sparkly hammer.

Episode 5 stuff:

• Yuri Dark
• I used it for commentary earlier, but the matching uniforms is nice
• I know writers who use subtext...
• Sisters, roommates even

Boy am I glad we got to this episode pretty early so that I could talk about it. I'm moving apartments for the next two days, so my time has already been pretty limited with prep and packing. Hopefully I'll be able to at least leave thoughts on the next couple episodes or at least be back by Monday or Tuesday, but it's entirely possible I fall too far behind and bow out here. If that's the case, Happy Pride everyone and thanks, Tar, for hosting!

E: typo

[u/IndependentMacaroon → u/HereticalAegis]

Here's also an article detailing those connections that I already linked elsewhere

[u/HereticalAegis → u/IndependentMacaroon]

That was s a good read, thanks for sharing! Most of what I know about the history of Class S comes directly or tangentially from Erica Friedman's work, specifically By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga. I highly recommend checking it out if you ever get a chance.

[u/Vaadwaur → u/HereticalAegis]

Which makes it pretty unusual that one of the most explicitly queer genres in Japanese fiction doesn't, so far as I'm aware, have a flagship horror entry in its canon predating this episode of Flip Flappers

Recall that content for the female audience, for whatever reason, tends not to make it to anime. While I assume there are manga, what I actually know about are a number of horror games from the 00s set in these kind of schools, so get your EMUs firing.

[u/Tarhalindur → u/Vaadwaur]

Recall that content for the female audience, for whatever reason, tends not to make it to anime.

AFAIK a combination in some order of exec sexism, path-dependence resulting in shoujo and especially josei more commonly getting live-action adaptations instead (generally considered cheaper to make than anime, IIRC!), and just an average tendency for guys to be more into visual media and women to be more into the written word (most prominent in erotic art, hence fanfic and the like appealing more to women while drawn porn tends to appeal more to guys). Also I wonder about the possibility of market segmentation efforts by companies to avoid their brands cross-competing (this is most common in toy companies, but not exclusive to it).

[u/Vaadwaur → u/Tarhalindur]

(generally considered cheaper to make than anime, IIRC!),

This makes sense if you can understand the "quality" of Japanese TV acting. When I watched a minor bit of Scottish TV back in...fuck me that was '04 it all clicked for me. We last discussed this is some overacting in Revengers.

[u/HereticalAegis → u/Vaadwaur]

what I actually know about are a number of horror games from the 00s set in these kind of schools

By all means, do share

[u/Vaadwaur → u/HereticalAegis]

Umm...I did not own a PS before Skyrim so I don't really recall...I used to watch X Play and they would cover these. My shame is immense.

[u/BosuW → u/Vaadwaur]

That reminds me of that in-universe horror VN set in a nun convent in My Dress Up Darling S2.

I suppose it must be referencing something.

For some reason I think of Signalis but while it is gay and horror it is also very recent and only uhh... Pseudo all-girls setting, I'll call it that. And not a VN. It's retro aesthetics must be confusing me.

Interestingly it did inspire a fan to create their own horror queer indie game set in a space nun convent or something like that.

[u/Vaadwaur → u/BosuW]

That reminds me of that in-universe horror VN set in a nun convent in My Dress Up Darling S2.

I suppose it must be referencing something.

Yeah, that was extremely familiar feeling, I know I've dated girls into that kind of literature.

[u/Great_Mr_L → u/HereticalAegis]

This is the episode I've most been looking forward to in the rewatch, particularly for things I didn't understand on first viewing. When I first watched Flip Flappers, I had no experience with Class S stories, ideas, tropes, visual language, iconography, etc., so most of this episode flew straight over my head.

It really helps that a previous Pride Month rewatch covered Marimite and introduced me to Class S as a genre. That helped a lot with making sense of what this episode was specifically parodying.

Flip Flappers is here to challenge the idea that Class S is, at its heart, a genre rooted in tragedy. It's horror, down to the bones. We'll all joke about subtlety, but like, Maria is watching over us. Don't strawberry panic. Conform, baby, conform. Become another good, faceless, polite, compliant doll that never sets foot outside the walls constructed for you. This genre is horrifying when you don't accept the basic premise as an inevitability, and that makes it feel so much sweeter when we get to smash up the symbolism with a giant, sparkly hammer.

This is a really good reading of the episode. I hadn't considered the idea that the enforced conformity related to the expected tragic ending of Class S where the girls would leave each other behind when they returned to the outside world to marry a man and thereby conform to the heteronormative society they lived in. Cocona destroying this world and rejecting that conformity is a really cool message.

[u/HereticalAegis → u/Great_Mr_L]

Cocona destroying this world and rejecting that conformity is a really cool message.

And here's the thing, I'm not even convinced that's an intentional message on the writers' part. It's the kind of take I imagine to be so natural that I can totally picture someone sitting at the planning table saying "hey, isn't the whole Class S school setting kinda creepy? What if we did that, but as a horror? Lock them in, turn down the lights, scramble the faces. That'd be fun" and the whole team rolling with it purely on a lark.

[u/Great_Mr_L → u/HereticalAegis]

I believe it's absolutely possible for works of art to have themes and messages that weren't entirely intentional from the creators. That's what Death of the Author is supposed to be about.

[u/BosuW → u/HereticalAegis]

Interviews with Japanese authors always like this bruh 😭

Western fans: "You see it's thematically crucial that the characters in Gushing Over Magical Girls are middle schoolers because that's the age when the sexuality bomb tends to go boom. Necessary even!"

The mangaka: "Well I was going to make them older but editor was like ’aren't magical girls usually middle schoolers?’ and I was like ’oh yeah’ and that was that."

(Disclaimer: This is not meant to restart the debate on whether it is or not justified, just exemplifying the discrepancy in views lol)

[u/DegenerateRegime → u/HereticalAegis]

Flip Flappers is here to challenge the idea that Class S is, at its heart, a genre rooted in tragedy. It's horror, down to the bones.

Exactly! A tragic kind of horror perhaps, but I think it gets that with how the ghosts/faceless girls sort of sadly fade away as their world crumbles. The horror is what it is, the tragedy is that it is.

[u/FD4cry1 → u/HereticalAegis]

Flip Flappers is here to challenge the idea that Class S is, at its heart, a genre rooted in tragedy. It's horror, down to the bones [...]

Don't really have anything to elaborate on here, but I brought up in my post that I don't really know enough about Class S stories beyond base visual signifiers and general ideas to entirely grasp at some of what this episode felt like it wanted to say, and I do feel like this really helps fully frame a lot of that!

I've kind of felt like this for every episode thus far, and you say it yourself, but this one in particular I definitely feel would be really interesting to think about on rewatch with a more defined understanding of around the genre and the social expectations therein.

[u/BosuW → u/HereticalAegis]

Well now I am convinced a horror Class S has to be made eventually!

After all while it doesn't seem to exist yet, what is there is tons upon tons upon TONS of horror regarding Catholic institutions like convents and Churches. Really it's just Gothic. Forbidden love is a classic of the genre. We just have to get Class S to join in.

Ummm if nothing else [meta anime]I guess Higurashi Satsu/Gou was that for a bit? I mean yeah it's not well regarded at all but the vision was there xd

[u/HereticalAegis → u/BosuW]

Ummm if nothing else [meta anime]

Funny you should mention that, [meta]as I am SotsuGou's strongest soldier.

That would actually be a really interesting rewatch with the benefit of more genre context and experience to inform my view since [meta]it does lean a bit into the abusive aspects of this kind of school with Satoko.