Continuing down the path Medievalotaku-senpai got me started on, I provide you with a translation of a part of the Ayana Yuniko interview published in the Eureka, poetry and criticism magazine issue devoted to yuri works and culture. As a scriptwriter, Ayana-san was involved with the production of Kiniro Mosaic, Natsuiro Kiseki, Rokodoru Yatte Mita and Aoi Hana anime series. She is also the writer behind the long-running Found a Little Yuri (Chiisai Yuri Miitsuketa) corner published in Newtype (and now collected and published in book format, the cover of which is featured above).
Ayana-san has been one of the go-to people for yuri content in recent years, and it is interesting to see how her thoughts on the genre changed over time.
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Interviewer: Now I’d like to hear your thoughts on yuri. It might not be the most elegant question, but if you were to state your personal definition of yuri, what would it be?
Ayana Yuniko: Now that’s a difficult question (laughs). Sometimes it’s a direct extension of friendship, sometimes the boundary is more vague. I think recently I’ve become more accepting… Or maybe I’ve just grown up enough to gain some perspective. I’ve come to think that “if there are two girls together, it probably counts as yuri”. When I was around high school age, I had a strict set of rules for the genre and would discard anything that didn’t fit, like: “yuri should be defined as follows…”, “Aoi Hana is the pinnacle of yuri, nothing else even counts!” and all.
I: You were a yuri fundamentalist, so to speak.
Ayana: Exactly. Like Kamakura and the other Yuri Danshi characters, I would scream: “That’s unacceptable!”, and I was ready to fight for what I thought, too. But I’ve come to think that whether the girls at the center of it all are aware of it or not, if everyone around thinks it’s yuri, then so it is. An irresponsible approach though that is (laughs).
I: Was there any particular reason for you taking a more relaxed approach?
Ayana: If I were to point to a particular reason, I guess it would be Yuru Yuri; the manga came out, the number of yuri fans increased and I found myself feeling grateful about it. After that, I suppose I was able to accept everything; I saw that it was one way to get to know the genre. At around the same time, I had the opportunity to work on Kiniro Mosaic, and part of me found it weird the work could be considered yuri, but another part of me said “oh well, there’s nothing wrong with that either.”
I: “If it works for you, you can call it yuri.”?
Ayana: Yes. There were parts of it that made my yuri spirit burn, after all (laugh). Now that the work is all over, I can say this openly, but when I was working on Locodol, writing some parts of it helped me release the frustration pent-up from Kiniro Mosaic. Writing Kiniro Mosaic, I could only use the purest parts of myself lest I defile the beauty of the work, and it wasn’t easy. So when the time came to work on Locodol, only the dirty me was left. For that reason, the yuri intensity degree of the work became relatively high. Nevertheless, my intention when writing the script was to include enough humor to make the yuri ambiguous. But the execution of the finished product was going in the real deal direction. I saw it and thought, “Can’t make excuses for that…” (laughs).
I: By the way, what was the idea behind making the final episode of Kiniro Mosaic into a musical?
Ayana: When we decided that the final episode would include the characters producing their own work, the director told me “Well then, let’s make that part into a musical.” I myself was surprised at the content, but I thought it would be a waste not to do something we normally couldn’t in the main story episodes. Because the characters are acting out a musical and not themselves, it was fine for Aya and Youko to become a mermaid princess and a prince in a romantic relationship.
Yaranakya 