Yasuko Acts Out

If you read (only) the first volume of Sweet Blue Flowers, or if you’ve only watched the anime adaptation, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Yasuko Sugimoto was the most important character other than Fumi Manjome. Although Akira Okudaira is on the cover, through most of the first volume Akira primarily serves as a companion for Fumi, lending her a sympathetic ear and a shoulder to cry on. Fumi’s coming out drives the plot in this volume, and Yasuko is the key driver of that development.

With that in mind, it’s worth thinking about who Yasuko actually is and what she represents. What Yasuko represents is relatively easy to discern: she’s (at least superficially) the Sweet Blue Flowers version of the “girl prince” archetype, whose evolution over the years has been explored by Erica Friedman.¹

The girl prince’s attributes include a somewhat masculine presentation and appearance (Yasuko’s short hair and above-average height), excellence at sports or other pursuits not thought of as traditionally feminine (Yasuko is a star on Matsuoka’s basketball team), a somewhat cool and distant attitude (most pronounced in Yasuko’s relationship with Kyoko Ikumi), and attractiveness to other girls and women (as noted in my previous discussion of the Wuthering Heights production).

As Friedman notes, a classic example of the girl prince is Haruka Tenoh, Sailor Uranus in Sailor Moon, dashing race-car driver and lover of Michiru Kaioh (Sailor Neptune). The archetype is common enough to be parodied, for example, in the character of Yū Kashima in Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun,² or to be critically interrogated, for example, with Utena Tenjoh in Revolutionary Girl Utena.

I believe that the character of Yasuko is an example of the latter. More specifically, Sweet Blue Flowers presents several examples of common yuri tropes and then inverts or critiques them (see, for example, my previous comments on Fumi and Chizu). As far as the students at Matsuoka and Fujigaya are concerned, Yasuko totally has her act together, just like any other proper girl prince.

But it becomes clear from the events of the first volume that Yasuko is as messed-up as any teenaged girl, veering between an emotional breakdown when Mr. Kagami appears at the Wuthering Heights cast party and rebelliousness and feigned bravado during Fumi’s visit to the Sugimoto home (SBF, 1:249–51, 1:306–8). Even her sexual orientation gets questioned (somewhat cruelly) by her sisters: “So you’re a lesbian? … So at the moment, this is who you like? … Then I guess you’re bisexual, huh?” (1:307–8).

At the same time, Yasuko can step back and diagnose her situation and accept some responsibility for herself and her actions toward others. See, for example, her comments toward the elementary school student starring in The Little Prince, in which Yasuko may be comparing herself to Heathcliff: “a troubled man,” prone to “cause other people trouble,” but not exactly a “bad guy” (SBF, 1:225–27).

She also acknowledges to Fumi that “My feelings are a mess … and I took it out on you,” and tells her they should stop seeing each other—although even here it’s not clear at all that Yasuko is entirely forthcoming about the background to all this (SBF, 1:320). It’s Akira, not Fumi, that figures out the connection with Mr. Kagami (1:347).

But, in the end, Yasuko is a failure as a girl prince. Where in another yuri work she might end up as the senior partner in a foregrounded relationship with a junior girl, here she seems to represent a dead end for Fumi. And not just for Fumi either: the end of the volume sees Fumi and Kyoko commiserating with each other over their being “dumped” by Yasuko (SBF, 1:375–76). Whatever part Yasuko is destined to play in the remainder of Sweet Blue Flowers, it will not be that of the prince.