gildedstage

Yukuri is likely the most mysterious Ikizuraibu character outside of Shion, which is signifcant considering that Shion has mystery as an explicit part of her appeal as a character. While the other characters work towards their dreams, Yukuri seems to have given up on chasing hers. Despite her deceptively calm exterior, Yukuri has a great emotional depth that has been held back by a tragedy shrouded in mystery. Yukuri has different facets worth analyzing, but this post will start with the mystery surrounding her changing mentality towards her dream of becoming an otokoyaku actor in the Takarazuka Revue after her illness.

Since she began posting on April 2nd, Yukuri has revealed her backstory in pieces. I have attempted to create a timeline, but it may be inaccurate since there is no explicit dating.

Yukuri’s Influential Life Events:
- During her childhood, she saw a theater performance for the first time after she was invited by a relative and fell in love with it (Posted May 8th, 2025).
- She reminisced about the first time she saw the Takarazuka Revue with her “still small little sister.” At the time, her sister was obedient and quiet due to “being in a hospital environment.” However, that day she grinned with her full face and danced rowdily. Yukuri considered this her “starting point,” as she “wanted to give her more and more” (Posted July 15th, 2025).
- After Yukuri became obsessed, she went from theater to theater and found “that” troupe. She saw it alongside her little sister and the two of them were so moved that they acted it out together. Yukuri was so excited by it that she could barely use her chopsticks at dinner or sleep that night. She declared it was her “koi” (romantic love) (Posted July 1st, 2025).
- After Yukuri began ballet, her “small little sister” always took a deep interest in her leotard and pointe shoes and tried to copy her (August 19th, 2025).
- An unknown amount of time passed and Yukuri had to cut down on her theater activities due to an illness. She already had her “last appointment” by April 2nd (Posted April 2nd, 2025).
- Sometime between May 16th to May 18th, Yukuri met Polka at the Sanja Matsuri (Posted May 23rd, 2025).

These backstory posts give useful insight into Yukuri’s motivations for wanting to become an otokoyaku actor. Though she was passionate about theater since her first viewing, it was her sister’s uncharacteristically gleeful reaction that pushed Yukuri to pursue it as her dream. While this can explain why Yukuri was later able to easily shift perspectives when she found another medium that can bring happiness to others, it still raises some questions.

The reference to a “hospital environment” is worded so awkwardly that it seems intentionally vague. It’s hard to believe that it’s meant to imply Yukuri was the one hospitalized, considering she would still go on to pursue intense training in dancing and singing afterwards with little room for breaks. If it does refer to Yukuri, that could mean that she has a long-term condition that later worsened and stopped her activities. Her calm exterior could then come from acceptance over the years.

However, there is interestingly no mention of Yukuri’s little sister or their relationship in the current day, only reflections on their past together. 4 out of 5 Tweets mentioning her always refer to her using phrasing such as “my still small little sister” or “when my little sister was still small” (and the one that doesn’t is still explicitly set in the past). Considering her importance to Yukuri as a character, it seems strange that her present day little sister doesn’t impact her, only memories of the past.

It’s especially strange with the knowledge that Yukuri’s little sister also had a strong interest in ballet and loved to act with and copy her older sister (July 1st and August 19th posts). How did Yukuri’s illness impact their relationship? Is her sister also still passionate about ballet, or is it just a distant childhood memory for her? Perhaps it will be explored further in the serialization.

After Yukuri’s illness, her view of her shared dream with her sister and her situation as a whole shifted in unexpected ways.

Yukuri’s Changing View of Her Situation:
- Yukuri decided she wouldn’t lament what can’t be recovered, so she decided to see a theater production for the first time in a while (April 2nd, 2025).
- She had no idea what to strive for now, but she unexpectedly found it a bit fun not to know (April 8th, 2025).
- Her instructor told her it’s too early to give up on her dream even after they heard her report from her last appointment, but Yukuri privately disagreed and thought it would be “difficult.” Despite her contentment with the way things are, she still yearned for the stage and decided to practice (April 23rd, 2025).
- She mentioned that she “might not be able to aim for stardom anymore,” but she still loves it. She believes a star is someone who shines on their own, but she wonders if she can still become one if she gathers “small stars” together into a larger whole. She asks if it’s okay to think like that (May 8th, 2025).
- “Black tailcoats really are the greatest 🎩✨ I keep remembering yesterday and am left with nothing but sighs for today…” (May 16th, 2025)
- “Even if your steps are small or if you take a step back at times, 🌧️ all you can do is free your mind and continue to walk toward your dream without giving up. I’ll be swept along towards what I yearn for.” Yukuri thought she lost her dream, but now she wondered if it simply changed shape. She thinks receiving and giving smiles is what unites theater and school idol activities (May 30th, 2025).
- She realized that she enjoys “the dance that springs out while dancing with my companions” possibly even more than the “the dance I dreamed and yearned for over that shining silver bridge*” (June 20th, 2025). *Common name for the apron stage of the Takarazuka Revue.
- When she compared seeing “that” troupe with her little sister to her “koi” (romantic love), she also compared her new school idol activities to “ai” (love) (July 1st, 2025).
- For Tanabata, Yukuri wished for Ikizuraibu’s activities to spread across Japan. She believes that in April, she would have wished for a world without illness (July 7th, 2025).
- After she assisted young ballerinas at a dance school, it reminded Yukuri of her sister again and she said “after all, I want to become someone who dances in order to bring smiles to people” (August 19th, 2025).

It may seem contradictory for Yukuri to insist that she is satisfied with the way things are now, even as she regularly continues to yearn for and reminisce about the stage of her dreams. The clue to understanding Yukuri’s mentality could potentially be found in one of her posts on May 30th, 2025. She uses the word “無心,” which is defined as “a mind free of obstructive thoughts” or “detachment” and is closely associated with Zen Buddhism.

Despite the depth and strength of emotion Yukuri exhibits in her posts and videos, Yukuri is still not controlled by her emotions in the same way a character like Shion is, because she does not allow herself to avoid them. Just as she will allow her exhilaration and sentimentality to pass through her in a sudden outpour of Romantic musings or sudden dance (after meeting Polka), Yukuri will also let her regret and yearning pass through her as she continues to take steps towards the next chapter of her life. Though the exact reason is still unclear to the audience, Yukuri believes her dream is over and therefore even her yearning for the stage does not alter her course of action, as deeply as she feels about it.

Yukuri’s solo song, which is tied into her July 15th, 2025 posts about her sister’s joy being the starting point for her dream, also gives great insight into her mentality. The song itself is full of grief and longing for something or someone that is no longer with her.

The speaker is the one left with “crying” and “silent tears,” while the “you” the song is directed at appears to be missing. There are many signs that point to this: “If only I could freeze time in the season you were there,” “wherever you are,” “you fade into the distance,” “alone by the window,” “believing that you’re smiling on me helps me carry on,” and “clinging with nothing to grasp.”

The song invoking Orpheus when the meeting between the speaker and that missing person is explicitly temporary (“I’ll cast the spell so stay with me for just a little while” and “until dawn arrives… stay here with me”) feels especially on the nose when the song ends with the speaker themself casting the spell that will bring dawn (look back) and therefore end their meeting (sent back to the Underworld). The song ends with the speaker deciding to “set off for anywhere” now that they have no dream to follow.

The September Love Live Days issue also touched on this a bit more in the commentary for Yukuri’s solo song: “Don't the opera style lyrics filled with grand tragedy and mourning show the worries the always calm Yukuri is carrying inside? A profound meaning can be sensed in the appearance of the name Orpheus, who descended to Hades.”

It’s unclear where Yukuri’s arc will head in the future. In a project centered around the characters’ lifelong ambitions and the theme of continuing after failure, it makes sense from a narrative perspective to have a character that had to give up their dream due to outside circumstances. In that interpretation, it seems likely that Yukuri could move on from her dream, but bring the parts of it she learned from and loved to her new pursuits. If that is the case, the main question is what her new lifelong dream will be, since her dream in her introduction was still listed as “otokoyaku actor,” even after she came to believe her dream had ended. Perhaps like Shion and Polka, she will work towards finding a dream as she “raises this shared dream” with Ikizuraibu.

However, given current knowledge, it also doesn’t seem like the door to her dream has been completely shut off to her yet. From her conversation with her teacher who told her it was too early to quit on the 23rd, it seems like it’s not just a question of physical ability, but also mental. For now, this is all speculation, but it doesn’t seem like her character can be resolved until the tragedy she is privately carrying is brought out into the open at last.

My next meta post on Yukuri will be centered around her relationship with Polka, specifically Polka’s parallels with her young sister (from the similar way Yukuri refers to them to even having a dream bestowed on her by both of them).

This was intended to be scattered thoughts about Blue Bird, but the Shion Sasaki portion overwhelmed the rest of it.

To be honest, I really made this post to talk about her in the first place. I am really enjoying the mystery they’ve set up around her. Let’s analyze what we know about her so far :D. The girls post batches of Tweets at a time, mostly a minute apart. The majority of Shion’s Tweets were posted on Mondays (which she has a contentious relationship with) and she is one of the two girls who consistently posts during early morning.

Her batches follow a similar pattern of avoidance. She’ll introduce an emotion or situation she’s struggling with, then end with what she’ll do to avoid it:

- April 14th (Monday): She struggled with conflicting emotions of whether to go to school or not, but finally quieted those emotions by swearing to study instead. She also streamed this day.
- April 21st (Monday): She felt stressed about the deadlines she kept putting off, but distracted herself by talking about her dream of dancing in knee-high socks and a pleated skirt.
- April 28th (Monday): When the atmosphere in her home and with her parents became suffocating, she acknowledged for a moment that it can’t stay like this forever but then immediately changed topics to a stream where she will coordinate her new uniform.
- May 10th: After she fought with her parents, she talked about how her noise-cancelling headphones have helped her carve out a space for herself at nighttime and that she’ll be okay since she has her viewers.
- May 21st: Shion saw a video (presumably the video with dancing that Yukuri and Aurora also saw) that made her feel frustrated (“unfair”). She explicitly said this time that she’ll pretend she didn’t see it. I think it’s important that she brought back and expanded on the weather symbolism in this Tweet, as it shows the video’s impact on her mental state.

When Shion mentions not going to school, she uses “rain” as her reason, but there is reason to believe this is not meant to be taken literally:

- April 14th: Her first ever Tweet used “rain” as her reason not to go to school.
- May 12th: Her introduction video mentioned “rain” as her reason again, even after she said she rarely goes to school anymore to begin with a moment before. This, combined with her Tweet on the 21st, makes it more likely that the rain isn’t literal.
- May 21st: After Shion saw the video that made her uncomfortable, she wondered whether tomorrow would be sunny. She said that even if it was sunny, she’d still skip school. This makes it more likely that the rain is about her mental state and not her physical environment.

There are other fun associations in her Tweets so far, mainly the divide between morning/night and Internet/reality:

- April 14th: Shion believes that the people she talks to online know the real her better than people in real life who have seen her face.
- Despite her difficult relationships in the real world, she seems to love and feel loved by her viewers. Every Tweet thanking them for watching ends with “I love you, you know 🩷” and in her introduction video she became sentimental about the phrase “next opportunity,” because it means “they’ll be able to meet again.”
- May 10th: Night is “her time” and she wished morning would never come, but for the sake of others contents herself with sleeping through it.
- April 21st: Monday morning is specifically the hardest for her. By then, she already feels a bit free from her burden after the weekend, but then Monday and her responsibilities come crashing down on her.

Though this much can be gleaned from her few Tweets and only video so far, there is one thing conspicuously absent. In a branch as focused on individual dreams as Blue Bird, Shion having no dream in her introduction video stands out. Even Polka, who doesn’t have a dream yet and hopes to find one at L High, still has that listed as her dream in her introduction video.

It seems unlikely that Shion doesn’t have a dream, but instead is avoiding it in the pattern established in her Tweets. There are a few potential avenues for speculation on her dream from the information currently available: fashion, streaming, dancing, and music.

In one of her April 21st Tweets, she mentioned a “dream” of dancing in knee-high socks and a pleated skirt. Styling a school uniform was also mentioned an April 18th Tweet and her livestream. However, it seems significant that live-streaming was mentioned only as a hobby, among puzzles and plastic models, and fashion was not mentioned at all. It’s also notable that her interest in fashion is so limited in scope and only centered around a school uniform. It seems more likely that it’s fulfilling an unmet need for her to be accepted as she is, rather than her actual life’s ambition to wear these clothes.

Dancing has only been mentioned twice and potentially implied once, but that’s still a lot for Shion. Both explicit mentions of dancing were only in the context of wearing the knee-high socks and skirt. The potential mention comes from the video Yukuri, Shion, and Aurora (individually) saw the week of May 19th. Yukuri was notably impressed by the high school girl’s dancing ability even as someone involved in ballet and theater as she is. If Shion’s dream is to dance, then it makes sense why she reacted negatively to another high school girl accomplishing what she wants (“unfair”). It seems unlikely since Yukuri covers a similar niche, but it’s possible.

Music is another possibility that opened up from her introduction video, which lists Shion’s special skills as piano and violin. Since the group lacks a composer, it would make sense if she is the girl aiming to be a musician. It also seems potentially significant that the teaser song has piano and strings as the instruments. Also, It’s hard to imagine Shion keeping up with the regular practice required for piano and violin in her current state, but it would make sense if she were avoiding it if if was related to her dream in some way.

For now, I’ll just have to be patient for more information.

Thanks for reading!
大好きだよ❤️