[Februaryuri 2025] Simoun

15 Feb, 2025

(base post on Februaryuri 2025 here!)

Simoun (2006)

by studio DEEN, directed and written by Junji Nishimura

26 episodes

Summary

On the planet Daikuuriku, humans all develop sexual characteristics usually viewed as female, and are all considered girls.

In the nation of Simulacrum, all of them, at the age of 17, have to make a choice between transitioning to sexual characteristics usually viewed as male and being considered a man, or keeping them as is and being considered a woman. This decision happens through a ceremony at a holy Spring, and it is considered the gateway to adulthood.

There is, however, something only people who are still girls, people who never entered the Spring, can do: piloting a Simoun.
Simoun are strange airships the nation of Simulacrum uses without understanding their functioning in full, as they are deemed sacred and linked to the nation's god, Tempus Spatium. A Simoun can only be piloted by a pair of girls, who must kiss to activate it - a ritual act, most of the time not particularly loaded.

Simoun can leave traces behind them and are used to draw intricate patterns, known as Ri Maajon, in the sky. Various Ri Maajon exist, some needing multiple Simoun to be drawn, and Simoun pilot are traditionally tasked to draw them as prayers to Tempus Spatium during ceremonies. Girls who get to pilot a Simoun are called Sybillae (singular Sybilla), and they are split into various groups called Chor.
Not all girls get to be Sybillae. Sybillae are highly revered priestesses to Simulacrum inhabitants, and their position sacred and hard to attain.

Well... All this is how it used to be, at least.
Recently, neighboring countries of the Argentum Archipelago and the Plumbum Highlands have been at war with Simulacrum, and the coveted Simoun are at the heart of this war: not only do they possess more aerial manoeuvrability than any other flying ship, but... some of their Ri Maajon have literal destructive power, too.

Soon, Sybillae become not just priestesses, but soldiers. Girls from less noble or influential lines are sought out to become Sybillae, and the usual rule to go to the Spring at 17 is even revoked if a pilot wants to stay longer: the nation needs more of them than ever.
All the Chor are tasked more and more dangerous missions near the frontlines, drawing destructive Ri Maajon all the time, and...

... And Simoun follows Chor Tempest, as it loses and gains members, as its girls struggle between trauma and interpersonal problems, throughout this war.

Comment

Simoun is really niche, and I like it the way I like some old, strange, obscure sci-fi books: because there is something very special to their premise and aesthetic, and they capture something you can't quite find anywhere else, and they have rich worldbuilding and a large cast; but also knowing that I will have to grind my teeth through a bunch of problems. Still, in the end the journey will have meant something and been oddly interesting, in spite of the hurtful parts.

What I need to say first is that Simoun is not what its summary may evoke to people. My own attempt here makes it feel like a pretext to have girls kissing. And, you know, to some extent it's true, but it's not made or framed in a voyeuristic way. It's just there, very matter-of-factly. The characters also get to talk about maybe kissing outside of the context of powering a Simoun, and some end up doing so and being really gay, and that's cool.
As a whole, the series has a few skimpy outfits and questionable framings, but it remains very occasional. Its illustrations that divide an episode in half for ad breaks are honestly the most pronounced source of egregious elements regarding the sexualization of its characters, along with some of the promotional material of the show. Still, within the series itself, I would say that Simoun almost always treats its characters decently on that front¹.

It's also not as much a war series as its summary implies. Oh, it is about war, and some of the trauma of it; but it's not as violent, and not as fast-paced, as many people may be used to nowadays. A lot of Simoun's runtime is spent mulling or talking or solving interpersonal drama aboard a larger ship until the next assignment. And it's really, surprisingly slow - there's almost some kind of introspective quality to it (even if we don't get to access the inner thoughts of the characters, making them occasionally hard to read).

Simoun is one-of-a-kind. It has a very 2006 aesthetic, featuring some decent 3D airship models; and it also has its own specific design of ships and outfits and symbols, with dedicated vocabulary and concepts. All this makes for a unique atmosphere of sci-fi yuri, made at a time where genre fiction yuri was very scarce. It does its own thing, and I'm quite fond of that.

This is also true story-wise. Simoun is far enough from common sci-fi and yuri references that a lot of its development feels hard to predict. A given episode can be just as much a one-time skirmish with the enemy, a downtime sifting through trauma, a big character/pairing moment, or some actual lore reveal - or a bit of all this, with no rush.

Similarly, the series manages a big cast of more than 15 characters(!!), and though a lot of them sit squarely within one kind of archetype, they all get to exist and go through stuff in ways fuller than a one-note trope. Sadly, that's not to say that Simoun manages all of them well: I think one could fill an entire tier list with these characters, from the excellent to the horrendous, from the meh to the "it's complicated".
But it tries.

On a large scale, Simoun depicts characters going through the traumas of war and grief, and the strange sanctification of their position.
Some are torn between a religious view of their task, and a more political and military one, and suffer pressure from representatives of both - most notably Chor Tempest's leader Neviril, who bears the brunt of it along with heavily dealing with loss. Some are hesitant about going to the Spring, either because it feels like betraying their lost comrades by running away from the conflict, like Yun; or because the choice imposed upon them feels impossible, and they would rather keep the freedom of piloting a Simoun, like Aaeru. Some, like Morinas, Limone or Dominura, are in different ways fascinated by the Simoun themselves, or some particular legendary Ri Maajon with strange powers they could perform with them.
Most of them are seeking, one way or another, what it means to them to be a Sybilla.

On a small scale, some characters are clearly more often in the spotlight than others; but most of them have at least one moment of brilliance, be it in pairs, by themselves, or through small moments of friendship and community - I mean, the series also has something of vibing together in shared dorms and lunch rooms, embodied by some characters with less pronounced arcs like Floe.
Still, some characters or pairings shine throughout the series; this is notably the case of the duo with the biggest focus, Neviril and Aaeru - the latter helping the former break off her grief and her exemplary girl role through unabated straightforwardness and a lack of social filter, and the former supporting the latter through her lowest points. Others include for instance Rodoreamon and Mamiina, who heal a long-lasting relationship from a social gap one of them used to be painfully unaware of; or Yun, who has an arc on staying and fighting for the ones who died that kinda goes in its own direction.

I also really appreciate the feeling of a united ensemble cast the series tries to create - of people slowly learning to support and help each other through difficult times. At some point, you get used to how each character works, and it gets really funny to see their small everyday interactions, the calm moments of squabbles and teasing and fun; just as much as it is fascinating to witness their big moments of tension.
As an addition, between some clear feelings for each other and the whole Spring choice that awaits them, there's definitely something kinda queer at play for most of them. This also includes two older ship captains who are both men, somewhat supervise the Sybillae, and who definitely have something going on between them.

Still, I feel the need to extensively address one hurtful element of the series which impacted my recent rewatch and deserves several paragraphs to carry actual nuance about it.
Simoun has three scenes of sexual assaults or threat of it between members of its cast. By themselves, these are uncomfortable moments, but they are not particularly written for shock value - they are meant to represent some epitomization of toxic possessivity and dependency a character moves away from later on. Alas, they are in my opinion all badly handled as topics - precisely because they are less topics than representations of this idea.
Simoun frames them as hurtful and notable events, and does not make exactly as if they never happened, but still: in each case, the victim herself asks not to talk about this again, and the abuser never apologizes. Later, the abuser has changed her ways through oblique conversations about moving on from a harmful mindset, and is seemingly forgiven, and that's it.

It's a shame, because as I said before the end of Simoun tries to create a feeling of community around being Sybillae together, and this exact way of under-addressing and forgiving its cases of assault weakens this message - and it makes me feel consistently wary around some characters that have otherwise really interesting arcs.
Mamiina, for instance, is a character coming from a lower class, starting off angry and desperate for social recognition as a Sybilla, and constantly getting reminded of that gap with the rest of the cast. I really like most of her character arc; but to have her initially half-threaten Chor leader Neviril of assault to try and be her prized piloting pair, even with the latter unflinching against that threat and it being disarmed quickly, feels way too hurtful and clumsy as character writing, and too grave for me to forgive.
Another is Paraietta, a character struggling with toxic masculinity, jealousy, and the harmful idea of eventually choosing to be a man to both "protect" and possess her crush Neviril (again) - and a good part of this is explored. Still, it terrifyingly ends up with her attempting to assault said crush... except part of it is consequently framed as the victim's fault(!!). The rest is literally considered "a mistake" and absolved as a sin in a Christian-inspired religious setting².
(The third instance of sexual assault is a particularly horrendous implied incestuous scene in the past of two sisters, and makes for what is by far the series' single-handedly worst episode and characters, with a preposterous "twist" of "maybe the victim was the abuser all along". The series tries to develop character arcs from that but-- no. Just no. That instance is just rotten to the core³.)

As I see it, Simoun should either not display such level of violence, or it should confront it strongly with the gravity it deserves, possibly with some larger community and restorative justice. I know this is me having too high expectations of a 2006 anime, on some level, but still. We could've had some much-needed discussions on responsibility and repair, and we never do.
Instead, in various ways but notably by always maintaining the abuser in the Chor as if nothing happened, and by never featuring any apology, the series makes all these occurrences feel readily excusable and it should fucking not.

In spite of my harsh words, if you are in the right analytical mindset to face them, I would also say that these problems are really good case studies to witness and unpack. Identifying how and when the series undermines any actual talk about assault is an interesting (if infuriating) exercise in itself.
But you have to be wary that these are here, and poorly handled, and they all leave some bitter aftertaste.

With all this, Simoun has one extra unsettling pairing, involving a 12-year-old and a 19-year-old⁴, that is clearly implied to evolve into a romantic and sexual relationship later down the line. The characters, Limone and Dominura, are individually interesting, and the arc surrounding them also goes into places lore-wise that I really like; but that component is here and unaddressed and that is terrible.
At this point, we're starting to check a whole bingo card of hurtful elements that sometimes crop up in yuri, and putting all of them next to each other like this feels like a lot. I do not want to downplay any of these elements - though I do not want to reduce Simoun's 26 episodes to them either. I hope you can be aware of their obnoxiousness, and that in spite of them, and sometimes through them, Simoun can give you things to analyze and food for thought still.

Because there is a lot of interesting stuff to mull over in Simoun, too. I swear there is. Some of it makes me really angry, but I also happen to like it a lot, for its vibe, and parts of its characters, and how it fits historically within the yuri genre; and for all it has to give to analyses in good and bad.

Simoun has a few very striking moments that make some of the series' highest points, with scenes I think back to often. It also interweaves a lot of interesting topics in various ways - even the warring neighboring countries are to some extent used to depict different religions and assignations of gender from Simulacrum, where most of the action happens.

Gender in Simoun deserves a deeper dive here, though there are whole essays one could write on that, before we close this commentary. As with all the rest, the series has in my opinion good and bad things about it.

Among Simoun's strengths is that the decision at the Spring is what matters, not physical appearance: the cast includes a man mechanic who recently went to the Spring at the start of the series, whose physical transition has not yet kicked in, and who is still gendered correctly and considered a man by everyone. Another highlight is how several characters have a more complex notion of gender than the binary choice imposed upon them: some characters don't really care about their future choice at the Spring, and we also get to see a few who regret a choice that has been somehow forced upon them. A third highlight includes two or three little things some characters get to do near the end of the series that bend ever so slightly the very rigid, gendered, heteronormative society they are forced to grow up into.

Still, the characters have to enter a heavily gendered society. And the idea of not doing so, which is entertained by a few and framed at first as the refusal of an impossible choice and an impossible future and could be read as a defense of nonbinary identities⁵, slowly gives way as the show progresses to a less radical reason for that refusal: not wanting to leave girlhood and enter adulthood. The idea of not choosing becomes a way of sacralizing that fleeting period, of making it eternal, of staying in it forever. And it is baked into the system from the start, since choosing means growing up.
It is also deeply rooted in the "Class S" yuri subgenre⁶, this historically fundamental movement of yuri that is usually broadly set at an all-girls elite school, with a hint of religion. It has this prevalent idea that its lesbian relationships only get to exist within that secluded environment and time period until graduation - a subgenre from which Simoun draws much more than it may appear at first. I will refrain from making an entire essay about this right here, because I don't want to spoil stuff, but I'm this close. Maybe one of these days.

In the end, Simoun covers much more than what you'd expect at first glance, but it also covers less than it could, and quite possibly should. That makes it in equal parts frustrating and fascinating to watch and to analyze. A lot of its aspects intersect in uneven ways, and the series ends up with high highs and low lows and a lot of slow moments in between. Talking about it makes me enthusiastic just as much as it maddens me on some points, and I could take its topics apart for hours.
Ultimately Simoun depicts, with sizeable flaws, found sisterhood in the middle of a fleeting girlhood and opposite injunctions. Most of its character arcs are about how to stop depending on others, yet how to rely on others - and how to live and take decisions for yourself. Behind this well-meaning surface, they range from dumpster fire level of terrible and uncomfortable, to pretty great; and they cross some strong and striking character moments, and a whole range of problems.
All this is served by an accordion- and cello-tinted OST that is particularly outstanding in establishing a distinct atmosphere, and that contributes to making it its very own fiction.

Simoun is one-of-a-kind.

Extra

Two quick additional things:

• If you want a detailed video analysis of Simoun, that also gives you which episodes are spoiled when and that has more considerations (notably on the making of the series) than this recommendation can cover, you may be interested in this really well-informed video by MidnightBirdie that released recently.
• Simoun also yielded a variety of other media that didn't release outside Japan - notably, apparently, light novels, a PS2 game, and two mangas you can find fan-translations of here and here and that seem to have storylines distinct from the anime, though I have yet to read them.

#februaryuri 2025 #yuri