Yuri Kuma Arashi Debut Episode Opinions

A few days ago, I began to dive into the bounties of the new anime season, and I had the pleasure of viewing the first episode of YuriKuma. Directed by the illustrious Kunihiko Ikuhara, this anime looks like it's going to grow into something big.
There's an interesting wordplay going on with the constant use of the word "Yuri". This translates directly to "Lily", and the flower appears throughout the show as a symbol of purity. Girls are introduced as "Yuri" themselves, which denotes a sense of purity among them, while also pointing at the fact that these girls seem to be lesbian. The director, Ikuhara, has stated that he likes to make yuri relationships in his anime because it's fairly unassuming, and a relationship between male and female always seem to overpower and over-complicate other aspects of the show.

The only instance of characters with a male-like appearance show up in a dream-like court session towards the end of the episode.

Unless it's something I'm really excited about, I usually go into the new season's anime without looking them up, save for short descriptions. So, when I first turned on Yuri Kuma Arashi, I had not known anything about the show, and I marveled at the cute girls and interesting direction. The romantic imagery coupled with a constant focus on yuri made Ikuhara's previous anime, Revolutionary Girl Utena (1997), spring into my mind.
At first, I had thought it was this season's SHAFT anime because of the minimalistic but romantic art direction. The director seemed to me to be trying to make this anime into a moe Utena, and I didn't mind it at all. When I discovered that Ikuhara himself was behind YuriKuma, I was not in the least bit surprised, but I was infinitely excited.
Somehow, I had not known that Ikuhara would be directing something this season, which is a momentous occasion: After he finished Utena, he stopped directing anime until Mawaru-Penguindrum (2011), 14 years later. As a fan of his work, I'm relieved he decided to continue.

After Junichi Sato left the project, Kunihiko Ikuhara  became the series director for Sailor Moon. Later, he also left the position to pursue a career with more creative freedom, which is when he put together Utena.

The story is silly fun. It opens on a high school filled with seemingly lesbian girls, and we meet the love interests of the show. Bears are then suddenly introduced as a species from another plane of existence who eat girls because "That's just what they do." Two bears appear to pose as High School transfer students in order to get close to the girls and eat them. At least one of the bears seem very interested in the main girl, who was shown to be in love with another girl in a previous scene.

It's not clear as of yet if the bears actually eat girls, or just eat them out. Here, they lick the honey off a main character's lily. I assume they eat out the ones they care about, and actually consume the others.

Something called the "The Invisible Storm" is exposited by the characters to "Destroy pure and gentle things", and it starts with the character's favorite bed of lilies. It seems the bears are a part of this Storm, who eat girls in order to theoretically destroy the purity of their yuri love. I have no idea what all this is building up to, but I'm very excited to experience what Ikuhara has lying in wait for episode 2. The second episode aired last night on Tokyo MX, just after midnight, so I'm eagerly waiting for [Asenshi]'s subtitles.