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mixmangosmangoverse · 4 years

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Stop misusing the term rip off

In hindsight, I should've made this post earlier. I'm gonna be infamous one day for defending "rip offs" like I do, but you know what I'm completely fine with that because I'm right.

You can hate Splash Star as much as you want just like with Yuki Yuna is a Hero but if you dismiss it outright as a rip-off (WITHOUT WATCHING IT, I should specify especially) then you're really only looking at the surface. Like let's just go through why these two arguments are so wrong. I don't even hold Yuki Yuna is a Hero in that high a regard but it doesn't deserve being compared to Madoka.

"Oh but Yuyuyu is dark! The main is a heroic pink girl and there's a blue and purple and red!"

Wowwww! It's almost like... More than one series can be dark! And it's almost like... Color coding exists in every magical girl series! And it's almost like the lead is always pink!

In more depth; Yuyuyu is not about girls fighting each other. Most of the series focuses on the slice of life, in which they're always together, laughing and smiling and getting along. In Washio Sumi (you know, the one where Gin dies) ,even if it takes them a while to get adjusted, they literally spend the entire rest of the series being absolutely in love with each other (in a plutonic sense). Even when there was a fight in Yuyuyu, specifically in the first season, the girls never want to fight! Yuna, Fuu and Itsuki only want their friend back. They don't want to fight, and in the end don't have to.

Also unlike Madoka, the series doesn't paint the girls as wrong for wanting to stand up. They win, they get their bodies back, they defeat GODS. Togo isn't willing to give up on Yuna, Yuna isn't willing to give up on her friends, and for that they're rewarded with power enough to save their world. It's almost an opposite message. Yes, Yuki Yuna is a Hero is obviously not perfect. Not even good. And obviously, obviously, Splash Star is objectively the better show here. But I had to highlight this, because Yuyuyu is an important series to me, despite it's many, many flaws. It's got many problems, but that doesn't change that it's NOTHING like Madoka Magica.

I could go on for hours about why Splash Star is not a rip off, but I think just the theme is enough. Every season has a different theme, the most fundamental part of it that drives the story. While Futari Wa doesn't necessarily have a theme, it has many undertones of love and light/color.

And that is nothing like Splash Star. Splash Star is entirely about nature. (someone made a really good post about how it relates to a Japanese belief about nature). It's about the love of nature, of the world, and the people in it. That is nowhere similar. How do you go from light to nature? More over, you find many differences in the characters.

Saki is one of the most optimistic Cures out there. I'd say only Haruka rivals her. Does that REALLY sound like Nagisa, a notorious pessimist? Saki is a bright, hopeful, openly passionate and caring girl. That contrasts heavily to Nagisa who is more brash, selfish, and abrasive in many ways. Put these two in a room where you can't see how they look, and they'd be complete opposites, which they ARE.

Mai is also different than Honoka, although in the opposite direction of Saki. She's more laid back, less excitable, and more of shy than Honoka ever was. A lot of her arcs center on her gaining confidence through Saki, who by being so open with herself inspires Mai to also be open about herself. She is also much more preceptive, but also thinks much more about the consequences of their actions. When she figures out about Michiru and Kaoru, she doesn't immediately run to tell Saki, because she knows how much it would hurt her. She's artistic, creative, a field much different from Honoka's logical and scientific interests.

To look at only their designs and dismiss it as a rip off, that would be dismissing Smile as a Yes!5 rip off because it has the exact color same color scheme and team number. It would be dismissing Go!Princess as a Fresh rip-off because of a blonde pink Cure and a reformed red Cure with pink hair. It would be dismissing every single pink, blue and yellow trio ever. Sometimes characters share similar designs. Yes, it would have better if they looked more unique. But the series more than made up for it with their characterization and the actual plot, which I haven't even gotten into but is a much more steadily and better paced than Futari Wa if only because, it was made to be like this from the start. Maybe, you could call Splash Star a remake, but a rip off it is anything but.

And finally, for some more of my thoughts, I'll link this post. It's a bit outdated, but it gets the point across.

#Mango rambles #yuki yuna is a hero #futari wa precure splash star #goodbye #I'm really sorry #but this bothers me a lot #not trying to start a fight

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animebw · 5 years

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Binge-Watching: Yuki Yuna is a Hero, Episodes 1-3

And so we begin! In which the reference points are impossible to ignore, and I wonder if this show can transcend its obvious inspirations or just wallow in them.

Senki Zesshou Madoka

There’s something to be said for the dangers of hewing so close to convention with a show like Yuki Yuna is a Hero. Only three episodes in, and I’ve already been forced to compare it to so many different reference points it draws from, a paradoxically broad yet specific net of culture, genres, and specific other works. It plays on a lot of stuff that I like getting out of anime, but it also plays on very specific applications of that stuff that I’ve seen done better elsewhere, in shows and franchises that I will sing praises of until the day I die. As a result, I can’t help but compare it against so many wonderful works that it just isn’t measuring up to in my mind. That’s not to say I’m not enjoying my time with it, because I am; there’s a lot of good to be found in this story, a lot of smart storytelling and clever ideas and warm, human sincerity that all give me hope that at the very least, it’s going to remain an enjoyable time all the way through. But just like the recent Bunny Girl Senpai couldn’t help but draw comparisons to its obvious influence in Monogatari, I find it impossible to think of Yuki Yuna without drawing connections to the far superior properties that have shaped its being. Will it be able to shake off those comparisons and become more of its own thing as it develops? That remains to be seen. But if nothing else, I’m eager to see it try.

So, the fundamental difficulty at the heart of Yuki Yuna is that it’s a dark magical girl show standing at a crossroads between two obvious influences from the same genre: Madoka Magica and Symphogear. Like Madoka, it’s got a five-girl team of enchanted warriors doing battle with evil monsters in a kaleidoscope world separate from our own, complete with a soundtrack awash in chimes and violins to give their journey a sense of epic grandeur and haunting depth, like sinking into a bottomless pond of rainbow-tinted darkness. Like Symphogear, it still maintains a level of slice-of-life goofiness to balance the intensity of its battles, its characters all driven by chronic dumbassery and an over-the-top emotional spirit. Its protagonist is both a pink-haired avatar of compassion like Madoka Kaname and a brute-strength, scatterbrained brawler like Hibiki Tachibana. Her wheelchair-bound best friend is both the inner-sadness-ice-queen Homura and the Lois-Lane-to-your-Superman Miku (who even gets the prerequisite “You never told me about this magic stuff” huff out of the way by the time the second episode is over). And to make the comparison even stronger on both fronts, Togo and Yuna are absolutely dating (”You got angry for me!” “You’re such a charmer.”) There’s even a Kyoko/Chris stand-in, a red-motif bad-tempered punk character who blows shit up real good and gets unwillingly dragged into everyone else’s friendship hug. And if you squint hard enough, you can even see parallels between the take-charge, big sister type in Kanade and Mami (so here’s hoping she doesn’t die quite as quickly as either of them), while her little sister then takes the role of Tsubasa/Sayaka. The reference points are so clear with this show that it’s hard to not think of it as an attempt to recapture that same magic, to aspire to that same legendary level of intense female trial-by-fire storytelling, with gay undertones ranging from subtle to This Is Obviously Canon (Togo on Yuna forgetting her homework: ”I’m not gonna protect you there, so do your best!” WHY ARE THEY SO HIBIKI AND MIKU MY GOD). But as with the aforementioned Bunny Girl Senpai, if you’re going to invoke such obvious reference points, you better be confident you have the skill and talent to actually match them. Otherwise, you’re only ever going to feel like a pretender to the throne, a cheap imitation of something that was never going to be topped.

Skipped Steps

And that’s where Yuki Yuna’s biggest stumbling block lies at the moment; pretty much every second I spend with it is a second that leaves me saying, “I preferred you when you were Madoka/Symphogear/A better slice-of-life cute girls comedy like, say, K-On.” It draws from the same well of character archetypes, tone setting and story beats, but it doesn’t carry them out with the same authenticity and thoughtfulness. There’s a moment where Kyoko/Chris jabs at Yuna, ”I bet people call you stupid a lot, huh?”, and it’s obviously supposed to play into her archetype of the Hibiki-esque dumbass do-gooder, but we’ve actually had very little time setting Yuna up in that same way. Hibiki was established right from the start as an absolute mess of a person who nevertheless carried incredible passion and drive to help people, even if she had to brute-force her way to a better solution. Yuna, by contrast, feels far more at home in the introverted, graceful optimist role of a Madoka, which makes it feel odd when the show tries to slot her into the brazen brawler format. She’s obviously meant to be the same sort of archetype, but she doesn’t live the truth of that archetype as deeply as she could; it feels like the show just assumed we would see her as such due to our familiarity with the medium, so it forgot to put in the legwork to actually making her feel like such. And that sense of steps being skipped to get to the kinds of tropes and cliches that this kind of story is “supposed” to have grows unfortunately more prevalent as we begin to settle into the narrative.

Consider, for example, the Kyoko/Chris character, whose name I haven’t quite pinned down yet. The point of this kind of character is to be an initially antagonistic force for the other girls, a lone wolf badass punk who sneers at authority and friendship and lives for the thrill of facing down foes with her overwhelming strength. Over time, though, the kindness of the other girls eventually wins her over, helping her overcome whatever trauma made her such a loner in the first place and accept their friendship and companionship, however begrudgingly. That arc usually spans the entirety of the first season, giving us time to get to know this girl, why she’s so standoffish and snide, before slowly having her open up and grow past the things that tie her down. In Yuki Yuna, though, that entire arc is compressed into a single episode. Not-Kyoko shows up right at the start, is already butting heads with everyone, but everyone instantly wants to be friends with her regardless, and she’s swept up in their whims with hardly a single chance to protest, and before she knows it, she’s already appreciating their antics. It’s drive-by storytelling, rushing through the bullet points of getting her on the team without letting any of them really settle as worthwhile emotional beats in their own right. Not to mention the odd time skip following the second episode, passing over the process of pulling the team together and skipping right to the point where they’re already a cohesive unit. It all contributes to a sense that Yuki Yuna isn’t so much drawing inspiration from its contemporaries as it is carbon-copying their ideas and story elements without any of the connective tissue that brought those elements together in their initial state. I didn’t fall in love with Madoka and Symphogear because they had intense battles and gay undertones and disgruntled characters joining the team; I fell in love with the because all those elements were part of a truly worthwhile story that used them to their greatest possible benefit. And unless Yuki Yuna can figure out how to do the same, it’s never going to escape feeling like a half-measure.

Kaleidoscope Chaos

Still, the fact remains that for all those complains, I am still enjoying my time with Yuki Yuna thus far, so it must be doing something right. And I think its secret weapon is that despite the shortcuts it takes in its story, it doesn’t take shortcuts with the framework that story takes place in. The first episode makes an incredibly admirable effort to establish the chemistry of the four girls and the specifics of the space they inhabit before dropping them into pastel rainbow chaos. Their very first scene, scrambling to save a botched puppet show and somehow pulling it off, makes a really strong impression on us, getting us acquainted with their scattershot charm and how well they play off each other. And the time we spend with them afterwards really makes their dynamic click. They way they talk over each other and bounce off each other, trading silly quips without a care in the world (”Udon gives you girl power.”), you really get a sense of how long they’ve been friends and how easy it is for them to like each other. Further contributing to that sense of lived-in camaraderie, everyone’s gimmicks are fairly understated, allowed to breeze by without calling too much attention to themselves, giving off the impression that these eccentricities and oddities, like the president’s heavy appetite, have been so ingrained into their friendship dynamic that they now come easy as breathing. Heck, the fact that Togo was just allowed to be wheelchair-bound without any big, showy comment on that fact was really impressive to me. Even just that one insert shot of her using the wheelchair lift at school contributes so much to our sense of reality of how this world works. It’s not a gimmick that she’s in a wheelchair, she’s just a character who is in a wheelchair and interacts with the world around her accordingly, with friends who are already accustomed to accommodating for her.

That sense of confidence carries through to the direction as well, which balances the silly slice-of-life bits and the intense mystical battles admirable. When things are goofy and relaxed, the show is able to casually toss off fun sight gags like questions marks popping in the air and silly faces rushing by a mile a minute, all giving us a great sense of how much fun these girls have with each other. And when the battles heat up, hot damn are they exiting to watch. I do take issue with some of the video-game nature of the conflicts, how there’s leveling up and boss timers and hit boxes and a bunch of other random rules that don’t seem to contribute much to the overall tactical or sensory experience (also, the switching between 2D and CG models in some of the wide shots is kinda distracting). But other than that, I love the way it makes the pastel rainbows of the etherworld look eerie and pale and terrifying; even the pinks are unsettlingly stark and menacing. I love the Madoka-esque soundtrack; like I mentioned above, it carries such a powerful sense of weight and myth. I love how Yuna’s first transformation has her punting enemies away as her boots and gauntlets materialize upon the moments of contact, like she’s building her arsenal on the fly. I love how Togo’s legs aren’t magically healed when she finally decides to join the fight, how she instead uses thick strands and ropes to carry herself like a human spider. Not only is that a really fun detail that adds a welcome variety to the combat movement, but it’s also a welcome relief that plays fair with her disability and keeps it part of her character without overstating it.

But it’s the opening half-episode, leading up to our first encounter with the etherworld, that sticks with me the most. The way the world is blanketed in a subtle layer of fog that makes the otherwise idyllic lives of our protagonists feel just slightly off-balance, the subtle cloud shadows that pass over the president’s head as she ruminated on whether or not to spill her secret to her sister, the absolutely chilling way the world freezes for the first time, soaked in a silence that grows louder by the second and an emptiness that grows more stifling by the moment, and the final, epic drop on the rainbow tides washing in from the distance like a tsunami of prismatic grace... good lord, that took my breath away. At its bast, Yuki Yuna is able to inspire the same awe in me as did Madoka and Symphogear before it, to reach beyond its obvious inspirations and carve out its own, equally majestic identity. If it can capitalize upon those better instincts, then this is going to be a ride to remember.

Odds and Ends

-So they’re agents of some beings called the Shinju. Who are the Shinju, exactly?

-That was an... odd magical girl transformation for someone about to go into battle.

-Oh, boo, that was lame. Getting distracted by your friends is a lame way to get taken out.

-Okay, Yuna hurting her hand on that thing cracked me up. Guess not every brawler had the fist strength right up front, Hibiki.

-”You really captured its wackiness in your drawing!” Yuna plz

-”Yuki Yuna comedy show!” Good lord, she’s trying so hard.

-”You came up with that joke just for me?” askjdhaskjdhasd

-Oh, that’s an amnesia bomb. What the hell was this accident that made you lose your legs, Togo?

-Was the boob jiggle really necessary, tho?

-”They listen to her more easily than me.” That feeling when Homura deposes Mami

-I like how the OP and ED change as new people join the team! It keeps you on your toes, because you can’t trust them to tell you who’s going to be important; you have to rely on the show for that.

-”You’re hitting the chalkboard.” pfft

-”Istuki, you can’t get up that early in the morning.” “Neither can you, Yuna.” I swear, it’s like looking into a Symphogear-shaped mirror with these two.

-”Stop overthinking things, you’ll go bald.” I don’t think she’s gonna buy that, Fu.

-”Wow! You only have water.” Something about the way she performed that line really got me. Amazement! Not.

-”Batemochi.” Togo. Honey.

And with that, we are on our way. This is gonna be one fascinating ride, folks. See you next time!

#anime #the anime binge-watcher #tabw #yuki yuna is a hero #yuki yuna wa yusha de aru #yuki yuna #yuuki yuuna wa yuusha de aru

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justselfloathingthings-blog · 5 years

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Me Ranting About a Bad Magical Girl Meme

So on discord an acquiatance-friend shared a magical girl meme about how “SJWs” ruined MG anime for the “West” that got me so angry that I need to rant about it here.

Their friend (that showed to them) sadly couldn’t find an original version so here’s one with some rapid-fire responses for reference

I think that really most of the appearance ones are good and dealt with though I need to personally say “lolfuckyou” for “sexy girls and guys”.

Let’s look at the others?

mostly apolitical beyond same ethnicity

The points in the response are accurate but we can go much further. If having one, broadly speaking (setting aside outliers like Anthy who don’t count I guess) ethnicity is perceived as a political statement (and I don’t disagree it is one essentially), what are we supposed to make of the messages like “have compassion for people even if they’re different?” that when possible, people should always strive for non-aggressive solutions and try to talk things out, even if in the end an aggressive solution is sometimes required?

If the inclusion of a single ethnicity is a political statement, what should be made of the constant reminders by magical girl anime that gay people exist (more on this later) and that they are people with their own struggles and should be treated just as fairly as everyone else?

Or themes and messages like that people shouldn’t be judged for superficial differences that really don’t matter, and that people should always strive for forgiveness, even for people that they have distaste for?

What about Utena’s portrayal of an unjust system that essentially perpetuates itself through the lack of desire of people at the top to tear it down and allows for people like the Student Council to have dominion over the rest of the school? Or how Utena’s story very, very frequently is used to deconstruct common shoujo tropes and expose their sexist undertrappings? Hey, remember that time in Huggto that Masato told Emiru that she shouldn’t play the guitar because it wasn’t “for girls” and Lulu is portrayed as justly taking Masato a-fucking-part? Surely no political implications there!

What should be made of episodic points like Miki utilizing Utena’s own critique of the dueling system removing Anthy’s autonomy for his own selfish ends, to the point of repeating it basically word for word? Or how about that scene in Sailor Moon that is basically devoted to softly criticizing Japanese academic culture?

I can’t believe I’ve gone this long without noting that the blending of femininity and the masculine, in saying that one can be “girly” and still have the ability to save the day and defeat the villain (very very often without any sort of male aid), something soundblasted at the climax of Huggto that “anyone can be a Precure” is ridiculously political at its core?

(psst the SJWs are coming from inside the house)

P.S. I love how Star Twinkle Precure managed to arguably make this out of date even at the time of its creation.

generally leaves Yuri to the fandom

lol okay here have a couple canonical manga pages

oh and here’s an actual movie screenshot

(This is roughly an encapsulation of the entire scene btw I’m really not cherry-picking with this one)

Things the Ace Memester is also conveniently forgetting

1. That time in the manga that Chibiusa and Hotaru’s relationship is directly paralleled by Usagi herself to her and Mamoru’s?

2. How Saki and Mai, and Itsuki and Tsubomi, and Setsuna and Love, and Kanade and Hibiki and Lulu and Emiru (excusing the two examples I already gave) are so super clearly supposed to be love interests that it’s borderline text? And on the male end you have the super obvious basically transparent subtext in the Sailor Moon R movie. You also have to deal with Seiya’s super clear interest in Usagi and Usagi’s interest in... basically everyone.

3. How about the time Regina used the nearly explicitly romantic Japanese word for love in reference to Mana in Doki Doki Precure? Or that time in the manga Rikka explicitly imagined Makoto and Mana getting married? Or that other time in the anime where Rikka talked about how life would be actually genuinely meaningless if she didn’t have Mana in it? How that’s an actual thing she really says?

4. If i’m allowed to include adult-oriented MG anime, how about how Togo from Yuki Yuna is explicitly stated in the extended materials to have a crush on Yuna (as if the show isn’t obvious enough about it)? Or how Nanoha and Fate live together and adopt a kid? Or Homura and Madoka and the subtext Kyouko and Sayaka have going on? Or the canon lesbians in Magical Girl Raising Project that get killed off to show how gritty the show is, but certainly exist? I’e gone this long without even mentioning Utena and Anthy or Shiori and Juri.

Like “generally” is doing so much heavy-lifting that the poor soul collapses due to the weights simply being far too heavy to be held up with any sort of intellectual honesty.

“better art and animation”

If you only watch the super-streamlined and high-budget shows, maybe?[1] But like, I am old enough and have enough residual memory to recall how Crystal got lambasted in its first season for its low-grade animation quality, ignoring the often wonky animation in the original franchise.

Like, if you don’t see the poor animation in MG anime, it’s often because of all the short-cuts animators really clearly take to disguise it, typically pouring pretty much all their budget into the important scenes that people really do need to remember. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.

“Original ideas and no parodies”

1. Hey, remember how much inspiration Naoko got from the tokusatsu shows she loved for Sailor Moon? And how things like the team dynamics and color scheme of shows like Precure are so obviously cribbed from the team dynamic in Sailor Moon?

2. Hey, remember how Futari wa (even though this one does die), Splash Star, Fresh, Suite, Doki Doki (arguably), Princess, and Huggto have eerily similar redemption arcs for one (or more in Splash Star’s case) of their villains?

3. Hey, remember how basically every season of Precure has a “the Cures are going to break up!?!” episode?

4. Or how plot elements of Princess Precure (like the Haruka-Kanata dynamic) are really clearly inspired by Utena?

5. Or do you want to talk about how Nanoha was pretty clearly inspired by Cardcaptor Sakura at points? Or how adult-oriented MG anime quite often cribbed from Madoka tonally, thematically, and even in terms of character/plot beats? (MG Raising Project is often the most blatant about this.)

6. If we’re talking about “parody”, see above vis a vis Utena and shoujo tropes.

Like oh my god there’s so many examples that I’ve forgotten some as I’ve tried to write this up.

In sum, can reactionaries who want to co-opt MG anime please get out of this fandom? They’re really not wanted.

1. Though I recall all the nitpicking that Madoka’s animation got back in its time.

#magical girls #reactionary meme #angry #rant #bad takes #raaawr

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joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh · 5 years

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On the topic of post-Madoka dark magical girl shows, I’ve been thinking about Yuki Yuna a bit recently, and I honestly wanna revisit it. It was a pretty interesting little series and I feel that, compared to every other dark magical girl anime after Madoka that was probably inspired by Madoka in some way, shape or form, Yuki Yuna is perhaps the most interesting one, with the most thematic depth and arguably challenging Madoka’s themes in some ways. Compared to the likes of, say, Day Break Illusion, Yuki Yuna feels like it learned the right lessons from Madoka and tried to turn it into its own strengths. I just feel the execution was a bit lacking.

Now obviously PMMM and Yuki Yuna are compared to one another all the time, but can I just complain about two specific comparisons really quickly?

First of all, people who call Yuki Yuna herself a discount Madoka Kaname. This really doesn’t hold true. Madoka is meek and not especially active, her agency in the plot isn’t related to progressing the plot so much as it is her trying to inform herself of the magical girl system and why people would become a magical girl, so that she can make her decision at the end of the series to pretty much just make the world a bit more fair for everyone involved. Yuna meanwhile is much more genki and confident, she has more faith in herself and compared to the Madoka that feels weak and helpless yet wants to help everyone, Yuna actually does her best to help people all of the time, I mean she’s literally in the Hero Club. The two are similar, sure, but I tink the difference in their personalities and agencies in the plot keeps Yuna from feeling like a Madoka without the arc.

Second of all, anyone who compares Homura and Togo. Because, why? They’ve got long dark hair, are more serious than their peers, and love the main girl? That’s all. That’s literally all they have in common. After that, they’re nothing alike, be it in backstory, personality, motive, interactions with others, none of it. Remember all those times Togo endangered or outright sacrificed herself for the sake of her friends, sharing as much information as possible and generally putting her friends first? Can you really see Homura doing that? For all of her precious friends? She’s driven by the desire to save Madoka and nothing else, completely apathetic to the rest of the world. Togo’s way more chill than that.

Idk these comparisons just feel exceptionally superficial to me.

#yuki yuna #day break illusion #pmmm #i prefer mado and homu to yuna and togo ofc #26.3.19

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seasaltmemories · 7 years

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001 Yuki Yuna is a Hero!

Favorite character: I love all the girls but I am partial to Karin and her archetype of ‘how do I social’

Least Favorite character: the Taisha

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): Karin/Yuna, Yuna/Togo, Togo/Sonoko and that’s pretty much it

Character I find most attractive: No really attracted to their designs but I think Yuna’s is aesthetically pleasing

Character I would marry: probably Yuna or Fu

Character I would be best friends with: I could see myself getting along with Fu or Itsuki equally well

A random thought: I really need to watch the later stuff

An unpopular opinion: While I understand the variety of reasons someone wouldn’t like the show and I can respect that, I still think it has an individual identity of its own separate from the generic ‘grimdark magical girl’ trend, while it is pretty heavily inspired by PMMM the girls’ dynamic is entirely different (for example, whenever someone starts to ‘fall into despair’ the others always pull the other out) I enjoyed the fact the girls are friends and support each other, and also the fact that it isn’t the consequences themselves that upset them, but the details surrounding it (ex: Fuu feels like a disappointment as a leader bc she got her underclassmen and little sister hurt, even when Yuna says that she didn’t regret her choice, Togo is overwhelmed by how much they were manipulated and lied, even her friendship with Yuna was planned, and she was quite unknowingly living in a post-apocalyptic world that is pretty much inevitably going to be destroyed eventually, no matter how much they struggle)

It gives the show a lot of heart and makes the emotional moments really work for me

My canon OTP: Yuna/Togo is the closest thing to it

Non-canon OTP: Yuna/Karin

Most badass character: While Yuna does punch the sun, Karin going Mankai four times is just as badass, so tie

Pairing I am not a fan of: while I don’t mind the ships, pairing Karin with either Inobozaki sister isn’t my thing, I’d need to see their individual dynamic more

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Togo in the transformation scene department bc hers has that perv pandering element

Favourite friendship: The Hero Club

#seasalt talks #thanks for the ask!!#yuki yuna is a hero #denizenhardwick

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animebw · 5 years

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Binge-Watching: Yuki Yuna is a Hero S2, Episodes 1-3

Second season, go! In which we take a trip down memory lane, and a shift in priorities makes for a refreshing change of pace... mostly.

Back to the Past

Going into Yuki Yuna’s second season, I knew that it was technically two half-seasons spliced together into a single cours. And if there was any potential for this show to compensate for the flaws of its first season, I think this was the right way to go. Yuki Yuna’s biggest issue was that it always felt like it was playing catch-up to other, better shows, copying their playbook without understanding what made them work in the first place. As a result, it didn’t have much of an identity itself. It was a hollow replica of its inspirations that barely got by on atmosphere and strong directing, and good presentation ultimately wasn’t enough to compensate for a story this lacking in legs to stand on. But with this two-pronged approach, exploring the show’s world in greater detail from multiple different angles, Yuki Yuna give itself an opportunity to finally give texture to all that was lacking before. By taking its core premise and exploring it in more depth from both ends, it could finally start establishing its own identity outside of its obvious inspirations.

The jury’s still out on how well it’s succeeding in that endeavor, but I can say that this trip back to the past, exploring the backstory of Togo’s first fling as a Hero, back when she was still called Wasshi, does do a lot of things right. With no need to pussyfoot around the reveals we already know are coming, it’s able to give a much clearer sense of how this pocket universe operates in contrast to our own. We get a much better sense of how the Taisho operate, seeing our heroes interact with them directly and even live in their houses. It feels like they have an active presence on the world this time around, as opposed to just randomly being brought up in the final lap. Even the praying in school has become more elaborate, and I can promise you that if Yuna and her friends prayed to Shinju-Sama to the extent that the girls in this prologue do, I would’ve had a lot better sense that this world wasn’t completely the same as ours. Seriously, it is so clear that the religious cult aspect of this world has importance now, I don’t know why it couldn’t have been more obvious in the actual show. But there are also interesting things being done with the etherworld battles; all the Vertexes we’ve fought thus far feel like far better defined monsters than the foes of last season, with unique powers like Super Fan and Deep Sea Anglerfish that instantly make them stand out. They’re not just faceless enemies, they have creative gimmicks, and it leads to slightly more creative battle scenarios as our new set of heroes have to content with each opponent’s skillset. And it leads so some absolutely wonderful moments, like Gin getting out of a water bubble by drinking it all down. That’s just freaking ingenious.

Most interestingly, though? Unlike before, the enemies aren’t taken own by ripping their pyramid souls out. They’re torn apart right as they are and purified in a mysterious flower ceremony that seems to come out of nowhere. That never happened in the first season. Which means somewhere along the line, something changed in the Vertexes and how they needed to be fought. How and why? That remains to be seen. But with that mystery in play, this backstory has enough intrigue to sustain itself and justify its existence. The ball’s in your court now, Yuki Yuna. Don’t let me down again.

Give and Take

That said, it should be noted that despite how similar in concept the Wasshi Sumi chapter is to the initial show, it actually has a very different feel than season 1. It’s far looser, far more playful, far less concerned with the danger posed by the Vertexes and far more interested in the everyday lives of its characters. Character arcs don’t really exist, and the focus is really on watching these dorks hang out and shoot the shit. Sure, the first season had plenty of slice-of-life elements, but this season really seems to want to be K-On above all else. Or perhaps the better comparison would be, of all things, Soul Eater NOT, another slice-of-life show with light action elements and not-so-subtle lesbian undertones (”Wow, I’ve never seen anyone bleed like that before.”) Hell, the character designs of the three lead girls in both shows are even remarkably similar. Thankfully, that’s where the similarities end, because Yuki Yuna is far better at the slice-of-life gig than the absolute pasteboard that was Soul Eater NOT. Unlike that show, it actually has fun bouncing its characters around and watching how they play off each other. It helps that everyone has a far better defined personality that consists of more than one cheap gimmick; you get a very good sense of who Wasshi, Nori and Gin are from the contrasting situations we see them in. Wasshi’s a shy introvert with a capacity for immense inner drive and a zealous passion for history that never ceases to crack me up; Togo’s history chuuni moments were easily the best part of her character last season, and this prologue has them in spades (”A Japanese woman like me, doing such a thing!”) Gin’s a rambunctious tomboy with a softer, more feminine side that doesn’t shame her for being brash and outgoing. And Nori... well, Nori’s just the best. I love how she can seem so placid and airheaded one moment (”It’s a planetarium!”) and then reveal that she was paying attention all along. She’s great and I love her.

That being said, it’s worth noting that this season isn’t without its flaws. In fact, it almost has the inverse problem of the first season; it has too much time as opposed to too little. Whereas the first season struggled to pack two cours worth of content into one cours and dropped so many details along the way, this season seems to have time for all the detail it needs, but it pads it out to such an extent that it’s often slow going getting there. There’s a lot of dead air between lines and moments, too many empty pauses and unnecessary space that drags down the pacing to fill for time. Again, it comes back to the same basic problem of not making the most of every moment allowed; it’s just that while the first season’s dithering meant a lot of content ended up missing, the second season’s dithering drags the content out too far. It’s definitely a far more bearable flaw, as all the important stuff is still there in the end, but I think it still needs to do a lot of work to convince me that this second season will be worth the effort. Can it do so? Well, you know me, I’ve never met an impossible situation I can’t hope against with all my strength. Yuki Yuna’s got a lot to make up for, but with a little elbow grease, I think it just might be able to pull it off.

Odds and Ends

-I’m still not a fan of all the fanservice in the transformation scenes. Symphogear never made me put up with this bullshit.

-The star-eyes, man. You can never resist them.

-”She’s late.” askdhasd she sounds so offended

-”It’s kinda like Battleship Nagato.” This just in, teacher’s boobs are a literal weapon of war.

-I am never ready for how eerie it is when the world freezes.

-”Hey, Wasshi! Let’s enjoy Kagawa life!” Yep, Nori’s my favorite.

-”It’ll take more than music to make me excited.” Narrator’s voice: she got excited.

-”You do have a unique imagination.” Like I said, Nori’s my favorite.

-”Shall we practice the goodbye kiss?” Continuing in the Symphogear tradition of “Things get even gayer outside the main story”, I see.

-akjsdha WHAT WAS THAT BAD REVIEW NOISE I SWEAR TO GOD

-”I have salt! Where does it need purification?” Good LORD, these idiots.

-The timing on all these visual gags is really strong; those dopey elipses slew me.

-Indoctrinating the kiddies early, I see.

And on we go. See you next time!

#anime #the anime binge-watcher #tabw #yuki yuna is a hero #yuki yuna wa yusha de aru #yuki yuna #yuuki yuuna wa yuusha de aru

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animebw · 5 years

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Binge-Watching: Yuki Yuna is a Hero, Episodes 10-12

In which the first season sadly ends on a dull note, and I go back to the inherent flaw driving all this show’s failures: ripping off without recontextualizing.

When Suddenly, Homura

Look, it’s not like I like being disappointed by the shows I watch. I get the sense that a lot of my binge-watches lately have been trending towards the negative, where even shows that start with promise eventually end up losing me by the end to some extent. Maybe I’m just growing old and jaded (said the twenty-one-year-old), maybe I need to rethink watching two shorter shows at once as opposed to a longer one for contrast, maybe my tastes and yours don’t quite line up, who knows with this stuff. The point is, I really wanted to end my watch of Yuki Yuna’s first season on a positive note after it seemed to be pulling itself together in the second half. Sure, it was still an awkward script in desperate need of a second draft, but if it could go out strong and confident in what it was trying to be, surely it would’ve been worth it, right? It’s not like I’ve been hating this show up to this point, I’ve just felt it needed more fleshing out to come into its own and stake its claim beyond the boundaries of its obvious inspirations. And now that it was getting that fleshing out, I had every reason to hope it would come together for a truly great finale. But man oh man, was I disappointed by the direction it went in. Just when I thought Yuki Yuna was finding its own unique voice, it collapsed back into the black hole of mindlessly borrowing from better shows without understanding what made those shows work in the first place, and as a result, what should’ve been a triumphant, stunning climax fizzles out before it can even get going.

Well, if nothing else, this stretch of episodes serves as Yuki Yuna’s most striking piece of evidence yet that it handicapped itself by hewing to close to expectations. I’ve said from the very beginning that this show clearly takes a lot of direct influence from Madoka Magica and its associated school of Dark Magical Girl ephemora, not always to its benefit. And the way this climax plays out is all the reasons why building your story this way is so often a bad idea.

Remember, if we take Yuki Yuna as a mirror to Madoka Magica, re-using the same tropes and ideas, then Togo is the Homura to Yuna’s Madoka. She’s the best friend obvious love interest who fights for her partner’s sake, affecting a regal, aloof attitude in the heat of battle. As revealed in the last chunk of episodes, she’s also a time-displaced warrior with a dark past fighting these battles that influences the person she’s become today. These last few episodes flesh out the rest of her backstory and motivations, and in doing so, it becomes clear that she serves the same purpose to this story that Homura served in hers. She’s the pessimist to Yuna’s optimist, the jaded, broken girl who sees the depths of hopelessness the situation has sunk to and needs to be talked out of her self-destructive streak by the hope represented by her pink-haired beau’s refusal to give into despair. It’s the same emotional climax, complete with a similar table-flipping reveal on the nature of the world itself and the characters’ place in it to drive home the hopelessness of their fight even more, giving the hero an even greater hurdle to overcome in saving their beloved. The cycles of fighting against a world that’s built to be stacked against you, trying to find some way to break free, all of Madoka’s ideas carry through in Yuna’s climax. And just like Homura, Togo stands as the last true hurdle to jump, the final lost soul to be saved in order to redeem the world. As always, the influence is obvious and blatant right down to the color coordination of our two sapphic leads.

And that’s just not a recipe for success. Even if it’s done well, by drawing such an obvious parallel between yourself and the definitive standard-bearer of your genre, you’re always going to be positioned as a pretender to the throne, copying someone else’s formula instead of charting your own course. Madoka and Homura’s tale is the stuff of legends in the anime fandom; calling so much attention to how similar your story is only serves to give you the highest possible bar to clear to prove yourself. And sadly, Yuki Yuna’s take on Homura doesn’t even begin to approach that bar. Episode 10 is the Togo Backstory episode just like Madoka’s episode 10 was the Homura Backstory episode, but Togo’s backstory just doesn’t have the same weight. So much of her past is related in drive-by exposition, too much telling and not enough showing, which means the particulars get dropped by the wayside. We know what happened to her, how she got to be in the position she’s in, but we don’t get to feel how deeply that past affects her as we do for Homura. With Homura, we got to see very single step that brought her from the shy girl she started as to the emotionally broken, closed-off renegade avenger she became. We felt her descent in real time, every further drop into the abyss a lurch in the pits of our own stomachs. This show, once again, runs out of room to tell the story it’s trying to tell and isn’t smart enough to find more efficient ways to compensate.

Beyond the Wall

But what truly damns this finale, what truly sinks its ability to land with the force it needs to, is in the reveal of what’s truly going in with the world. This is where the Madoka influence really ends up shooting Yuki Yuna in the foot; it borrows the despair-inducing lore twist but doesn’t figure out how to make it work in the context of this show. It’s revealed that all this time, the world we’ve been living in is a pocket dimension, the last remnant of a universe that has since been overtaken by the forces of darkness. Chaos has basically won, and the last of humanity is like an ark surfing through the hostile waters of hell, where enemies are built and rebuilt in an endless assault against the final scrap of the gods’ domain. So the magical girls must eternally throw themselves into the fray, breaking more and more of themselves until they become too broken to fight anymore, sacrificing their lives for a hopeless cause and then passing their mantles on for the next generation to be broken just the same. This is the all-is-lost moment, the point where it’s revealed that the entire universe is basically rigged to fuck over our heroes and it seems like there’s no way they can possibly triumph. In theory, that should be just as gut-wrenching and horrifying as the reveal of the recursively corrupting time loop Homura’s gotten herself stuck in. That’s the reason Yuki Yuna copied the idea, after all; it knew that Madoka used this kind of reveal for its own darkest hour, so it figured it should be able to do the same.

So why does it fall apart here? You already know why; because it borrowed the idea of the thing without understanding why it worked in the first place and without adjusting to slot it into a new context. The reveal of Madoka’s world-shaking twist was foreshadowed plenty of times in the past, building off previously established ideas and story beats to maximize the feeling of lived-in dread. And the thematic power of that hopeless situation contextualizes everything about why Homura is the way she is. That show’s entire universe was built around the idea of that twist, from the literal in-universe mechanics to its deepest underlying messages. Yuki Yuna’s twist, in contrast, comes out of fucking nowhere. There’s no hints at it, no buildup, no suggestion that anything else might have been going on until it’s already being revealed. And the way the she tries to compensate for this lack of information is really bizarre; it tries to retrofit worldbuilding into the reveal without actually having shown any of that worldbuilding previously. Suddenly, this show’s world is a place where this powerful religious cult is a known presence to the point where people give their kids to them for safekeeping in times of need, and the parents themselves are all in on this scheme to protect the world from evil, but we haven’t seen a single lick of this nonsense previously. It was never established that this world was anything out of the ordinary. We were never shown that the Taisho cult was an important part of society’s makeup, or that there was any deeper meaning to the massive seawall that the Vertexes came pouring over. Seriously, the way the scene plays out makes like Togo is breaking some deep and meaningful rule by stepping over the wall and into the universe beyond, but we were never given any reason to believe that people didn’t go past it on vacation or whatever all the fucking time. The reveal here requires worldbuilding that just doesn’t exist, so it tries to jam it in at the margins at the last possible second instead of finding a better solution that doesn’t involve hinging the success of your entire story on a borrowed twist that doesn’t fit the narrative you’ve ended up constructing.

And then, Togo’s reaction to the reveal of this news is just as unfulfilling and poorly thought out. The only reason she goes full nihilist is because that’s what Homura did, and the show wants her to serve the same story purpose, but it doesn��t make sense with the mechanics of the story it actually wrote. If Togo doesn’t want her friends to suffer, then why is she trying to destroy the world they live in? How would that make things better? Even if she just completely lost all hope, the most I would expect from her is giving up and refusing to fight anymore, possibly even trying to hold Yuna captive to keep her from joining the fray as well. But hastening the world’s end, to the inevitable death of the people she’s supposedly trying to save? That just doesn’t add up. Remember, Homura, for all her despair, wasn’t actively fighting to weaken the world’s fabric; it was just an unfortunate end result of her repeated attempts to save Madoka. And it was justified because as long as Homura had hope she could actually succeed, she could still see a future where the world was saved and Madoka came out okay. It was built into the mechanics of her particular situation and justified by the logic she used to get there. But there’s no justification in Togo’s collapse into despair; the logic doesn’t follow from the situation she’s in. The only reason she makes that choice is because the writers were copying Madoka and wanted her to serve the same purpose as Homura, but they didn’t stop to think about if that’s actually what their story needed. And that’s the constant problem with Yuki Yuna’s writing, all the shortcuts and half-measures and unfulfilled potential; it takes on the skin of its inspiration, but it fails to flesh itself out in logical ways underneath.

Starlight Brigade

Which is crushing, because when all is said and done, there’s a lot in this finale I liked. If nothing else, Yuki Yuna has always been a master of atmosphere, and the way this final battle plays out in near complete silence for the first half, the empty void of despair choking everyone until Yuna finally gathers the strength to stand up and inspire everyone to fight with passion again, was a masterstroke. Istuki silently begging Fu, like she’s screaming to get the words out while the empty air is heavy with her failure? Good stuff, man. And watching Karin cut herself to pieces to fend off the invasion was badass like nobody’s business, never mind the team banding together to stop a solar fireball from destroying everything. Plus, I will always be down for heartfelt gay angst, and, well, they’re no Hibiki and Miku, but watching Yuna and Togo pull each other back from despair over the course of this climax and its fallout did a number on my heartstrings like nobody’s business. That show of them mirroring the ED, except this time Yuna’s in a wheelchair and Togo’s the one tending to her, repaying her for all the years of kindness? I want to love that image with all my heart. It’s probably the perfect symbol to bid this series goodbye, and I just wish it landed with enough real resonance and buildup to justify itself. But there’s too much going wrong in the setup for the conclusion to work like it needs to. Plus, I’m a little confused at the mechanics of the body-stealing fairies; if they could just be reversed by the Taisho at any time, what was the point in keeping them? Again, this isn’t like Madoka where the mechanics crippling the girls are the laws of the universe themselves that they can’t escape, there was a clear way to avoid all the trauma of the back half of the show. Unless maybe there was some reason the fairies still needed to exist for them to be heroes, but if that’s the case, why not just return all but one and let them keep the vast majority of themselves instead of taking more and more pieces when it doesn’t seem anymore like it was necessary to do so?

Of course, the answer to that question is, there is no reason. Because once again, this show borrowed the iconography of Madoka and its ultimately hopeful ending without justifying it within its own parameters. When you write a story based on the tropes you want in it, as opposed to finding something unique to tell and using whatever tropes best suit that idea, you run into the risk of a story that feels artificial and untrue, untethered from its own internal logic. And that sense of disappointment is going to linger with me the longest now that I’m finally done.

Odds and Ends

-”I want to eat your snacks every day if I can!” DON’T MAKE THE OBVIOUS JOKE DON’T YOU DARE MAKE IT

-SHE DOES MAGIC TOO YOU EXTRA MOTHERFUCKER

Man, that sucks. I really wanted to like this show. Oh well, stick around for my season reflection in a bit, and hopefully the next season is better!

#anime #the anime binge-watcher #tabw #yuki yuna is a hero #yuki yuna wa yusha de aru #yuki yuna #yuuki yuuna wa yuusha de aru

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animebw · 5 years

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Binge-Watching: Yuki Yuna is a Hero S2, Episodes 8-10

Well, alright then. In which the Hero Chapter completely flips the table over in ways both good, bad, and uncertain. This show is a never-ending ride, folks.

Reshuffling the Deck

It was always a bit of an open question as to whether or not the second season of Yuki Yuna would be any good. Sure, finally being freed from the constraints of licking up Madoka’s table scraps meant it had the potential to finally carve its own identity out, but it also meant that with no road map, the chances for failure were just as prevalent as the chances for success. Thankfully, the Wasshi Sumi chapter managed to find the right kind of avenue to explore this series’ world more fully with, stripping away the demands of the plot and focusing on building a likable cast of characters that you enjoyed hanging out with. In just six episodes, it proved that this show is able to capitalize upon its untapped potential when given the opportunity to do so. But would that carry through to the Hero Chapter in the second half of the season? After all, now we’re returning to the main cast of characters and all their associated bad storytelling baggage from the first season. The possibility of slipping back into bad habits was a genuine concern. But then again, so was the hope that with its improved talents, this show would finally manage to make its central thrust a tale worth getting invested in. So going into the Hero Chapter, I was prepared for pretty much any possibilities.

And yet, it still managed to utterly flummox my expectations within the first minute when none other than the lovable Nogi bursts through the clubroom door in the present time, Togo’s presence seemingly wiped from the face of the earth.

Seriously, whatever else I might have expected from this final chapter, I was not prepared for it to jump in media res into a Forgotten Memories subplot that placed the show’s best, most important character relationship in jeapordy right from the outset. I hope you were comfortable with the comfy status quo of the past, now get your seat belt secured and get ready to his the gas, because there are no brakes on the future train and we’re going full speed all the way until morning. It’s about as pitch-perfect a shove out of your comfort zone as I’ve ever seen in the show, and it sets the stage for an epilogue chapter that brazenly junks everything you thought it would be and charges ahead full-tilt, careening off the tracks every step of the way. It’s honestly kind of awe-inspiring to watch in action; every single choice the Hero Chapter makes feels like a purposeful “fuck you” to the show’s own previous lack of imagination and daring. There’s no rulebook anymore, and plenty of the old rules no longer apply, so there’s nothing to do but race ahead at breakneck speed and hope you don’t smear your face across an approaching wall. If nothing else, I admire the sheer audacity with which Yuki Yuna approaches its finale. This show is officially done playing it safe, and I hold it in the utmost respect for that.

As for the actual execution of that audacity? Well... that’s a far more complicated matter. So let’s dive into the good, the bad, and the maybe of the Hero Chapter thus far and see how close we’ve come to sending this series out on a strong note.

The Three Stooges

My biggest concern heading into the Hero Chapter was that now that we were leaving behind the first hero team, we were going to lose the strong camaraderie and character sense that informed the Wasshi Sumi Chapter. Would the likes of Yuna, Fu and Istuki be able to hold a candle to some of the heights that Wasshi, Gin and Nogi reached? Well, as it turns out I needn’t have worried, because like I said above, two thirds of that dream team is fully operational in the present now. Like, the very first thing this final stretch does is integrate Nogi, the best part of last chapter, into the current status quo. It’s a mark of good story sense, in my opinion; the story knows it had a good thing going with her, and it doesn’t want to let her go to waste in the present. And it pays off in dividends, because now Togo/Wasshi has two devoted love interests to interact with and bounce off of. And they. Are. RIDICULOUS. In fact, I would hazard to say that Togo, Yuna and Nogi’s camaraderie is the single best character trio in the entire show thus far, for one key reason; they’re all complete dumbasses. All three of these girls are some flavor of utter dumbass, and the specific ways they influence each other only make their dumbassery grow exponentially larger with each flourish of alpha waves. Nogi’s bonkers imagination inspires Yuna’s blockheaded determination to even more blockheaded heights, which excites Togo’s anxiety-fueled protectiveness even further, and by the time they’re all snappily trying to Jedi-mind-trick each other into keeping in good health, I was already rolling on the goddamn floor. I cannot stress enough how utterly ridiculous they are in action, and it’s a frigging delight to watch unfold. The only downside is the wrenching turmoil it’s putting my shipper heart through. Seriously, you do not know how hard it is to pick between these three potential pairing of chaotic dumbass goofballery.

Baby With the Bathwater

But as is frustratingly often the case with this show, the arrival of a positive must come with its own baggage to sort through. As delighted as I am that Nogi’s a member of the central cast now, it also raises some bizarre and untoward questions regarding how we’re supposed to take the first season. Like, Nogi’s presence in season 1 was one of helpless tragedy. She was a former hero eternally scarred by her battles, trapped in her prison of an unworking body and left to wish she could have mad more of a chance to experience life while she could still live it to its fullest. She’s presented as a lost cause, a terrifying potential future that our heroes may well be staring down should they keep on their current path. But now, not only is she traipzing around with everyone as if she never suffered those years of torment, we don’t even get to see her integration with the main cast. She’s already part of the gang when we start the show, and we only see brief snippets of how she met them all in flashback. This legendary hero with a tragic life suddenly finds herself able to stand with the main characters once more, and it’s established with about as little gravity as I could possibly imagine. That in and of itself would be weird enough, but the more I think about the implications of this choice- and the more the show fails to explore them- the more I’m left to wonder if Yuki Yuna didn’t just junk the entirety of the first season’s legacy to bring us to this point. And I’m not sure how I feel about that at all.

See, one thing that never sat right to be about the way the first season ended is just how easily everyone got their bodies back. It’s established as if them losing their functions a piece at a time is an eternal blood price they pay for being heroes, and every piece of them taken away is something they’ll never get back. That’s where the suppose weight and tragedy of the story comes from, much like it did in Madoka with the hopeless, increasingly inescapable situation its own characters were stuck in. But then at the end of the show, all the Shinju-Sama have to do is remove them from duty as Heroes, and all the things they lost come right back, even Togo’s lost legs that made her such a powerful character as a disabled warrior compensating for her handicap with guts and cleverness. On the one hand, that’s dramatically unsatisfying fr how easily it was overcome; such a massive, seemingly impassable obstacle shouldn’t be wiped away with that little consideration. But in terms of in-universe lore, it has an additional effect that’s only exacerbated by the way it’s treated here: it makes the Shinju-Sama seem like utterly reprehensible monsters. Why? Because all this time, they had the power to heal the wounds the girls were suffering, and they never said a goddamn thing. They made our heroes think they had no choice but to keep fighting and keep losing and keep tearing themselves apart until they were nothing but hollow shells, when that apparently couldn’t be further from the truth. Hell, it’s worse than that: they literally kept Nogi crippled and paralyzed for years on end despite having the power to fix her right at their fingertips. She was no longer fighting as a hero, so they didn’t even have the excuse of wanting to keep her in the dark and on their side. She. Wasn’t. Fighting. Anymore. They could have fixed her. And they didn’t. For no apparent reason. And nobody seems to realize what an utterly fucked situation that is.

This is the issue at the core of the show’s twisted lore, and especially now in this final stretch. If we accept the information it’s given us as the official canon, then it implies that our heroes are fighting under the authority of sadistic, negligent monsters who are not only perfectly fine letting them suffer in ignorance, believing they’re fighting an eternally losing battle, but also perfectly fine literally letting them suffer crippling physical injuries that they could heal at the drop of a hat, but instead choose to leave them paralyzed and depressed at their inability to experience a normal life for no good reason. And Nogi’s easy return to the main cast only makes it even clearer how utterly meaningless her paralysis was; if she could be healed so easily and with so little fanfare, why did they not heal her at any point before now? The only in-universe explanation that makes sense is that the Shinju-Sama were perfectly fine letting a prepubescent girl suffer from curable injuries and disabilities, believing her life was eternally confined and cut off from her, despite having the ability to completely heal her at their disposal. And I know for a fact that’s not what the show wants me to think, because it’s constantly banging on about how “it’s nobody’s fault” that things got so bad for the girls, and that the Shinju-Sama made mistakes but were trying their best, and everything turned out alright in the end so it’s no big deal, but the actual situation they’re dealing with has a clear perpetrator to blame. The logic of the world the show’s constructed doesn’t fit with its moral outlook, and the clashing intentions can’t help but throw the entire experience into disarray.

But here’s the thing: looking at the choices the Hero Chapter makes as a whole, I think it’s pretty clear that the overall intention here is to move beyond the parameters set by the first season as swiftly as possible. Not only are the injuries everyone suffered rendered meaningless, but the battle system that facilitated those injuries is completely re-written as well. Now, the Shinju-Sama have found a way to work the fairy system so that it relies on mana drain instead of stealing body parts, more akin to a Halo character with a shield and health bar than the previous system. It’s not even a big deal, either; it’s just explained that the Shinju-Sama found a better system and that’s the one we’re sticking with now. So now, pretty much the entire unique dramatic thrust of the first season has been rendered moot without so much as a celebratory firework marking the occasion. Even the monstrous, doomed Hellworld outside the wall feels less threatening and hopeless than when we first saw it, teeming with monsters and wailing and walls of fire that seemed to spell the end of says tearing at reality’s cover; now, it’s just a big lava field that also has monsters in it, a place where out heroes can adventure out into without too much concern and swan dive into a black hole to save their friend (though I’ll admit, ”I’ve never met someone who came back as a black hole before” got a chuckle out of me). The Hero Chapter is so determined to set up its own paradigm that it completely throws out everything about the old paradigm, giving itself an in-universe reset button to reshuffle the mechanics of how this world even works that goes in a completely different direction. And in the process, it pretty much communicates that the first season’s entire dramatic narrative should be entirely disregarded for the sake of jiving with this new way of doing things.

It’s... bizarre, to say the least. And even now, I’m not sure what I make of it. Sure, I wasn’t that big a fan of the first season’s story, but just wholesale tossing it out like this might raise more problems than it fixes. Can I even accept that I’m supposed to disregard the entire initial twelve-episode journey I went on with these characters, however flawed it was, in order to accept this new story that’s meant as a continuation of that journey? Because if not, then we’re left with that whole “Shinju-Sama are assholes” problem I was just complaining about. If nothing else, it really drives home how pointless and unnecessary a lot of the first season’s Madoka aping was, now that the show’s discarded with it so readily. The fundamentally broken system wasn’t even broken this time! They fixed it with so little effort, rendering all the seemingly inescapable pain our heroes suffered under it totally meaningless! But more importantly, while it wasn’t executed well in my opinion, is it really right to discard the entire thematic weight of that experience just for the sake of making your story slightly more streamlined? Isn’t that throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Like, how’s that gotta feel for the fans who did get invested in the first season’s story? I can’t imagine it feels right to have the importance of that entire journey ripped out from under your feet without so much as an acknowledgement of how radical the show’s being in re-inventing itself here. Even as someone who overall thought the first season didn’t work, I can’t help but feel slightly insulted by that. Surely there was a better way to address the show’s problems in-universe than by completely junking the good with the bad and throwing away a whole season worth of effort and establishment and investment. I don’t know what it might be, but I’d hope a team of professional writers would be a little more creative and thoughtful than a twenty-one-year-old fanboy who decided that writing about anime as a hobby was a good idea.

Bad Luck Charm

Still, all that complaining leaves us on a very important point; what about the story the show’s currently telling now? However bizarre and frustrating it may be to see the entire first season junked like that, the ultimate value of that decision is going to come down mostly to what the show decides to do with this new paradigm. Is this finale good enough to justify the compromises taken to get here? That question, in the end, will decide the value of the Hero Chapter in comparison to the first season. And thus far, the answer is decidedly... maybe. It seems like the storytelling is still managing to avoid falling into the trap of compressing too much into too little; I don’t yet feel like any of the plot is being rushed or any story beats are being blown by for the same of timing. On the other hand, once again, saving Togo from basically burning in Hell for all eternity feels like it’s far too easily hand-waved for the established drama. Normally, the human sacrifice thing is a “someone has to stay behind to make things not go boom” sort of deal, not a “You literally just toughed out dying so now there’s enough soul juice that no one has to be punished” sort of deal. Then again, it’s not like they came out of the black hole completely unscathed; Yuna’s picked up a literal bad luck charm that’s starting to wreak havoc on her friends and seems to have the Re:Zero curse where you can’t tell people about it without fucking things up even more ferociously. And it’s kicking up Yuna’s own martyr complex something fierce, in case you needed more similarities between her and her girlfriend. Not that I blame her, honestly; Fu getting smacked with a car was a far more shocking, brutal event than I expected, and it’s clear that once again, nowhere is safe for our girls and the game seems rigged against them. But considering how often this show’s backed out on this exact concept before, do I really trust it to set up an effectively dramatic impossible situation without finding a convenient fix-all with little explanation or justification?

My point is, the jury’s still out for now. This season’s done a lot to earn my goodwill in its first half, but it hasn’t fully escaped the messiness that cripples its ability to be truly great. At this point, it’s all going to come down to the wire. These final three episodes are going to serve as a referendum not just on the Hero Chapter, but the entire goddamn show. After all the frustrations and false starts and attempts at redemption, only the ending will determine how it all manages to fit together, if at all. At this point, I have no expectations. It could end in triumph, or it could end in tragedy. Or perhaps somewhere in between. I’ve learned to be prepared for anything with this show, and that’s going to hold true for the final episodes. Whatever else might be said about Yuki Yuna, I can at least say that however it chooses to end, I will not have seen it coming.

Odds and Ends

-”Let’s start with my favorite computing matrix.” I’d question the funny glasses, but I’ve learned better at this point.

-These goofy sound effects that mimic voices are... something else.

-”My sister finally made something edible!” “Onee-chan, that’s actually more hurtful.” pfft

-OH SURE CALL BACK TO THE MOST HEARTBREAKING MOMENT IN THE FIRST SEASON NO BIGGIE

-I have... no idea what to make of Togo being a real-life superhero. That just seems weird and out of place.

-”Itsuki, this time, pop some supplements.” Oh, I missed you, Karin.

-”How have you been?” “You brute.” akjdhaskjadhd

-The CG models are still distracting, sadly. And it seems like they’re being used a lot more, which is less than ideal.

-God, the Togo in the mirror in the grey void is a creepy visual.

-”Well, a black hole is more important than an entrance exam.” Agreed.

-asdkashd PLEASE DON’T SEPPUKU YOURSELF TOGO

-”WHAT, YUNA’S SICK?!” WHAT THE SHIT WAS THAT FACE TOGO JESUS WEPT

-”I detest my lack in writing skills!” Sweetie, please.

-”Is it about your love life? Wait, that would upset Togo.” askjdhasdkj SHE KNOWS

-”Were there embarrassing pictures of you two?” FILTHY FILTHY SHIPPER ALERT

One more session to go. See you next time for the epic finale of Yuki Yuna is a Hero!

#anime #the anime binge-watcher #tabw #yuki yuna is a hero #yuuki yuuna wa yuusha de aru #yuki yuna wa yusha de aru #yuki yuna

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