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EP. REVIEW: Yūki Yūna wa Yūsha de Aru

Alright Actar, at your behest I went back and rewatched the start of the second half to get a clear representation of the message sent to Karin from Taisha. The only thing it says is that the enemy attack has ceased indefinitely. Please tell me where it states that the next attack won't be until Yuuna and co are in their adulthood. That appears to be nothing but conjecture as I can't recall anything to support that.

Yeah, that's actually one way to look at it. However, as I interpret it, they only remain Heroes until they reach a certain age or until the threat no longer exists. To me, the Sange was never about the disabilities healing or not. It was about the fact that they had to live a period of their lives in an incapacitated state.

The actual verb they use is 治まる 【おさまる】 to be at peace, to clamp down, to lessen (storm, terror, anger) or (by google translate) Subside/be at peace/clamp down.

I do not think to say the vertex battles have ended for the near future (10+ years) is mere viewer speculation since the Shinju has its survival at stake, he cannot see the future but n doubt has a better understanding of the outside world battlefield than anyone else.

One possibility that's being overlooked here is that the Taisha weren't actually lying when they told Fu that the effects were only temporary. We only assumed that they were because we were following the girls' viewpoints (and they jumped to certain conclusions based on limited knowledge and assumptions) and are used to deceptions like that being pulled. The writing has, after all, played with audience expectations before.

If true, this would support the contention that the sacrifices of bodily functions by the girls were always meant to be more security deposits than actual payments, perhaps even a built-in limiter to discourage the girls from using their powers recklessly or becoming dangerously powerful.

I also do agree with the interpretation that the Vertexes getting into the border space as they did may have been a stress-limitation action by Shinju-sama - i.e., they were let in deliberately and under controlled circumstances to prevent too much pressure from building against the wall. Mimori thus actually inadvertently did the Shinju-sama a favor by breaching the wall and drawing in both the smaller Vertexes and the particularly big one so they could be dealt with in one get-go, which was why she never had her powers withdrawn and wasn't punished. That would explain why the Taisha knew exactly how many were coming and were confident at the end that things were secure enough to permanently release the girls from service.

Hmmm. This actually resolves most of the minor issues I had with the last episode.

They had to allow us to believe that the threat was over for a long time (or "indefinitely" - however you want to interpret it), because otherwise it would be harder to buy the deus ex of the girls suddenly being relieved of all suffering and having a big "RESET" button get pushed. If the threat was still there, heroes would still be needed, and sacrifices would still be necessary.

I think people trying to absolve this show of all of its issues, whether minor or large, are relying on a biased perspective. They're looking for ways to excuse things rather than accepting the imperfections for what they are. People can do that if they want to, of course, but that's going to be a relatively small number of people who are going to see this show as perfect or near perfect.

There were also some really smart ideas in the show. Togo was a very great character idea, not just because we like to see diversity of disabled people, but because she is a great idea for a fantasy character. The Magical Girl genre is all about fantasy of an ordinary girl being granted power to become something special and greater than she is in her normal life to do wonderful things. So, there is something highly appealing about the fantasy of someone who is permanently disabled rising up out of their wheelchair and "walking" again, so to speak. Any person inflicted with such a disability would dream about such a possibility, so it is the perfect fertile ground for a magical girl and I am really amazed it has not been really done sooner (or if it has been done in previous shows, they haven't been very prominent). Whoever came up with that here was very smart, or at least thinking outside the box in some ways as far as previous magical girl shows.

The big one that I have discussed at some length previously is the fact that there was no active role character in the show. Everyone was a passive role character, just being affected by what was happening around them and reacting to those things. These type of characters are less compelling by nature. They don't have vision, in that they can only really see what is right in front of them at any given moment. As a result, they don't act to shape some larger goal or bigger picture. This is where Madoka shined greatest. Homura and Kyubey both filled that role, I suppose in an antagonistic relationship. They were superb characters (in the first series... don't hold me to that in the follow-up movie and other stuff). Their stories were so compelling that it made the rest of the show fantastic. The lack of such superb individual character work in Yuki Yuna is glaring, ESPECIALLY given the opportunity of the Togo character. She should have been an even more compelling character than Homura or Kyubey. She should have, but she wasn't. I simply cannot forgive this! Seriously though, they just really dropped the ball there.

The fairies... The only plus to the fairies is the fact that some of them were pretty cute. Yuki's cow fairy was a great idea. However, the big downside to them is that they were almost totally throw-away characters. At the end of the day, they added nothing to the show other than some silly antics. This is an unwelcome departure from the magical girl show norm of the mascot character. Such characters do usually bring the cuteness to the table, but they also bring many other things that were lacking here. They are often very useful for helping the magical girl (and the audience by extension) with acclimating to the magical world. They smooth that transition with their knowledge and guidance. We didn't have any of that here, and the show did suffer for it. The transition between these girls being normal girls and then magical girls was pretty much non-existent. One afternoon they were just regular school girls, and then all the sudden they were magical girls on a mission, and that almost seemed so natural to all of them as if they had already known they were magical girls and had been doing the whole battling thing for years. That felt totally fake. Additionally, mascot characters tend to function in some ways as a "straight man" to the girls' eccentricities. That sort of comedic relationship between the girl and mascot makes the shows a lot more fun. They tried to do some of that here by making the fairies so goofy, but it just wasn't the same, I think largely because they didn't seem particularly sentient. They were more akin to mindless pets, which again is sort of cute, but doesn't add much beyond that.

As I mentioned before, the ending also had problems of the ass-pull variety. That being said, I'm not so certain that I disliked the ending. It was very upbeat and positive. I do like upbeat endings, and it fit with this show's overall message of virtue and hope. However, it was still an ass-pull. There's not much explanation for why the girls are all suddenly healed. We are simply to accept that the Shinju "relieved" them, but there is no way for us to understand how that happened and why it didn't happen before. Much of the show's emotional weight was premised on the girls being permanently disabled. To have that all swept under the rug at the last second does feel like there's a bit of cheating going on. Again, I did like the positivity of the ending, but the explanation was sorely lacking and that is kind of inexcusable for such a key component.

Furthermore, taking away basic bodily functions like eyesight or the ability to walk seems extremely counterproductive to your only fighting force protecting your lives

If the Shinju could have solved all of its problems for the foreseeable future by letting in some big honkin Vertexes and sent a bunch of girls to go bat $%#@ crazy on them, then don't you think it would have done that a LONG time ago rather than just streaming in the smaller ones from time to time?

Guess it would have gotten in the way of the scenes where Yuna pushes her around.)

Key wrote:

Guess it would have gotten in the way of the scenes where Yuna pushes her around.)

It would have prevented the deep bonding between Togo and Yuuna, which no doubt was key for their teamwork and final victories. Yeah, I think the Shinju's manipulations make Kyuubei look like a grade schooler.