Yuki Yuna is a Hero: The Great Mankai Chapter

Episode 6

I remarked last week that Chikage's looming struggles were the component of this Great Mankai War flashback arc I had the least interest in, so of course, that's what the show chooses to focus on moving forward. This is admittedly established territory for the Yuki Yuna franchise, as its 'Dark Magical Girl' show status incentivizes it to grant at least some focus to showing the toll Hero work takes on these young girls. And with respect to it as an overall work, this one almost seems to be continuing that thread of shoring up popular opinion on Togo from a couple of episodes ago, presenting us an example of a Hero who might have actually done even worse things! Charting Chikage's fall necessarily means this episode is A Lot, so the critical question becomes how successful that lot is.

The main problem with this story, in my opinion, is how it muddles the reasoning for Chikage's turn. At first, as seen at the end of the previous episode, she seems to be primarily struggling with the negative public opinion of the Heroes, exacerbated by her own past ostracization in her home village. But then the writing also introduces the possibility that the Hero System itself induces negative mental side-effects, seeming to cast Chikage as a warped victim of the tech's untested use. Only then in the last stages of the episode does it pivot again to having Chikage declare that actually she's just gone all yandere in zeroing in on her affection for Takashima. Any one of these directions would have been effective as a focus for the arc of Chikage's downfall, so trying to domino all of them together feels like overkill.

I can see how these elements could have been integrated more gracefully, in ways that reflected other overall arcs of the franchise. The issue of the public's reaction to the Heroes, for instance, actually forms a neat through-line in our understanding of why the Taisha has secreted away information about the world's true state and the girls fighting to protect it in the 300 years since. A key point in Yuki Yuna's utilization of flashback arcs has been seeing how all parties involved figured things out as they went along and 'patched' the system as necessary, and how this particular subject is addressed raises some potentially-interesting ideological questions: Is it better to let the people of the world live in ignorance of its true nature if it reduces the stress on their lives and the efforts of the Heroes? Or should the truth be open no matter what, as its inevitable revelation can only lead to a sharper breaking point, as we saw with Togo in the show's first season? There's no clear answer to be had yet, but here it feels less because that's some kind of unique moral quandary and more because the writing has little interest in that exploration beyond using it as a setup for Chikage's breakdown.

The same goes for the proposition that Chikage's deteriorating mental state is itself a side effect of the Hero System. Breakdowns have happened to other Heroes in previous episodes of the show, of course (though never quite to this degree), though even extreme cases like Togo's felt like the arguably natural results of the sheer amount of trauma that had been inflicted on them over the course of the story. And that could actually go for Chikage as well here, as we follow her struggles from her past up through the events of this episode, so the side-effects explanation comes off like a momentary red herring at best, and an excuse for her behavior at worst. I think it downplays the kinds of struggles Yuki Yuna always insists on putting its characters through anyway; Chikage is still absolutely a victim here, of the circumstances she was thrust into and the environment that required it. The writing shouldn't have so little faith in our ability to empathize with her that it also floats a fully mechanical explanation for why it might not actually be her fault.

The final selection on Chikage's mental-breakdown motivation choose-your-own-adventure then comes off almost like the opposite of the Hero System side-effects element. We'd only spent one episode with Chikage and the other girls thus far, but I feel like mayhaps I missed some scripting that indicated just how close she'd grown to Takashima Yuna. The writing in this episode also oddly opts to skip over any flashbacks or actual indications of Chikage's affections and attachment to the prototypical pink-haired powerhouse until near the very end, after which she's suddenly voicing that wanting Yuna all for herself is her entire motivation now. That last burst of setup we see at the hospital, along with a couple aside comments earlier in the episode, at least ensures the development doesn't come completely out of nowhere, but as stated, it still feels like an extraneous explanation when there were already multiple concepts coalescing around illustrating Chikage's accelerated downfall. If I was being especially cynical, I'd even hypothesize that this bit was included mostly because Yuki Yuna realized that 'Yandere Magical Girl' was something it hadn't added to the edgier corner of its indulgences yet.

For all my criticisms of this episode's deployment of its narrative beats, I don't know that I can judge the overall story itself yet, as we haven't seen what point it actually arrives at. The portrayal of Chikage as her psyche and the world around her crumbles, for whatever reason we're believing is to blame for it at the time, hits that level of harrowing that shows like this need to shoot for. And the transition to the late-episode battle shows this series can still put on one hell of a sight and sound show when it needs to. However, whether it's this particular episode's handling or the fact that we've been through two-and-a-half seasons of this by now, but even the provoking of those visceral reactions feels very mechanical here. Though much of this episode, as I was sitting through Chikage's overt violent freakouts or overplayed conversations with her own Dark-Kermit self, I couldn't help but reflect on the compositional necessity I knew this was all leading to: Things are either going to get better or worse here, but they need to get somewhere sooner. Yuki Yuna's out-of-order flashback structure continues to do it no favors at this stage in its serial lifespan, as I'm already acclimated to its eventual ability to portray uplifting ultimate status-quo shifts, so opting to demonstrate how strongly it can show off misery porn does significantly little for me these days.

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Yuki Yuna is a Hero: The Great Mankai Chapter is currently streaming on HIDIVE.

Chris is a freelance writer who appreciates anime, action figures, and additional ancillary artistry. He can be found staying up way too late posting screencaps on his Twitter.