The modern era of Magical Girl is still, essentially, “Post-Madoka” – there hasn’t been another game changer like Madoka Magica or Sailor Moon since, and so what remains is to analyze the themes and tropes of the genre as they exist. After Madoka hit, what did the Magical Girl genre do with it?
Some shows didn’t change a whole lot. It’s possible to get Magical Girl shows that reach to one side or the other of Madoka in terms of what influences they express. There are some harder to escape traits. Since Sailor Moon, the Magical Girl character herself has been more defined as a type of warrior, and since Madoka the image of what a Magical Girl is has more often included the idea that her powers are a burden, not a gift. Some shows play less with these aspects and some more, but when you think about a Magical Girl nowadays, chances are she wields weapons and has a heavy purpose. When speaking of shows that take more, especially from Madoka, though, you’ve got Yuki Yuna is a Hero.
Yuki Yuna is, in my mind, the RahXephon to Madoka Magica’s Evangelion; Largely a copy of the formula used by a legendarily strong predecessor, but with some notes used in an interesting way that’s worth analyzing and talking about.
The story of Yuki Yuna is a hero follows, who else, Yuna. She’s a member of her school’s “Hero Club” along with the wheelchair-bound Mimori Togo, senior Fu Inubozaki, and Fu’s little sister Itsuki. It’s something of a Chuuni service organization, where despite the theatrical aspirations held particularly by Yuna, they mostly do good work helping people with day-to-day problems.
However, the Hero Club serves another purpose (As Fu was aware of): the girls in it are potentially to be called upon to defend the divine tree, the Shinju-sama, from the attacks of monsters known as Vertex. If a Vertex reaches the Shinju-sama and kills it, that’s the end of the world right there. As such, when they’re summoned to the technicolor battlefield called the Jukai, it’s do-or-die. Over the course of the first two such battles, one against a single Vertex and one against three (accounting for four of the twelve said to exist), our four Hero Club members become real heroes, Magical Girls protecting the world. Soon after they’re introduced to their fifth team member, Karin Miyoshi, a brash fighter who takes on and takes out Vertex #5 fairly easily.
I’m going to pause here and talk about some of the immediate comparisons. The Jukai and Vertex are very reminiscent of Labyrinths and Witches, but they’re certainly a step or two down. The Jukai is a beautiful battleground, with the vast spread of pastel plant life leading to open or difficult engagements as suits the action scene, but it lacks the phantasmagorical wonder and deep symbolism of the Labyrinths. The Vertex enemies are, at least, eerie and otherworldly much like the Witches, and heavily use a different art style than the rest of the show… but all the same, they’re not as individually characterful or interesting, being something more like the Angels in Neon Genesis Evangelion who, despite their odd and sometimes meaningful forms, were often little more than monstrous threats to defeat, with abilities that might make that harder in particular ways.
The themes also feel a little watered down at first. Because every fight is a fight to save the world, the questions of what’s right and what someone can choose are dropped as a concept. Yuna and her friends have been chosen to have the ability to fight by the organization that oversees the Hero system, the Taisha, so they must.
While the characters and designs are mostly unique and engaging (I especially like that Mimori’s wheelchair becomes a floating battle platform with heavy artillery when she transforms), I’d be lying if I didn’t say I didn’t recognize a little “Monkey see, monkey do”. We have the very pink eternal optimist main character (Madoka/Yuna), the yellow senior girl who has to show them the ropes (Mami/Fu), The best friend in Blue (Sayaka/Mimori), the red-themed latecomer who’s a verbally harsh martial type (Kyoko/Karin)… I actually kind of wish things didn’t match up so well because some of these characters are engaging in their own right and most of them aren’t too similar to their Madoka counterparts aside from what I’ve already listed. It makes it difficult to not see Yuki Yuna as something of an imitation.
Back to the plot, after befriending Karin properly and a breather episode largely dedicated to Fu’s regrets and fears that’s actually very well done, another battle is set. As it turns out, all seven remaining Vertex are coming at once. The intense battle that follows sees the girls, other than Karin, using “Mankai” forms (a extra-powerful second tier of transformation with conditions to meet) to rise to the challenge. As much as it takes, though, the girls win. All twelve Vertex have been well and truly destroyed. In Episode 5. I smell a rat.
Surprisingly, that has a fairly long hangtime, as we’re treated to a couple slice of life episodes focused on the girls. One of the things Yuki Yuna does well, arguably even better than Madoka, is showing the characters at rest and establishing them as individuals. Madoka Magica’s characters were perfect for Madoka Magica, but Yuki Yuna is a different show with different needs, and doing more downtime study is part of what it does differently.
Across the two episodes that serve as the breather before the other shoe inevitably drop, we address a new plot thread as well: The girls who entered the Mankai state all lost something and gained something. What they lost came from their selves: Yuki lost her sense of taste, Mimori her hearing in one ear, Fu her sight in one eye, and Itsuki her voice. The last of those hits particularly hard, since Itsuki had dreams of becoming an idol, a love of singing, and the talent to possibly make her dreams a reality. What they each gained was an extra little fairy companion, having all started at one (except for Mimori, who had three). At first the Taisha tells the girls that these losses will probably be temporary, the result of combat strain, and at the same time treat them (and us) to an Onsen episode. The girls suspect they might be being lied to, and after their first renewed battle against a fairly minor Vertex, they’re proven right.
Yuki and Mimori end up summoned into the presence of Sonoko, a former hero, now enshrined by the Taisha for her service. She’s hospitalized and can barely move, since she triggered Mankai twenty times in her career, and each time lost a part of her, an offering for the Shinju-sama that granted her the power to fight back, driving off the Vertex. They tell Fu, who tries to stay in denial even as evidence piles up, especially from the exceptionally disturbed Mimori, who feels like she should know Sonoko.
When a demonstration of the Hero System’s rules convinces Fu (namely, Mimori displaying that they’re denied escape when her fairies reflexively stop her from committing suicide), she goes a little berserk, calmed only by Yuki and Itsuki’s acceptance of the prices they’ve incurred becoming part of the Hero Club.
Mimori, however, doesn’t take it very well at all. She returns to Sonoko, having realized that both her inability to use her legs and her lost memories are the result of former Mankai incidents, and learns from her the truth of the world.
As in Madoka Magica, the truth is… unkind, first about the nature and fate of Magical Girls (the reveal about Mankai being comparable to the reveal that Madoka Magica Magical Girls are basically undead thanks to their soul gems) and then about the nature of the universe and the fight the girls undertake (this reveal and the one about the cycle of Magical Girls and Witches). However, while the plot beats are fairly similar, I actually think that the reveal here is one of the two very clever setups in Yuki Yuna is a Hero.
Because, in both this case and the other I’ll get to, there are clues and a scenario that make it clear the twist could happen in this universe. The world Yuki Yuna presents is one that’s made no secret about being technically post-apocalyptic: the story we get early is that, three hundred years in the past, humanity was ravaged by a killer virus, giving way to the isolated society on Shikoku that forms the world of our main characters. The calendar was hit and reset with a new epoch of years, and the culture shows some acknowledgment of the legacy of disaster and salvation, such as the honor given to the Shinju-sama that protects Shikoku in the daily lives of the characters. But it’s not really “in your face” about that status. The world the girls live in is by in large a nice place, and why shouldn’t it be that way by centuries after its formative disaster?
According to Sonoko, though, the truth is much worse: One group of gods decided they’d had enough of humanity and sent the Vertex. Another group merged themselves into the Shinju-sama and raised up a barrier to protect what it could: Shikoku. There was no virus, and there is no outside world left outside their bubble. Mimori goes to see for herself, and finds out the truth with her own eyes: the normal Earth past the wall around the world they know is an illusion, and what’s really there is what can best be described as Hell – a world of madness with aspects of a burning cavern and deep space alike, absolutely swarming with numberless lesser Vertex, the shoals steadily merging their forms into new copies of the gigantic, devastating Vertex that the girls fought before.
Not only is their battle not over, it will never be over since they’re facing an enemy that can never be fully beaten. Lost in her despair thinking about what this means for her dear friends, and how they are doomed to suffer, Mimori decides it would be better if things were quick, and blasts a hole in the Wall to admit the Vertex and lead them on to the destruction of the Shinju-sama.
This is a great twist in the show, because as I mentioned there’s a disaster in the distant past that’s been mostly in the background, never really expanded on but making you wonder, if you really think about it, why the show isn’t set in the present day and present time, and quite suddenly all these little facts that might have escaped your consideration but not your notice pay off in a huge way. However, as an emotional moment, Mimori’s turn to nihilistic despair does come across as a little lacking.
This is pretty comparable to, in Madoka Magica, when Sayaka Miki falls into despair and becomes a witch. However, it’s straight-up weaker for a few reasons, most of which boil down to variations of cause and effect. First, there’s the buildup. I won’t say that Yuki Yuna didn’t have time, even time focused on Mimori’s growing desperation, as indicated when she demonstrates that, even if only to test a theory she was fairly sure was right, she made a legitimate suicide attempt. However, her descent feels more sudden because she was sour for some time but never really seemed “ready to break”. It’s actually stunning – in any sort of objective sense, what Mimori faces is far worse than Sayaka, but because her inner world isn’t studied the same way and we don’t chronicle a steady fall, it can come off as a little crazy.
Speaking of a little crazy, that’s the other weakness in this compared to the movement in Madoka: Sayaka dies, and what’s left of her becomes a destructive monster that ultimately proves irredeemable. Mimori, on the other hand, decides to initiate the end of the world in what is essentially sound mind, or at least as herself. This is a little… strained. She does make some points and there is a scenario that supports her behavior, namely the fact that magical girls aren’t permitted to die normally and that the inevitable need to use Mankai will slowly result in a fate that could be seen as worse than death (particularly given Mimori’s own disquiet over having lost her memories) despite the Taisha’s attempts to honor them for their sacrifices. But the stakes are just too big to really follow along with her to the conclusion, since she’s not just taking a final out for herself and her precious friends but also taking out all humanity along with them. There’s a scene in the time loop episode of Madoka where, after Sayaka becomes a witch, Mami turns on the other girls for reasons similar to Mimori’s here, reasoning that they should die as themselves without becoming witches. It’s only a few seconds, but it works because the cause and the effect match up and are in proportion to each other.
While these weaknesses are quite striking in comparison to Madoka, some of them (particularly the last bit about scope and scale) are evident even if you’re not looking at Yuki Yuna in terms of Madoka Magica. In any case, this is our setup for the climax: the girls called into one last, desperate, multi-episode battle against Mimori and the invading Vertex swarm.
The action here is actually extremely good. Throughout Yuki Yuna is a Hero, the fighting had been on the good end of serviceable, with some sequences being strong while others were slow and static. Most of it was, at least, creative and tactical, fulfilling the needs of an action show. The final battle, however, really goes all out, and shows us the best of what the show is capable of. Karin, for instance, triggers Mankai repeatedly in a short span, each time suffering a new loss, leaving her half-paralyzed, blind, deaf, and hoping that she did enough with her display of power. The fighting she does is creative, and the steady build to her crippled state makes it emotionally effective and tense as well, neither Karin nor the audience knowing if she’ll have enough to achieve her goal.
Yuna, of course, has the priority of talking her friend down from her Omnidestructive rampage and saving the world along the way. Compared to her fall, Mimori’s redemption is actually fairly well handled; it’s not trivial on any score. After that is the final push against the Vertex invasion, which as a last boss sort of contest… works well enough. Everyone contributes what they can with their new disabilities and Yuna’s straining to deliver the final blow is paced just right. The big scary Vertex is destroyed and disaster is averted, seemingly for the foreseeable future this time as the girls are released from the Hero System of the Taisha.
And then, oddly enough, it’s in the denouement where we have the other cleverly set-up twist.
In the hot springs inn episode, there was a small scene where Fu was hungry (as she often is) and spotted a snack laid out as an offering on a small shrine, confirming with the others that it’s alright to take offerings if they’ve been there for a bit, before the girls take her to get something else to eat. At first, it’s easy to take this to be just a comedy routine, one of many for Fu, The losses incurred by Mankai are repeatedly stated to be offerings to the Shinju-sama, however, and in the ending… they’re granted the return of those offerings. All the girls slowly regain their lost functions, ending with Yuna herself, who was rendered comatose in the wake of the final battle, something like her soul or consciousness offered up, pulling through.
If it weren’t for that earlier scene, this could easily be taken as a contrived happy ending – which has its own merits – undoing some of the drama of the finale by giving back easily what was lost. But the way it’s established and presented (not spending much time with most of the disabilities, Mimori being stuck in a wheelchair aside, and spinning the line about offerings and the return being the will of the divine) it feels more like a culmination of a theme. The girls went into battle and sacrificed themselves willingly for a greater good, and because of that they were rewarded with freedom and wholeness. It surprised me at first that it worked, but it worked.
On the whole, I could say the same about the show. As to why the show works… its plot is decent. The action is alright, edging up towards good, as is the story and how the twists are set up and paid off. Where it makes itself distinct, though, is that Yuki Yuna is a Hero isn’t just an action show: It’s a slice-of-life show around an action/Magical Girl show, and the slice of life is really well done. We get to know the characters both in extreme situations and normal ones, which makes both sides stronger when they overlap. That by no means raises it anywhere close to Madoka Magica’s level, but it does move Yuki Yuna is a Hero somewhat out of Madoka’s shadow. It’s got the doom, gloom, sacrifice, despair, and burden down, but it also has a brightness, softness, and sense of fun that’s all its own.
In some ways, I feel like the show is more about Fu than it is about Yuna – Fu has a strong arc, grappling with responsibility (in many senses of the world). She confronts her rage and despair and has to overcome them, while also shouldering the burden for what happens to her friends and her little sister. Yuna, however, is the always-positive light showing other characters the way when the world seems far too dark all around them. Compared to Fu, she’s more flat and static, and even the Mankai cost she incurs, something that’s studied for the other characters in various ways, is one that’s easily forgotten and she doesn’t let affect her outside of one scene where the other characters have to realize she’s hiding her troubles. But, while Yuna might have gotten the title treatment, Fu’s depth and complexity isn’t missed potential either; she lives up to it, and gets the time she needs in and out of Hero scenarios to really pay off.
On the whole, I give the show a B. I’ll happily recommend it, and have even done so repeatedly in the past, but it’s not really incredible, it’s just a solid good show.