Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru episode 5 gave us all its got: brightly colored characters, vibrant effects, bizarrely abstract looking enemies, and a battle that lasted almost 20 minutes.
So? Was it good?
That depends on what you want from this show?
For me, last week’s signs of on-coming dread and loss didn’t really pay out. Yes, the girls are all beaten up by the end of this lengthy battle, but no one is lost. More over, four of the girls unlock their Bleach-style ‘Mankai’ level up ability exactly at the moment any fear of loss crept into the battle.
The results felt predictable by genre standards and cheap “friendship power saves the day.” None of their abilities felt earned.
The Man-kai’s themselves, which transformed the girl’s skimpy sailor-style uniforms into more priestess like robes, looked cool enough. Each costume looks like an upgrade and sports a flowery “Old School Tenchi Muyo” aesthetic.
My only criticism is that each girl’s abilities are all over the map in usefulness and power. Togo gets a flying spider-like weapons platform that can breach the planet’s atmosphere and Itsuki gets… more finger strings.
In some ways the aesthetic has an odd Persona vibe going on too. While many of the Vertex are just random 3D rendered shapes, many have that game’s gothic icons plus ‘stuff in a blender’ style going on.
The above character shows this pretty well: it’s a book with hands wearing thigh-highs and a gothic lolita dress and chains. It is also a robot, sorta maybe.
There’s nothing wrong with aping Persona’s style, nor Bleach’s I’m shouting Man-kai to level up style, nor Old School Tenchi’s Jurai costumes… but it starts to make YYwYdA feel like a sum of parts and less a show of its own.
The loveliest moment came at the end with Togo and Yuna falling back to earth. Both are drained of energy and unsure if they will survive the fall. Togo wraps them in a flower-remains of her robes/weapon platform with the last of her energy and they say good bye and fall asleep.
It’s a beautiful scene and, for an instant, gave me hope that one of the girls wouldn’t make it out of this fight in a touching and lovely way.
Sadly, that’s not the direction YYwYdA has taken.
So I’m disappointed no one died. YYwYdA toyed with that idea on several occasions but it was pretty obvious the show was never going to go through with it.
The only reason I will tune in next week is the obvious set up for a twist. We are only five episodes in and all the enemies have been defeated. SOMETHING has to happen for the next 7 episodes.
The question is: what?
If that something is just a second wave of more powerful Vertex… I’m dropping the show from my review list. If that something twists our expectations for the protecting god or what the Hero Club believes to be truth, then I’ll keep up with it.
Okay YYwYdA, next week is your judgement hours!
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