Not your average slice of life

At last I have the final first impression post on Metanorn with Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru or as we are calling it on our Metanorn skype chat YYYY Girls because we are super lazy to type it all out! Anyway I hope you enjoy watching these two episodes because I think it might be a surprise to most people who quickly wrote it off as another cute girls doing cute things anime based off trailers.

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 Well, that was a bit unexpected! I thought a program would, typically, announce whether or not they had a Mahou Shoujo in the up and coming. So color me as surprised as the vivid world these girls are fighting in.

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Interesting Characters

Time to brighten your life up with the cast of Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de aru~

When we meet these characters for the first time we can tell right off the bat that all of them are fairly close in age and how they treat each other like a second family, these girls even go a step further and form the Hero Club which is a club dedicated to helping people in their community. So what makes these girls so special? For starters we don’t get to learn too much outside of Fuu and Itsuki being sisters and Yuuna and Tougou are neighbors who turned best friends; however once we get into the real story of Yuuki Yuuna we discover something interesting about these girls. Personally I did not see the unique twist of making these girls transform into magical girls to fight off creepy monsters! Since I am the resident magical girl fanboy on Metanorn I can tell by the colors of their magical forms how they might act based off my past experiences with that genre.

I love that giant sword!

Fuu: Being a yellow magical girl often means the role of support or backup role as I have seen with past Precure series which usually places yellow with using shields or supplying healing magic to help out the other girls as seen with characters like Inori from Fresh Precure, Itsuki from Heart Catch Precure, Yayoi from Smile Precure, Alice from Doki Doki Precure and Yuuko from Happiness Charge Precure and often these girls are very kind hearted and are sometimes the glue that holds the team together in dangerous situations.

Cute little sister type.

Itsuki: Now you would think that green magical girls would supply all the healing magic; however for some odd reason that is not the case most of the time. When I see green most of the time they start off being shy, but turn strong later on once they gain more confidence which fits Itsuki who was shy and quiet much like Komachi from Yes Precure 5 and the only other green magical girl I can think of besides Nao from Smile Precure, I could throw in Yayoi from Smile Precure who is a Yellow Magical girl but shares similar traits of being shy! Outside of Precure id go with Luna from Genei wo kakeru Taiyou who used vines to hold down her target much like what we saw with Itsuki in the second episode.

Melee fighting in a magical girl series? Always a good thing!

Yuuma: Pink is usually the default leader color for most of these magical girl shows and pink tends to be full of energy and extremely helpful which fits perfectly with Yuuma who displayed all of those traits! So what about her fighting style? Most of my experience with pink they tend to be aggressive and are more hand to hand based like Love from Fresh Precure, Tsubomi from Heart Catch Precure, Hibiki from Suite Precure, Miyuki from Smile Precure, Mana from Doki Doki Precure and finally Megumi from Happiness Charge Precure! Yeah the list of pink leaders is huge.

Blue is one of my favorite colors.

Tougou: Blue types tend to be really smart or the brains of the group and they are usually very tactical and really calm during battles, but Tougou is a bit different because she starts off as quiet and feels weak due to her disability holding her back until her friend Yuuma gets hurt she is forced to push her fears aside and become strong to help her friends! As far as powers go I noticed blue tends to use ice based magic and are usually ranged based as seen with Ami from Sailor moon, Karen from Yes Precure 5, Miki from Fresh Precure, Erika from Heartcatch Precure, Reika from Smile Precure, Rikka from Doki Doki Precure and finally Hime from Happiness Charge Precure.

Tougou is an instant favorite.

Out of the four characters so far which do you like the most? For me I felt quite drawn to Yuuma because of her happy go lucky attitude and helpful nature, but the only character that I could connect to on an emotional level was Tougou! As most people know that I use a wheelchair in my daily life so I can totally sympathize with her due to that and to my surprise she wasn’t complaining or cry about her situation until things got dangerous which she felt weak and in the way due to her disability; however she pushed those fears aside and through her transformation she gained the confidence to fight with her friends. Speaking of her transformation I was kind of shocked that she didn’t just magically stand up start walking because I could totally see her wanting to stay in the magical world to avoid being weak in the real world, but the tiny detail of her ribbons acting as her new legs was a unique touch so good job Yuuki Yuun for doing that right!

Studio Fun

Check out that insane background! Isn’t it awesome?

Studio Gokumi has produced some of my favorite anime in the past few years, with Oda Nobuna no Yabou, Crime Edge, and Kiniro Mosaic being a select few. So I was quite looking forward to another program with their signature approach to characterization and slice of life atmosphere. And it starts of in that realm very well, with the friendship’s very well established in the cold open, and continuing on throughout their everyday lives. Four Bowls of Udon! Fuu-Sempai is superior eater! She a couple of other things as well, besides being the big sister of the Hero Club, an outfit determined to community service, she is also something of a government agent. They let her off the hook for withholding the danger she was prepared to put them pretty easy. But it was fun to see her almost losing control when Momori finally transformed. Speaking of which, kudos to the storytellers for not having the magical girl power’s heal her legs or something equally insulting.

Magical growing boobs.

But when all is going peaceful we get the Forestize Alert! And it all goes crazy. I’m really grooving on the designs, I only hope they can change up the backgrounds every now and again, as that world, vivid as it is, can become quite same old same old after a few more episodes. But I still love the character designs, each one bringing out facets of the girls personalities. And it might have been a blink or you miss it, but did you notice the flower petals on each uniform? They leveled up after each Vertex defeat. That was a moment of very subtle exposition, and I greatly admire the storytellers for not making it a big old in your face Magical Girl moment. That sort of thing is done with just enough bravura to make it noticed, and then it’s down to business. Which is kicking tail.

FK YA EXTRA MAGIC

This is basicall Will in moe anime mode

At least Yuuki doesn’t cry as much as Madoka…

Magical beans?

Big boobs and a huge butt on a middle school girl? Only in the world of anime.

End thoughts

Well that certainly was a very interesting set of episodes for Yuuki Yuuna and I have to say WOW I was seriously expecting slice of life following cute girls doing cute things, but instead I got epic magical girls which has me super excited because that is a genre I can easily talk about! So when these episodes aired I saw a huge flood of “Oh it’s just going to be another Madoka Magica clone.” Which to be perfectly honest really annoys me just because Yuuki Yuuna just so happens to be a magical girl series with odd backgrounds and strange monsters. That said do agree that there are similarities between both series; however didn’t we say the same thing about Genei wo kakeru Taiyou when it was airing? So what do you think about all of that? Do you feel that Yuuki Yuuna is just another clone of that popular dark magical girl series? Personally I want everyone to view it as a standalone series own without all the heavy comparisons and I noticed with this new series we are missing two important additions! Like a wish system and the all-important Kyuubei like figure.

This was an unexpected surprise. I’m more than willing to enjoy a pure slice of life show, so the bonus of the Mahou Shoujo is a benefit. I wonder how they are going to mix it all up in the coming weeks. Are the Vertex an event with multiple participants? Have we had four out of the mentioned twelve to appear, or does this count as two? Will the other hero’s of the world be making an appearance. I’m eager to find out….

Preview

Catch you next time yo!