Hey guys! Long time no see!.Though I think a good number of you guys already know how I roll.
As some of you may know, Quick Looks is where I normally try to showcase to you guys shows that I find interesting enough to recommend. I suppose what I’m aiming for now is a little bit of that still, mixed with my own musings on the matter – as I believe there is something to be said about this feature, specifically in regards to current anime trends. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. *ehem*
So, for the next couple of minutes (or, y’know, read at your own pace), allow me to ramble about Yuuki Yuuna is a Hero.
As is my self-imposed standard for this, I’ll start by formally introducing Yuuki Yuuna is a Hero. Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru (or YuuYuuYuu, for convenience) was a Fall 2014 feature from Studio Gokumi. In the simplest summary I can provide, YuuYuuYuu is, for the most part, a slightly-darker-than-usual magical girl series.
Let me catch myself there for a second. Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru is not a masterpiece. The story itself is alright, but the pacing was a bit rough. The animation isn’t anything special either. If not for my LoveLive! loving uni friend, I never would have even heard of it. To those curious as to why I had to point out that my friend likes LoveLive!, well, it’s because of her – Suzuko Mimori, or Mimorin, voice of LL’s Sonoda Umi, who also voices one of YuuYuuYuu’s main heroines, Tougou.
A faint one at best, but one that stuck with me once I finally finished watching the show. It may just be me, but I can’t help but think that Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru is a good example of how we have become so unappreciative.
If not, then I’m sure at the very least I think most of you would agree with me that we have been an audience that is hard to please as of late. It’s not necessarily a bad thing if you think about it. There have been genuinely good and critically acclaimed titles that have come and went that now serve as our benchmarks, and that just goes to show how anime has evolved to match the evolving audience.
Somewhere along the way, we came to look to Madoka, and its fellow highly-acclaimed shows, as if they were the standard – and anything that vaguely resembles them are shoddy knock-offs of a genuine article.
Okay, I admit. I’m most likely blowing my generalizations way out of proportion, and I assure you I say these things in slight jest (think of it as my inner hipster kicking in). I do, however, think I have a point here, that I wish I got across.
Looking at it objectively, the added factor of mortality conversely added a new layer to the mahou shoujo archetype, almost reinventing it in a way. What YuuYuuYuu did with that mortality was it brought new light to a particular facet of these kinds of stories that is normally taken for granted – that is, the everyday life.
More often than not, the everyday life of fictional heroes is only meant to serve as a background, if not a means to make the hero more human. In anime, the depiction of the everyday life is usually only a means to slip in slice-of-life/comedy moments, while often keeping the action/fantasy aspect separate. In the case of YuuYuuYuu, the everyday life (to me at least) was not so much a background, as it was the foreground. The everyday life of Yuuki Yuuna served to represent the world that they wanted to protect.
One would think that the use of light-hearted scenes and such were only a means to evidently further progress the foreboding conflict. It made you care about these four-five girls, to some extent.
To me, YuuYuuYuu was never a story about beating the big bads once and for all. Of course, that would be the most favorable outcome. It would certainly be easier that way – blast off the monster of the week and everything’s A-OK. But it is that exact structure of mahou shoujo, and fictional heroes in general, that I think Yuuki Yuuna went out of its way to deconstruct.
With Madoka, it was about dismissing the pastel-colored ideals of selflessness – that the once pure and resolute magical girls have their own demons. True selflessness is giving one’s self fully. Or so I’ve come to believe.
With YuuYuuYuu, it was the plight of the hero – that being one was as much of a curse as it was a blessing. Having the power to protect the ones you love, yet powerless to give up that power for their own sake. In the show, Yuuki Yuuna was a hero, but there were others before her. To ensure that others will follow after her, Yuuki Yuuna fought with all she could until she couldn’t anymore. That is what YuuYuuYuu is really about. I didn’t see its ending as a compromise ending. Everything, from the first episode to the last, was about defining what it really means to become a hero, with all the ugliness and despair that it brings (cue F/SN Archer feels), and at the end of the day be able to say that being a hero is still worth it.
And that’s the point. Often times, we look for shows to be special in some form or another. Sometimes they just don’t have to be.
Welcome back, Leap! Ah, great comeback post, as expected!
And the result is that it would always seem like anime (or manga) writers/authors would most likely fail at successfully delivering a huge number of ‘masterpieces’. To me it all the more seems that we, as ‘cultured’ fans, are becoming more stubborn when it comes to appreciation of the new things. We are more likely to stick to our ‘older’ favorites. Perhaps we’re subconsciously wishing that no other titles in the future would come as superior to our beloved anime/manga. Or maybe I’m simply too conceited to think that. But I do think it’s quite the natural progression that we would ‘seek’ the greater heights that anime would have achieve when we’ve seen a lot of the good ones.
Oh, and it seems like Madoka isn’t entirely a deconstruction of mahou shoujo genre as most present day fans would make it out to be.
Thanks! Took me a while though, lol
“To me it all the more seems that we, as ‘cultured’ fans, are becoming more stubborn when it comes to appreciation of the new things.”
– True. Very hipster-ish for some, but I think it actually does happen, regardless of whether viewers consciously or subconsciously appreciate their older favorites more. And at some level I think we actually need to have that stubbornness to give us a sense of direction in terms of what to watch/read.
It’s the practice of comparison that we have that makes it harder for new anime/manga to take center stage, I think. The idea that /x-anime/ did /x-thing/ first makes it the genuine article isn’t really that valid of an argument anymore, when we think about how many shows get produced in a single season alone. Ideas are bound to be repeated at some point.
Ohh. Interesting read! Admittedly, I also fell into that assumption that mahou shoujo was inherently all sweet and sparkly.
And this is how we actually build our ‘tastes’, even if we’re not conscious about the process. We might openly say we don’t mind watching anime of any genre, but there’ll inevitably be priority titles and series which need some scrutiny from us.
Indeed. I admit I used to care so much about which series have done ‘this’ before ‘that’ did it. But rather than focusing on these repeated ideas, fans are better off looking at the core messages and themes that are more worth taking away.
Yep. Ditto. That askfm answer kind of enlightened me. 🙂
One difference I had always like to point out is that Madoka seems more of a plot-driven, while Yuyuyu seems more of a character-driven story. The latter makes the slice of life nature of the anime (and there’s actually a heavy emphasis on it, even more than Madoka) seems more important compared to “waiting for things to happen” in Madoka. In that aspect, the ending also makes sense-the “big bads” had not been beaten (in fact, I’m not sure if there’s actually any characters who would be count as antagonists), but the characters had their conclusion.
“[…] Madoka seems more of a plot-driven, while Yuyuyu seems more of a character-driven story.”
– Very nice point 😀 And yeah, I definitely agree. Although it could be argued that the entirety of Madoka Magica was a means to show Madoka’s growth, it was more-so a story about ideals.
Yep, true. I don’t even think they ever mentioned the Vertices as being “bad”. A lot of people just didn’t like that ending for some reason/
Pingback: Real Neat Blog Award | Leap250's Blog
Pingback: Comparisons as an Avenue for Elitism and Anime You “Must Watch” First | Leap250's Blog