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I have never seen a show pull a 180 so fast and so effectively, I've to talk about it.

Honestly this show the previous 11 weeks used to be mindless fun, something to relax every wednesday morning, a charming protagonist helping people and learning how to interact with people, that was her only hurdle most of the season because in terms of power she started so strong in the alternate world that she didn't face anything on her level until her very last battle.

But that wasn't episode 12, episode 12 was completely different but also used the same elements it established since the first episode to ... deliver something beautiful.

Let me explain.

Yuna started as a loner that enjoyed being alone since episode 1, that was fine but it never looked like the show was gonna do anything with it, and I was okay with that, a chill show in which you just enjoy the slice of life with the occasional battles that never even have any sakuga because why would they? They aren't the focus, it was a simple show free of any serious issues, everything the protagonist faced wasn't taken seriously.

So I couldn't see what the show was building up since the start.

I noticed in one of the latest episodes our protagonist Yuna realized in a scene how nice it is to get along with people, it didn't last long but I thought that was a nice reminder of how much she has changed from what she used to be. It would end like that and move onto the next arc.

Oh how wrong I was.

Enter Fina, the first meeting she had with Yuna was considerably different to the meetings Yuna has with the rest of girls in the show, a bit hard to notice because Fina was before everyone else but now looking back in retrospective, it was kinda obvious they were setting up something back then.

But that's the thing, in retrospective.

The show did a perfect job to mask what it was setting up for 11 episodes, using adventures and battles and silly slice of life interactions with snarky remarks and good timed comedy. But everything was building up in the background.

Fina's feelings were building up.

Fina got a whole nice segment around the middle of the show about her and Yuna going out together the 2 of them and no one else. When the episode 12 preview showed its title I thought the last episode would be a repeat of that but on a much larger scale because it's the finale.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Turns out everything Yuna did until this point had consequences, namely neglecting Fina because she had to take care of all the people she knew. This wouldn't work if the whole show didn't play out as it did, we see Yuna do the things she usually does every week but this time from Fina's perspective, we see what she feels and what she thinks and at this point she had enough, she decides to distance herself so she can be as worthy of her presence to Yuna as all the other "useful" citizens are to the bear.

But that's not what she wanted, that's not what Yuna wanted either.

Enter Noa, all the previous bonds Yuna made through the show will always be important even if they aren't as important as Fina's, and now that the 2 main girls are distancing themselves those bonds have to help our protagonists. Noa is a delight of a character and she shines the most here, as much as she loves the bear she has to help these 2 useless lovebirds to realize what they are doing wrong.

And help she does.

Yuna doesn't understand it but she knows Fina is the only one that fills the emptiness in her heart, meanwhile Fina always knew but because she lacked courage she couldn't say it. When it finally happens and both let everything out and tell each other how much they want to be together, it's the most cathartic moment ever not only because of how the episode built up to it but also because everything that was presented since the very beginning. This wouldn't work if we hadn't seen a lonely Yuna in the first episode and how their meeting played out in 2, things that were seemingly meaningless had the strongest meanings all along.

And that's beautiful.

10/10, this show should be a guide to everyone about how to write a proper romance.

I feel I could write a whole book about this show, I can't describe with words how happy this anime makes me.

From experience I can say it's hard to write romance, it's also hard to write age gap romance between a 10 and 20 year old, and it's even harder to sell it to the audience.

But they did it, they accomplished it and the final result is the most wholesome and heartwarming romance ever animated by Japan.

The key to success is to make the characters believable and entertaining at the same time, our protagonist isn't over the top and the love interest naturally wasn't into ... the whole thing at the start, on the contrary even though the older girl was really shy and lovestruck like a pure maiden, the young one still had a hard time even trusting the cosplaymaker.

But like the human characters they are, there was character development, things didn't stay static, progress was made and the characters grew, both as a person and to each other. And the show left pretty clear they complement each other very well, one has terrible fashion sense and it's essentially useless at homechores while the other has big social anxiety issues, and they motivate each other to work on these flaws, depending more and more on each other while the show goes on, their dynamic getting better while at the same time growing together.

It was proven why the art direction and sound were 10/10 thanks to the final episode, but everything else was 10/10 thanks to our main couple.

There are all kinds of couples in media, couples with a strong bond that weren't shown how they got so close but still leave a big impression like Kanon x Koyori, couples that are pure concentrated sugar that depend on fluff more than on substance like Noa x Hinata, and couples that we see grow from nothing into something big with the biggest focus and evolution of their romantic feelings like Miyako x Hana.

At first glance, some people might think this anime is the same as any other of it's genre, but they couldn't be more wrong if they tried, this series is unique and we probably won't have something as good as this in a long time, and this is why:

Let's start with the less remarkable part for me, the art, sure the show had high production values, that's expected from J.C. Staff, but it did nothing to make the art, well, outstanding, it was just there. The art of the manga is by far superior, so that's a good reason to read the manga after finishing ... the anime.

But the art is the only thing I can say has flaws in this show.

The story. For starters, this show has a story, a plot, a main goal the cast of girls want to achieve and individual goals each of them have (besides all of them wanting to become first rank Ura, Chiya wants to find her mom, Kon wants to beat and be better than her mom, Koume wants to be the best so she can return to her loved witch, and Nono wants to stop relying on her big sister for everything) that's unexpected, that's more than any other show about an Slice of Life with cute girls has, sure there might be some exceptions that tried to have a plot too, but didn't executed nearly as well (Haifuri and Taroumaru Gurashi... I feel so bad for those poor shows.)

The thing that this show does well is mix and alternate between the slice of life and plot, and develop it successfully and with believable progression, so it never loses it's slice of life charm while at the same time giving the feeling that something happened. Sure most of the plot revolves around Chiya and the overall mystery that surrounds her character, but that's why this show did it so well, it stayed focused and knew what it wanted to do.

The sound. The OST reminds me of medieval RPGs, if I'd to compare it with something current I'd say it reminds me of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which is a bit expected because Chiya is a wild feral girl, some tracks that were used to depict the city of Labyrinth Town fit right in the game, so if you liked the soundtrack of that, you'll love the soundtrack of this. There are other kind of tracks too, of course, the "comedy tracks" used in most slice of lifey moments and the "serious tracks" used in most plot heavy scenes, mostly revolving around Chiya and Kon. Which bring us to the next point.

The characters. Overall, the dynamic between all the four characters is unique because of how intimate they are and how casual they are about it, they aren't scared on touching each other bodies (Kon was only at the start) and this makes this cast different to any other cast you'll find in any other show of its genre.

But the characters individually.

Don't get me wrong, Nono and Koume are great, they got some great moments and a bit of development, maybe Koume more than Nono, but besides episode 3 and 7, Koume was only used for comedy in all the other episodes. Which makes the rest of the show the Chiya & Kon show, feat. Koume, and it's great because all the characters played the roles they were supposed to play, so it's not the show's fault Koume and Nono got the short end of the stick, somebody had to put the comedy in this Slice of Life, Comedy show.

But I'm gonna focus on Chiya and Kon here.

This two play each other really well, at the start of the show, before we had any clue about Chiya, Kon seemed to be the most protagonistic of all of them, she had her main goal and worked the hardest to get there, after episode 5 Chiya started to show signs of why she's the protagonist (besides those yuri heavy scenes she had with Kon, Koume and Nono in episodes 2, 3 and 4 respectively) and in the same episode she started to have some influence in Kon, and suddenly that scene they had in episode 2 became a lot more important.

Kon used to think that the rules to do everything were set in stone, she did everything by the book and what she studied there was law. Even her train of thoughts for non-Urara related things were like that, she used to be worried of never getting married when Chiya lifted her skirt and ended blushing when they touched foreheads without even thinking of pulling back. Easily, she's the character that developed the most, thanks to her scenes with Chiya, like the soulmate scene, the incident with the kitsune spirit and everything about episode 8, she learned to rely on her and even got some traits from her, she learned to develop her own methods of divination instead of trying to memorize old ones and focused her hard work that was initially going nowhere into a better path that will help her achieve her dream. When she repeated at the end the thing Chiya told her in episode 8, I realized how much she had changed since the start of the show.

Chiya parallels directly with her, but at the same time she got her unique developments. As a good protagonist she's someone alpha that never gives up, she's not scared of even gods and she's willing to do anything to help her friends and find her mom. Which kinda made her have a rough start when she didn't care about the rules of the town and almost tried to sneak to different districts that she wasn't allowed to go in, she had to learn how things are done and what path take to accomplish her goal, which ended her giving some traits from Kon as seen in the kitsune spirit incident. After that she developed some sense of protectiveness when she promised to stay forever together with Kon, no matter what even the gods say, in one of the most romantic scenes ever done in any anime or manga. Later, with all the girls, she realized she didn't have her own divination method, but after a plot relevant incident in which she got more info from her mom, she found her own thanks to some family ties, even if she can't use it whenever she wants. I can say that Chiya's determination was the part that developed most from her during these 12 episodes.

I don't think it's possible to enjoy a show more than I did this one, that's why I'm giving it a perfect 10/10

Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru is part of a multimedia project of LN, VN, videogame, manga and anime. And despite of it, the anime is completely able to stand on its own.

The story is one of the strongest points, but for you to understand this you need to watch the series from the right point of view. As a Slice of Life the story is about the characters, sure world building is important, but ultimately the story focuses on the 5 main protagonists, it makes you care about them, their lives and it gives a proper conclusion to them.

The art is pretty good for ... a studio with low budget like this one, at the start the CGI is noticeable, but after a while you learn to appreciate the backgrounds, the town and all the locations, you can see they put a lot of job on this.

The OST is a solid 10/10, with the composer of NieR is to be expected. From the Slice of Life to the action music every scene has a perfect ambience that lets you get immersed in the story. I doubt it's possible to find flaws about it.

The characters are the main motivation to watch the series and also get into the franchise if you're interested in the side material. You learn to appreciate them and you get really attached to them because everything is portrayed and developed around them, the support between the sisters, the romance between Yuuna and Tougou and the character development of the originally lonely tsundere girl is explained at the right pace and given the proper screen time. The fact that this anime (and the whole project) had 2 years of planning is noticeable.

The anime is really enjoyable by itself, but as someone who started watching it since the first week, I can say it's extremely recommendable to get into all the other material that is also part of this multimedia project, it contains multiple interesting information that makes you see the characters in a whole different light, and as I said the characters are the more important part of this franchise. The best way to do this is:

Watch the first 3 episodes of the anime, read the manga, watch episode 4, read the VN, watch episodes 5, 6, 7 then read the first 7 chapters of the LN, watch episode 8, read chapter 8 of the LN, watch episode 9, 10, 11, read chapter 9 of the LN and then watch the final episode.

The videogame is unrelated to the rest and it comes out until February anyway.

Overall the series delivers everything you want, good characters, writing, romance, action, interactions and it teaches you exactly what the title says: Yuuki Yuuna is a Hero. It teaches what is a Hero and how to be Hero, to you and the characters.

As a side note, even though I said the characters are the most important part it doesn't mean that the world is not interesting, on the contrary, the issue is that the anime doesn't give a lot of focus to it, only the necessary, that's why the speculation is also one of the best parts of this franchise, and this can be proved because it has been less than 2 days since the anime ended and there's already a lot of theories regarding the ending, and all of them are equally likely since this series is famous for leaving foreshadowing and references in all its media. I recommend you to watch it and join those theorists until those points are properly explained, and I know they will be properly explained because this series hasn't ended yet, it's only the beginning.