Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru Episode 12 Discussion

Zyrusticae said:
Since nobody mentioned it, I will:

Remember how in episode 7 there was a throwaway line about taking back offerings after they've been sitting there for awhile?

Yeah. Who'da thunk it, eh?

kikohunter said:
At the very least, Yuuna should've stayed a vegetable since it could've been a plausible ending but no, she overcame her vegetable status with the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP AND WILLPOWER. Fuck this. Maybe I'll lower it to 4, also what the fuck was up with that random ass sun out of nowhere? Nothing explained at all.

Saffron_entity said:

And these kinds of oblivious people will be the bane of this anime.
This was foreshadowed. Even if you are completely oblivious to the foreshadowing, Shinju said that they would lose their disability's after a while.

Also why would you want this anime to be completely despairing and sad? For the sake of being despairing and sad? A mixed ending is what this anime needed.
Anyway what was with the enphasis on Friendship and willpower? If you actually watched the anime than you should know that they didn't avoid becoming vegetables by friendship and willpower... The series of events actually make sense. Shinju just saw how incredibly risky and dangerous it is to allow humans to take such massive amounts of power and to give such incredibly despairing consequences to humans for taking this power to protect the world. Therefore Shinju disbanded the hero's from fighting which allowed Shinju to give back the offerings to the hero's. This is mirrored in one of the earlier episodes and its very blatant mirroring. Makes it hard to believe you watched this anime...
The biggest problem would be that ,now that Shinju has disbanded the hero's, who will take their place? The angels still need to be defeated... This is probably the biggest problem of this entire ending. Who or what is going to protect the world???

If you take away that problem... This ending is better than the much predicted (and evidently hoped) ending of everyone turning into sad potatoes due to overusing mankai to protect shinju. You would have to be pretty stupid to carry that system on after seeing a hero manage to bring the world to destruction and almost succeeding. Especially when that kind of thinking wouldn't actually be rare in the situation. Fu was going to do it as well. So Shinju disbanding the hero's from protecting the world makes sense... But what is the alternative? Shinju directly fights the angels? It was stated by Karin that Shinju was collecting data on the hero's. So perhaps Shinju is going to make clones of the hero's? It's a pretty open ending in that regard. I wonder why none of the yuyuyu haters have even commented on this HUGE plot hole...
Than again if you join the dots together from earlier episodes as well, the theory that Shinju is making some sort of clone or android of these hero's is more plausible and is slightly hinted.

This ending is getting a lot more hate than it deserves just for being a happy ending that uses a lot of cliche phrases. It's a pretty logical ending (putting aside the HUGE plot hole) and it certainly makes sense. It is definitely not an asspull. It makes logical sense, It was blatantly mirrored earlier on in the show, Shinju directly stated that the Hero's will get better over time and it was a very emotionally impacting and beautifully done ending. Why is it so hard to see this?

kikohunter said:


It's not about wanting to have a good or bad ending, it's about wanting to have a decently written story. Whether you like it or not, this is BAD writing. It takes everything that our characters went through and destroys it in a mere 5 minutes. Look at Karin' s mankai battle during the previous episode. What was the point of it? It's absolutely meaningless now because not only does she come back to fight a few minutes later but she's comepletely fine the next episode. Might as well never happenned. Not explaining anything and have it be the the power of friendship and willpower that saves everything is also BAD writing. What's the point of caring about the characters if we knew that everything would end well and fine?

sroque said:
And if you read all of this and still think it's bad writing, learn what literary diegesis is and tell me with a straight face that it broke any of it.

starstorm said:
Why the hell should I have to look up some word and learn it to say if it was bad writing.. It comes down to whether I enjoyed it or not. lol. :P

I felt it was an asspull so it was an asspull.. for me. xD

Why would they want collateral? lol.

sroque said:
Let's set this straight for all the people who think Yuuki Yuuna's final episode was an asspull.

Okay think about this for a second. When Togo was told the truth by Sonoko, she mentioned that Shinju was the only god to side with the humans against their extermination. Why would you side with someone who is undeniably the underdog and then make it so that their lives are miserable? The answer is that you wouldn’t unless you absolutely needed to. You only do these things if they are necessary for survival, and it was. Why would the Shinju endanger itself against an overwhelmingly powerful enemy and every single other god out there? It must have seen something in the potential of the human race and did what was necessary to bring out that potential. It may have been hard on the heroes, but that’s why they have the aptitude tests. Because a real hero can take this kind of beating and still stand up for what is right. And as proof from previous generations of heroes, Shinju-sama and the Taaisha are always trying to improve the hero system. Before the battle that made Togo lose her memories and legs, Shinju implemented the Mankai and the fairy system from the battle data they gathered from Washii’s team’s fight.

Shinju never meant to keep what it had taken from these girls. It had always held them as collateral for the powers they received for the purpose of gathering the data it needed to preserve it’s own life and the life of the human race. Sonoko didn’t get better til the end because they still needed her power in case of emergency and Togo never got her legs back til the end because they needed her to become a hero with Yuuna again (the hero who showed the highest aptitude of all). Give your body and receive power, have that power taken away and your body returns to you.

It’s simply the concept of equivalent exchange and people don’t see that even though they explicitly explained it in previous episodes. It’s kind of annoying that people see this as an asspull even though it’s blatantly obvious that it’s not. It was even foreshadowed well and kept consistent with the themes of the show. People seem to be just upset that they didn’t get their “grimdark” ending.

And if you read all of this and still think it's bad writing, learn what literary diegesis is and tell me with a straight face that it broke any of it.

starstorm said:
I hate deux ex machina endings like this.. -.-
There was no foreshadowing that they would get better, so when they randomly get better for no good reason.... ugh.

I mean I suppose it was cause she touched the core of that thing.. But they kept going on about successors so I guess the fight isnt over?? I DONT UNDERSTAND..

6/10.. It had feels but... lol.

The ending where Togo was pushing Yuuna in a weelchair instead of other way around was nice. :)

animefan8800 said:
So we just got the last episode, and I was honestly expecting them all to die or at least become crippled husks. Instead...they all get better due to...willpower......yeah.

See, this is one of the dangers when you try too hard to make a show "dark." I have read plenty of comments on various boards about how something like this is automatically "better by being serious or dark." I definitely don't think that's necessarily true. I think it CAN be, but it shouldn't be assumed. So now we come to this ending...and they decide to go for a happy ending. I would have been FINE with this except...they went out of their way over the last several episodes to make sure we knew the situation was hopeless. If a series does this, it better follow through and give the bleak ending. If it doesn't, it better give a damn strong reason why it didn't...and "the power of willpower" was NOT a satisfying explanation. I'm left feeling confused by it all. If this was the planned ending all along why did they go so overboard on the darkness? It makes absolutely no sense, and this conclusion feels very weak. I love the fact that they're all okay because that's what I wanted, but the path we took to get to this point was flawed. I can't give this more than a 7 out of 10. Unfortunate since I thought I'd be grading it higher but...oh well.

Zyrusticae said:
Reminder that the whole point of the slice of life + suffering combination was to drive home how important their daily lives were to the point of Togo choosing to die rather than live a life devoid of... well, life.

Also this entire post:

Paulo27 said:
I know how you feel and feel a bit like that although not to such an extreme level.
Even if the ending sorta of renders their sacrificies "meaningless" it doesn't make them dissapear, they still suffered, someone even died prior to this, it's like there's a disease and doctors are trying to find a cure for it and when they do find it everyone is ok, but it doesn't change the fact they still struggled or that future people might still suffer, it's just ok, for now.
The main problem with the episode was the execution and not really the content, it was painted in a way too positive light, making it look like everything will be ok from now on, but I'm sure that isn't the case, the idea of S2 is still up in the air but if it ever happens I'm sure it'll keep the tone that the other episodes had rather than this one.

Takei_Hisa said:

there was foreshadowing that they would get better. In the one scene where they talked about the offerings. Paulo even posted it

Paulo27 said:
That's not how it usually works but hey, to each their own.

starstorm said:
Not how what usually works? Lol I am interested in other people's opinions, so don't use vague pronouns when you respond to me.. :c

My point was that it's those opinions that make a show good or bad, not some cookie cutter recipe. xD The recipes come from the opinions not other way around.

If there was foreshadowing of them getting better, it was like.. 1/100 of the amount of foreshadowing in say.. Madoka Magica. xD I mean the only people that said they were going to get better was the Taisha, who were again and again being shown to be untrustworthy, so.. yeah. :/

Zyrusticae said:
Speculation time:
The reason you don't see Yuuki covered in petals with her own faery sitting on her at the end of the battle is because she was not relieved of her Hero duties. She still has her phone and faery and still has the ability to transform, and the reason you see her go dizzy at the end of the play is because a Forestation occurred and she left to go fight and came back fatigued. She recovered entirely of her own force of will.

Or at least, that was a good theory until I realized that they ALWAYS return at the site of a shrine, not where they were last located before being Forestized. Still fun to think about, tho.

Paulo27 said:

Just because you don't see how it happened it doesn't mean it was an asspull.

starstorm said:

What's an asspull then?

My understanding is when you have the desired ending, which is seemingly not connected to the rest of the show, and then you just make up whatever to connect the two.

A good show (in my opinion) will have tons of strong connections to everything else throughout the show.

They could easily have replaced the ending with one where they never get better, and it wouldn't have been any more disconsonant with the rest of the show (though I'm sure many fans would be mad). xD I mean look what happened to Sonoko Nogi.. What did they do that's so different from her that they got this better ending??

Apparently the answer is basically just generic willpower (*insert generic friendship speech here*)... Lol. If friendship can solve every problem by itself, then I wish I could move to that world.. xD

starstorm said:

What's an asspull then?

My understanding is when you have the desired ending, which is seemingly not connected to the rest of the show, and then you just make up whatever to connect the two.

A good show (in my opinion) will have tons of strong connections to everything else throughout the show.

They could easily have replaced the ending with one where they never get better, and it wouldn't have been any more disconsonant with the rest of the show (though I'm sure many fans would be mad). xD I mean look what happened to Sonoko Nogi.. What did they do that's so different from her that they got this better ending??

Apparently the answer is basically just generic willpower (*insert generic friendship speech here*)... Lol. If friendship can solve every problem by itself, then I wish I could move to that world.. xD