Yuuki Yuuna does actually have a story and some decent character interactions, the problem is a lot of it just honestly isn't very good. Just not quite enough to escape the "plotless moe" label. A lot of the lines are your typical "I will protect the ones important to me!" MAMORUUUUUUUU!!! The sort of contrived deal that has become more and more stale over the years. Some of the conversations the girls have with each other are also amazingly boring. The writing just doesn't give you enough to care. The suffering feels thrown in to be there for the sake of making the show appear to have more depth than it actually has.
A big problem that makes Yuuki Yuuna so meh-tier is for most of the story the bad guys appear as nothing more than evil monsters with zero personality out to destroy the world for the sake of being evil monsters. This part of the plot is eventually redeemed and the shows story does eventually become better. But by eventually I mean the very last couple of episodes. If I were to break this review down by episode, the initial episodes are a 2/10 and the last two are 8/10. I came very very close to dropping Yuuki Yuuna many times. I'm somewhat glad that I didn't, but the problem still lies there. A good anime should get its story rolling by the third episode, not the last minute.
So this then brings up the question: Does a decent end justify the other 80% of a show being a mediocre ripoff ? Not enough to justify giving it higher than an average rating. This has been repeated many times, but I will say it again because it's the simple reality: Yuuki Yuuna really is just a mediocre Madoka clone. It isn't good. It isn't bad. It just is.
