This is just awful. The story of Dai Mankai no Shou is a mixture of a prequel, midquel, and an epilogue. It starts with a midquel showing the original cast doing slice of life things, then a midquel of a new cast know as the Sentinels doing scouting missions in the void area, then a prequel of a different cast fighting the Vertex a few hundred years ago, then back to the Sentinels to show what they were doing at the end of Yuusha no Shou, then a retelling/retcon of the ending of Yuusha no Shou, then finally an epilogue. Does this sound like this has terrible pacing, because it does. Dai Mankai no Shou has the worst plot pacing I've ever seen in a 12 episode show, no event being given enough time to sit with.
The midquel with the original cast is a fine episode, actually probably the least damaging episode of the show, the original cast are sadly basically just memes of themselves and don't really have much in the way of character writing.
The first few episodes with the Sentinels are mixed bag, but are the most interesting episodes of the show and my favorite bunch. It shows Mebuki, the leader of the Sentinels trying to lead the other Sentinels into scouting missions, with the majority of the members not physically or mentally prepared to handle being attacked by Stardust. It then ends with a cliffhanger of everyone's memory being erased after the events of the beginning of Yuusha no Shou. Then they reintroduced towards the end with them having to protect priests while they pray a weapon into activating. During which those inside the sphere praying will disappear if they loose faith while doing it, except then it also just yeets some of the Sentinels outside of the prayer sphere. That annoyed the hell out of me, because now it harms the pay off of the first few episodes where the leader Mebuki more or less achieved her sole goal to get every single member out alive. It also then causes harm since there is no grief for the teenagers just get unceremoniously killed off. What the weapon is even suppose to do is confusing as well, when it gets activated it just shoots a beam that coincidentally matches with the attack of Karin, Sonoko, and Itsuki then breaks a glass ceiling or something. Also really lucky that it matched up with the hero's attack. So the Sentinel related episodes started off intuiting but got ruined towards the end. The characters in the Sentinel episodes aren't great, Mebuki is the best written one with clear goals and conflicts, though it is damaged towards the end with her not really being impacted with the death of some of the other Sentinels. The rest are just a single character trope with no depth.
The few hundred years in the past prequel on the other hand it terrible from start to finish. It starts of with 2 characters dead... alright, guess well never know them, except when they lazily just throw in flashbacks to try and add character to them. The plot revolves around 3 of the past heroes back when heroes were known to the public and how the public reacts to it and how the heroes deal with the publicity. Problem is that the general public is comically dismissive, the news of 2 of the heroes, who are teenagers mind you, dying is basically met with a "lmao" from what we are shown. Chikage is the specific target of bullying by her classmates and has abusive parents on top of it in case you needed more angst, but none of the other heroes suffer this problem. On top of this she is also emotionally dependent on Takashima, and just seeing her interacting with Nogi puts her in such a bad mental state that ends up trying to murder Nogi, only to then have her powers taken away from her by the Divine Tree. Then learning to error of her ways, she sacrifices herself to save Nogi from some Stardust. It is very poorly done, Chikage is written like she is a psychopath who looses her mind very easily, which questions why the Taisha or the Divine Tree chose to make a hero out of someone who is so clearly mentally unstable. Nogi's character is flat, her one goal is stated to be revenge against the Vertex but it isn't really translated well into the script. Takashima is literally just Yuki. That is it, she just a clone of Yuki. The ending of the prequel also just rips the payoff of Yuki willing herself into hero form from the first season but with no emotional weight to it. Just, "Hey remember that one scene from the season you like?"
Then we have the retelling of the ending of Yuusha no Shou, which was about as worthless as a recap episode. There wasn't much new added to it, but what was added either was just indifferent or damaged the already badly written ending of Yuusha no Shou. Not a lot to say here.
Then we have the epilogue. It is also bad, it is basically trying to add to the world building showing the general public not trusting the Taisha anymore. Sonoko makes a really good suggestion of starting a coup to overthrow the Taisha. That makes sense, not only is the general public not happy with the Taisha lying to them all the time, but also at least 4 of the 6 heroes should be furious with them at this point, I mean everything they have done has cause immense suffering. Nah, the other 5 talk her out of it pretty easily. This is honestly character damaging for the original cast, especially for Fuu. Then we have a 4 year time skip, Karin, Yuki, and Togo are doing expeditions into the new territory that was revealed with the destruction of the void area, Fuu is a scientist now I guess, weird considering she wasn't characterized as being particularly interested in science or particularly intelligent, Itsuki is a singer, and Sonoko is the new leader of the Taisha I guess.
Art is fine, not much to say on that. The OST and voice acting are is still great, shame the voice actors got wasted on such a terrible script.
This might be the single most disappointing thing I've ever watched. Pacing is awful, characters are either flat or written downright terribly, and the story is functionally broken at times. Emotional moment have no weight to them since the characters aren't well written nor have I been given enough time with them to Stockholm Syndrome my way into caring about them. It feels like someone cynically went, "Crying scenes and characters yelling is what made YuYuYu popular so we'll do more of those, also throw in some gore in the middle because people like that in magical girl shows now." The first season got me to tear up multiple times during it, Washio Sumi no Shou got me to tear up a few times, even Yuusha no Shou got me feeling things occasionally, Dai Mankai no Shou I felt nothing but apathy towards and only really finished out of obligation. Just, absolutely disappointing.
