Yuki Yuna is a Hero

This story is a mess. And I'm writing this one review for the entire series. To preface, I love drama and dark stories, but when it's done well. The story as a whole; from the original, the prequel and the last season, is constantly trying to figure out what it's trying to be. Sure the visuals are amazing, the enemy designs are great, but beyond that, we get a story of girls who are forced to save the world and the organization who is helping is either evil or very oblivious and the writers can't make up their minds on which direction they chose to go. Instead of typical school drama such as romance, heart-break, betrayal, social ostracisation, we get needless trash getting piled up on these girls to show how "horrible this world is" in the same amount and intensity of teen drama.

When building a world for a dark story, it's fair to show that the world is not all sunshine and rainbows. Because that's how real life is too. But when everything the writers are trying to throw at us is more and more stuff to make us feel bad for the characters, it's not balanced. Sure, it was never balanced to begin with considering at first the girls seemed to be equipped with deus ex machinas, but with two extremes, the show lacks the middle ground and any substance for it to be considered fair. If this was a show about girls doing over the top stuff and purely for the eye candy factor, I wouldn't mind the plot, or the lack thereof, but when the writers are clearly trying to put in heavy plot, it's apparent that either they were too ambitious or do not know how to write.

Speaking of lacking, the show is called "Yuki Yuna is a Hero" but the original fails to even bring her character to be main character worthy. The other support characters carry her weight in being more memorable until the 6 episode sequel. But even with those 6 episodes of her finally being a main character, she lacks substance. Just "oh no, things are going bad because of me, therefore I must disappear". Fuu's guilt with bringing her sister along, Tougou's conflict with wanting to end the suffering that caused her and her friends by the god or whatever (useless pair of chopsticks, if I'm being frank) was written so well BUT it had to be ruined with Yuna intervening with "because we're all friends". Save that kind of stuff for kids shows, seriously. The biggest problem with protagonists like that is they always have to bring up their friendship and that damned phrase "I understand". We never understood Tougou's feelings until the prequel and with how Fuu felt, there is no way she would "understand" any of them, but to be such a nosy meddling character is exactly the reason why she fails as a character. Sure you could argue that a lot of anime protagonists do that as well, but with all the series I've seen, I have never met a character with no backbone and so little personality and little understanding of the people around her trying to be such a caring and understanding person. This isn't Persona 3 where we have to deal with a protagonist with the personality (and looks) of a bathroom tile, but we're dealing with a character that is using ignorance and baseless positivity to make the supporting cast's suffering seem like their emotions were overreacting.

In conclusion, is it worth your time? Well, like I've mentioned, the visuals are great. The music is absolutely amazing. But the needless drama to make the world and story "dark", the lack of any clarity and direction it wants to take the story, the lackluster ending after so much build up, the MAIN CHARACTER as a whole, and least we forget, the needless fanservice is what killed this show. If you want to watch this show, you'd be better off watching clips on YouTube to get the gist of the show than spend 9 hours of your life like I did. Or better yet, just watch a better show.