When a helping club can be so much more.
What They Say:
Yuki Yuna is a Hero contains episodes 1-12 of Season 1, episodes 1-6 of Season 2: The Washio Sumi Chapter, episodes 1-6 of The Hero Chapter, and episodes 1-12 of The Great Mankai Chapter directed by Seiji Kishi plus Churutto! directed by Seiya Miyajima.
Lots of people talk about helping others, but Yuna Yuki and her friends Mimori Togo, Fu, and Itsuki have gone a step further, forming a “Hero Club” that people can ask for assistance. Then things go further than they ever expected when they find themselves offered real super powers in exchange for helping defeat the Vertexes, who seek to destroy the Divine Tree and kill all life!
It’s an easy decision to make, but what they don’t know is the price that each of them will have to pay for their new abilities. With great power comes great responsibility, but in this case it also comes with a devastating cost for every girl who enters the Hero System. Get ready for the genre-bending series that changed Magical Girl anime forever in the complete multi-series collection of Yuki Yuna is a Hero!
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this is pretty solid as we get the original Japanese language track as well as the previously created English language track, both of which are in stereo and encoded using the DTS-HD MA lossless codec. The English dub for this series isn’t exactly tricky but it only exists for the first season, so after that first twelve episodes it’s only in Japanese. That said, the series works a good mix of dialogue and action with some decent music cues along the way to give it a little extra life and some solid flourish during the bigger action sequences. In general, it works the forward soundstage to present a show that gives us some big action pieces and has plenty of impact where it needs to, especially with the music. Dialogue is well placed throughout as there are at times a range of styles of dialogue being used but it’s still a fairly typical stereo mix overall without a lot of placement and only a few minor areas of depth at times. The music populates the show in a good way by adding more overall warmth to it where appropriate and the opening and closing sequences are where it’s at its richest.
Video:
Originally running between 2014 and 2021 for the material included, the transfer for this TV series is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.78:1 in 1080p using the AVC codec. The show is spread across six discs broken out in a kind of seasonal way overall so everything has plenty of space to work with. Animated by Studio Gokumi, the show has a really good design about it overall with plenty of detail in the characters and backgrounds that gives it a bigger life than a lot of shows of this nature. It also really does a fantastic job when it comes to the colors, giving it a lot more pop and vibrancy to it in both characters and backgrounds. There’s little in the way to fuss about when it comes to the transfer overall as colors are bold and solid and there’s barely a hint of line noise in a few scenes during panning sequences. Beyond that, it’s just a visual treat.
Packaging:
The packaging for this release comes in a standard-sized Blu-ray case with the two discs held against the interior walls. The front cover is one that works well enough as it uses a familiar key visual even if it is one that feels just a bit too washed out and overblown in the lighting because of the backgrounds from the logo. It gives us a good look at the main cast and costume design and that goes a long way here in drawing in people. The back cover is fairly traditional as well as it leans into the pink hues with a few shots from the show along the sides and a decent summary of the overall premise. Add in a few colorful taglines as well for a bit more pop. The disc and episode count are clearly listed as are the extras for the release. The technical grid covers everything well and the production information for folks like me that read them is definitely easy to read. Sadly, the release has no inserts, booklets, or artwork on the reverse side.
Menu:
The menu design for this release is fairly traditional in its layout, which is to be expected, as we get the navigation along the left that goes for a decent approach with its iconography, colors, and the text itself while still being easy to read as it breaks it down by episode numbers and titles. Going with shades of pink at the start, for example, isn’t a surprise. The right side features the character artwork against other the lightly detailed and somewhat indistinct background so that you’re drawn to it pretty well. The logo is through the center at the start with the character artwork and it does give it all a bit more weight with its design. Submenus load quickly and the navigation works well as the pop-up menu during regular playback.
Extras:
The only extras included in this release are the clean versions of the opening and closing sequences.
Yuki Yuna is a Hero was an original series that came out back in the fall of 2014 and was a title at a time that generated a lot of interest. I mean, obviously so as it has several sequels that go all the way into 2021 for it. The property was one that got attention with Takahiro creating it and being an original work with Studio Gokumi and it did well in getting a bunch of spinoff projects from manga and light novels to some visual novel games and more. And lots of merchandise. But it was hampered along the way in accessibility in North America through some of its streaming initially and then being released on home video in very limited form by Pony Canyon USA. And even then they only dubbed the first season, which left a lot of fans behind from looking at picking up more as there was no dub. But now, the main series anime has now found a complete home video release through Sentai Filmworks and it delivers the show as strongly as it can with the materials it has.
The series is one that certainly falls into a familiar kind of work to a degree, one we saw a lot of in the wake of Madoka Magica and its attempt to play in the magical girl field anew. Here, we’re introduced to a group of girls that live in Sanshu, a fictional city on the island of Shikoku that’s pretty much a familiar modern-day place. Through a flashback, we’re introduced to the girls that are members of the middle school hero club, which is your standard club that focuses on helping others. They play up the being a hero thing in a cute enough way and the cast themselves are pretty decent, albeit still middle school students. They do a good job in helping others but they end up in a situation where they’re caught up by larger forces that whisk them to a forest. It’s here, amid the various monsters called Vertex, they are blessed by the guardian deity of Shinju and given a phone app by an organization devoted to her that will give them the ability to transform into heroes. It’s a nice little familiar play on the magical girl genre but it doesn’t stray far from the basics.
With the threat of destruction out there, the girls are living that dual life thing where they have to deal with the club itself but also these darker forces. The main difference is that unlike the more episodic older shows from the days of yore, things have more of a streamlined plan here and they’re better at handling the emotional arc of the characters. There’s some strong stuff out of that at times, especially with Mimori (and notably with English voice actor Erika Harlacher) as they deal with all of these pressures and their own personal problems. The general premise is one that most magical girl fans will find familiar but, as always with these kinds of shows, it’s a combination of the details and trappings of what it means to be a magical girl here and the animation. I really like the designs that we get here throughout as the characters have a neat look without being overdone and it doesn’t try to play up the sexuality, which is a huge plus. And I like the focus on service as well with the community-building aspects of it. But the show is pretty standard in a lot of ways so it comes down to the depth in which you’re a fan of magical girls and if you’re looking for something that stands out. I do think this one isn’t just a cookie-cutter piece and being an original work helps it a lot even as it moves through some of the familiar tropes and cliches of such things – especially for a middle school set series.
Yuna as the lead of the group is a familiar one and her focus on service by working the club is a good one and she carries that big positive energy through everything – which makes the moments of weakness stand out all the more until she reasserts her resolve. Mimori is still my favorite of the group and it seems like the “best friend” of the lead is always my think. Mimori is big on protecting others and she has a darker story mixed within because of what we see early on with her in a wheelchair, having lost the use of her legs in a car accident that she doesn’t remember much of. This provides a good hook as it progresses and in the first season has some strong emotional moments for her as well. While they’re both second-year students, we get a third year with Fu who is the club president. She’s got the serious thing going on pretty well because of the loss of her own parents and the way she cares for her sister, a first-year named Itsuki that’s also in the club. They set a solid foundation for thing that builds from there with others coming in as well along the way, with some standing out and others actually dying.
The property as a whole has a lot of material to it and while it started as an original thing with the visual novels coming out, there’s a lot of manga and other things as well that makes it a pretty rich world. I don’t think it makes it an issue in enjoying just the show directly as they crafted it well enough that you don’t feel you miss things. It’s more that if you know/play the other elements, you’ll have a greater appreciation of it and more context to certain things. It is, at its core, a pretty standard magical girl property so there really aren’t any surprises here. But what it does it help to further the evolution of such things that we’ve had over the years. Coming from a place of seeing a bunch of what existed in the 80s and the heyday of the 90s, the changes in the past twenty years as its evolved have been great to watch. Yuki Yuna is a Hero is one that leans pretty well into that and pulls from Madoka Magica in a number of ways but doesn’t go quite as bleak as that, which helps to those looking for something engaging without being destructive to your soul.
In Summary:
I ended up watching this set over a few weeks because it is three seasons of material and binging something like this just doesn’t work for me. Taking it in smaller chunks and going through the emotional ride that these kids go on is definitely a lot of fun. It’s really unfortunate that the show was hobbled in some ways over the years with it first being on Crunchyroll and then the second season on Anime Strike with the third season showing up on HIDIVE. That kind of split can make it hard for more casual viewers, which do make up a large chunk of viewers, to follow it. So getting this complete collection of the main TV series in one set is really welcome. There’s still other material out there but this is the driving narrative and it looks great with the encoding we get, the dub for the first season really delivered for me, and the packaging design makes it clear exactly what you’re getting. I’ve long wanted to see this since it first came out and to be able to have it all in one place is perfect. Fans of this genre will definitely enjoy what’s here and it’s strong enough to draw in those that may not look to the genre much as well..
Features:
Japanese DTS-HD MA 2.0 Language, English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Language (Season 1 Only), English Subtitles, Clean Opening, Clean Closing
Content Grade: B
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: B-
Released By: Sentai Filmworks
Release Date: September 27th, 2022
MSRP: $99.98
Running Time: 900 Minutes
Video Encoding: 1080p AVC
Aspect Ratio: 1.78;1 Widescreen
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
