Watching YU-NO is like researching a piece of anime history disguised as a piece of entertainment media. It's something that really would have been far more impactful had it aired 20 years ago than it is today, but nevertheless it's interesting to watch for educational purposes perhaps more so than the story itself.
In essence, YU-NO is based on a classic visual novel from all the way back in 1996. At the time of its release, there wasn't really anything else like it on the market. Visual novels back then were still relatively unambitious and it wasn't really a medium attempting any grand storylines until YU-NO ... came along. I guess you can say that YU-NO was for the visual novel medium what something like Evangelion was to anime for its time. Something that paved the way for so many other works in the decades thereafter. But in the same way that Evangelion is not normally considered anything revolutionary for people that watch it for the first time today, the same problem can be seen here as watching the anime adaptation of YU-NO 23 years after its original VN release will make it a lot more difficult seeing what the big deal is supposed to be.
It is however quite clear that a lot of famous anime have taken ideas and inspiration from YU-NO originally. Steins;Gate might be the most obvious parallel there seeing as its time leap machine is clearly based on YU-NO's reflection device, and its world line and attractor field concepts are pretty much directly taken from it as well. You can kind of think of YU-NO as the grandfather of all sci-fi and time travel-oriented visual novel stories, which has surely also spilled over into other mediums in Japan over the years considering that the game has always been amongst the top rated VNs in the country because of its legacy.
That said, the actual anime itself isn't really that special by today's standards. It goes through the various routes one at a time in a way which is not particularly unusual for VN adaptations but it comes with the regular problem of whichever heroine who's route it's not currently on seemingly disappearing from the story all of a sudden which feels quite unnatural. The characters themselves are also fairly bland, and you're often left with the feeling that a bunch of content has probably been cut out from the original since the pacing can be quite jumpy. As a result it can sometimes get confusing and it's a bit difficult to really settle down with it. Eventually things does start to make more sense about what is going on in the grander scheme of things but it takes quite a long time to get there, and once it gets to the final arc things will have changed so much it feels like you're watching a completely different anime than you did at the beginning. A better anime admittedly, but nevertheless the continuity of it all feels a bit strange as a result. On the other hand, the plot reveals towards the end are quite shocking in a lot of ways, and I mean that in a positive sense. It somehow managed to tie all the loose plot threads together in a much more complex manner of fashion than one would anticipate.
Overall though it's a bit difficult knowing whether to recommend YU-NO or not because the main reasons for watching it are not really related to the anime itself but rather just because of the source material's legacy and impact on the industry in the past two decades. It's something more worth watching to satisfy your curiosity and to learn something in the process rather than for what entertainment value it possesses by itself.
But as a side note I can in that case also mention that the 1080p remake of the visual novel is being officially released on PC in Japan and on multiple platforms in English on October 1st 2019. In other words, literally the same day as this anime ended. I'm pretty sure that's not a coincidence so we can definitely assume the main purpose of this adaptation was to boost sales and interests of the VN's remake, and I think I might as well just go ahead and oblige to that because if you haven't seen YU-NO yet and you've been thinking of whether you should do it or not... your best bet is most likely to just go ahead and pick up the just released VN remake instead. I'm probably going to do the same one of these days.
Edit: Or so I said but I didn't actually get around to reading it until early 2022. Good game though!
Alternative Titles Synonyms: Yuno Japanese: この世の果てで恋を唄う少女YU-NO Information Type: TV Episodes: 26 Status: Finished Airing Aired: Apr 2, 2019 to Oct 1, 2019 Premiered: Spring 2019 Broadcast: Tuesdays at 23:00 (JST) Producers: Genco, AT-X, BS Fuji, MAGES., NBCUniversal Entertainment Japan, Nagoya Broadcasting Network, bilibili, Yomiuri TV Enterprise, ABC Animation Licensors: Funimation Studios: feel. Source: Visual novel Duration: 23 min. per ep. Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older Statistics Score: 6.591 (scored by 51,127 users) 1 indicates a . Ranked: #63732 2 based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded. Popularity: #1469 Members: 158,674 Favorites: 509 Available AtResources |
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