Yuki Yuna is a Hero Season 2

Episode 10

If last episode was one of the action highlights of this second season, then this episode represents one of its dramatic highlights. Accomplishing this while also featuring some of the series' most fun character interactions to date just makes it all the more remarkable.

Yuki Yuna Is a Hero does a lot of things well, but one of its strongest aspects has always been its group interactions; I've never seen a magical girl series that handled them better. The Sonoko/Washu/Gin trio got off to a great start before Gin died, but even they didn't click as well as the Hero Club, and Sonoko's addition just adds fuel to the fire. Their interactions are so casual and natural that they can smoothly transition between silly scenarios without seeming forced, and that's rare even for a slice-of-life series. These scenes dominate the first half of the episode, where the topic might suddenly bounce from Fu studying for her upcoming high school entrance exams to Mimori pretending to commit hari-kari (because she was sort of responsible for Fu not getting to study) to Sonoko and Mimori radiating “alpha waves” to help Itsuki for an upcoming concert. It's frenetic and fun even as it blithely sails over more serious matters like Yuki having rescued Mimori from the “Black Hole.”

A truly serious tone does underlie all the frivolity, and Yuki stands at the center of it. After all, she does have that scorched symbol on her chest from rescuing Mimori, and she's anxious about telling anyone because every time she even thinks about doing so, she starts to see burn marks appear in the same spot on the others. She comes to think that those marks are calamitous, as each of the girls has minor problems after their mark first appears, and Fu gets hit by a car when Yuki comes so close to spilling the beans that the mark blooms into its full size on her chest. Assuming that her theory is correct (and we have no reason to doubt it at this point), this has abruptly become the arc's defining mystery. Does it have something to do with the petals that ominously fall from the Shinjyu-sama in the opening scene? Why would whatever power is behind this not want Yuki talking about it? And why would Yuki refer to it as “the duty” or her being “kept alive”? Further, how did Fu end up so badly hurt despite her fairy seeming to have protected her? She probably got hit by blows as hard as that car while in Hero mode all the time, after all. It can't be an innocuous detail in a series like this.

Regardless of the truth behind all this, the way Yuki isolates herself as a result allows us to see a bit of her home life for the first time, making her the last core cast member to get such treatment. Her prolonged emotional isolation even when in the company of the other girls, along with some superb use of musical score, set up Yuki's emotional meltdown in the final scene as she finds herself caught between some nasty development and the conviction that she can't safely tell the others about it. At least Sonoko seems to have picked up on something being off with Yuki, perhaps because she's had more time than the others to dwell on their situation.

The artistic quality of the episode may not be perfect, but it still supports the comedic parts well and shines in its precise execution of the more poignant moments. Put that together with the fabulous music and sharp writing and you have one of the most finely-executed episodes of any anime that I've seen so far this season.

Rating: A

Yuki Yuna is A Hero Season 2 is currently streaming on Amazon's Anime Strike.