Kono Yo no Hate de Koi wa Utau Shojo YU-NO First Impressions

“Some famous doctor once said that dreams are manifestations of repressed desires. If that’s true what does a dream of my dead parents mean?”

The only thing I knew about Kono Yo no Hate de Koi wa Utau Shojo YU-NO when I went into its first episode was that it was based upon a particularly early entry in the visual novel genre of gaming. Kono Yo no Hate de Koi wa Utau Shojo YU-NO or YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of the World was a 1996 eroge released by ELF Corporation, and given the nature of the adaptation, none of this surprises me. Arguably, the aspect which surprised me the most was the fact that I believe I have actually heard of ELF Corporation, though I have no clue why that would be the case. Back during the summer anime season, I provided a questionably modest rating to Feel’s less than stellar visual novel adaptation Island, and it appears the gods have seen fit to provide me with an opportunity to rectify my past mistakes. It took little time for me to recognize that YU-NO wasn’t going to be any good. The production values are some of the worst I’ve seen in a while, if you exclude contributions by GoHands. There is plenty of looped walking animation, poorly integrated backgrounds, and poor character modeling that’s often inconsistent. To put it bluntly, YU-NO has all the narrative trappings of a generic visual novel-based anime from more than a decade ago, and roughly equivalent production quality.

The story follows Arima Takuya, a high school student whose solitary defining characteristic is being a pervert. He starts off the episode by staring up a teacher’s skirt, much to her… apathy? I guess if you wear a purple corset and fishnet stockings to your job as a high school teacher you may have a different personal definition for harassment. Anyway, Takuya seems to spend every moment that he’s on screen making some allusion to sex, panties, periods or a matter-of-fact reference to his father’s recent demise. If this sounds like a poor formula for constructing a main character, you’d be correct. I don’t hate him. There isn’t enough there for me to hate. He’s just an annoyance who is unfortunately central to the narrative. The rest of the first episode deals with planned construction around a weird landmass near the local beach, alternate dimensions, an elven girl who appears naked on that landmass and a history teacher turned mastermind. If that sounds like nonsense, then I have properly conveyed what it felt like to watch this first episode.

This episode looks awful. The character designs look flat and uninteresting, and, strangely enough, Takuya is the worst offender in this regard. It seems strange that the main character would have the blandest character design, but he looks like an amalgam of a couple dozen anime protagonists with the sole intent of constructing the most nondescript character imaginable. The framing of shots is terrible as well. I remember when I was trying to find screenshots from the first episode of Black Clover I had difficulty finding ones that stood out because every shot was structured in a mundane and uninteresting manner, but YU-NO makes that series look like a work made by the Renaissance masters. Frankly, I just picked three moments that I felt exemplified the qualities of this work (or lack thereof). I said in the first week of the year that W’z was going to be the title to beat when it came to which was the ugliest series of 2019. YU-NO admittedly doesn’t even come close to unseating that champion, but, of the titles I’ve been witness to so far, it has a reasonable claim to the second place position.

Before I wrap up, a few Notes and Nitpicks:

• I kept feeling like Takuya was going off model. I’m not actually sure that is the case, as I may have just kept forgetting what he looked like from one scene to the next.
• This series needs to stay away from characters with facial hair. Between the gun toting history teacher, and another character seen in the opening who may be Takuya’s father, it appears that YU-NO’s animation is doing no favors to those with follically inclined faces.
• This show didn’t do itself any favors with that title… or with anything else for that matter, but an obnoxiously long title isn’t exactly putting the best foot forward.
• There is an implication that Takuya slept with a former member of the high school staff, but it’s hard to be positive since this episode doesn’t bother with proper introductions.
• The character of Arima Ayumi is something of a mystery to me. She is referred to as Takuya’s mother, but since he alludes to both of his parents now being dead, it would be natural to assume that she is his step-mother. However, that assumption also has problems as she seems oddly unfazed by the recent passing of her husband.