Yuki Yuna is a Hero: The Washio Sumi Chapter

Overview

The Washio Sumi Chapter is a six-episode prequel to Yuki Yuna is a Hero. This prequel follows the group of girls who were heroes before Yuna and her friends. This means Yuna isn’t yet in the series and so the protagonist is Sumi Washio.

Other than the characters being different, the plot is essentially the same from the first season. There are large enemies called the Vertex which come to destroy the Shinju (the tree of life). Some middle school girls are chosen by the Shinju to be heroes who fight the Vertex.

Since we know that Yuki Yuna is supposed to be a dark magical girl series from the first season, you would expect this prequel to be action-packed since it’s only six episodes long. However, that’s not the case. At least half of the series is just slice of life nonsense which feels like filler.

According to my notes, episode three, in particular, annoyed me, although I don’t even remember what happened in that episode at this point despite only watching it maybe two weeks ago. That’s how unimportant much of the content in the series was.

Characters

This time around there are only three main characters compared to the five in the first season. For this section, I’m going to include spoilers from season one because I’m assuming anyone reading this who cares about spoilers for this series has already watched that.

Sumi Washio is the protagonist of the series. We know her as Mimori Togo from the first season. That’s right, Wheelchair Homura is back, but this time she’s not in a wheelchair and doesn’t act completely like Homura from Madoka Magica.

Originally in the series, Sumi uses a bow, but this later gets upgraded to the guns we’re used to seeing her use.

The next character is Sonoko Nogi. Sonoko uses a spear that can transform into an umbrella-like shield. You may recognize her name because she’s the girl wrapped in bandages who used to be a hero that Yuna & friends meet in season one.

The final of the three characters is Gin Minowa. While Gin isn’t quite as good as her season one counterpart, Karin, she’s still probably the best character of these three. She uses two large swords to fight.

Conclusion

While I suppose I would say that this season was darker than season one, it didn’t have the same impact. Rather than feeling like a continuous story, the extreme jumps from slice of life to action and back again made it feel like separate stories were being mashed together. This was especially bad due to the short nature of the season (six episodes).

In the end, I enjoyed the prequel less than season one even though I went into it expecting to like it even more. I ended up giving The Washio Sumi Chapter a 4/10.

So while I feel the series went downhill between the first season and the prequel, there’s still a six-episode sequel that I have yet to watch. Here’s to hoping the sequel is able to redeem the prequel; although I don’t have high hopes since it’s the same short length.