English Dub Review: YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of This World “The Promised Ritual”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

When we left off last week, Ayumi had just revealed to Takuya that the oncoming meteorite can only be stopped by performing the ritual. But there’s a catch – there’s a 99% chance that it will destroy her in the process. She’s accepted this, though, and Takuya gifts her a stone from the reflector device. Underneath the castle in the sewers, Ryuzoji evades Eriko and sends her splashing.

The day of the ritual arrives, and everything is ready. Yu-No enters the Mother computer chamber thingie willingly with Takuya wishing her well. All is going according to plan until Ryuzoji shows up. Even though Ayumi planned for this and is able to trap him in the sphere bubble again, she didn’t anticipate his next move: opening a dimensional rift and summoning a horde of havoc-reeking spirits.

Our Take:

It’s the penultimate episode of YU-NO, and all things are coming together. Amanda and the rebels have been pardoned by Divine Emperor Ayumi, Takuya and Yu-No have been reunited, and Eriko has finally captured Ryuzoji… wait, forget about that last one. Yes, the final conflict of the series wouldn’t be such a big deal if Eriko actually did her job and took Ryuzoji down. I’m sure she’s doing her best and all, but the entire time she stood there listening to him monologue at her, I kept thinking Just shoot him already! Apart from little annoyances like this, The Promised Ritual is a pretty solid stage-setting episode for the finale next week.

One thing that really caught my attention this episode was Yu-No herself. Not only is she the title character of the show, but she’s the daughter of our main character and a priestess. As she mentions, it’s almost as if she was born to sacrifice herself in the finale for the good of the world. She seems almost too at ease about it all. Destroying yourself to save the entire human race is a heavy burden for a teenager to bear and I wish the show would let us into Yu-No’s mindset a bit more. Heroes are always more interesting when they have flaws and struggle with doubts like those of us in the real world.

When it comes to Ryuzoji, I also want some more development. We know that he’s a cross-dimensional space alien whose true form is not human. But why does he do what he does? For one thing, his motives are so unclear to me. It’s one thing to want to destroy the world for a good reason, but it’s quite another to try and annihilate the entire universe just because you feel like creating some chaos. We don’t really get much insight into the dimensional criminal’s true motives. He tells Ayumi that he’s doing it because everyone eventually dies, life is meaningless, etc. But that’s such a boring, pointless motive. There’s gotta be something more… unless Ryuzoji wants to be merely a cliched villain with no memorable motives.

This week’s dub had some well-written lines and pretty natural performances, although I could use a bit more theatrics from Ryuzoji. Also – shout-out to the dude the subtitles list as ‘Man 25E’. Great work, man. “The Divine Emperor isn’t evil? It was all some kind of misunderstanding?” What a shock to the poor resistance members back at base camp. “Then this is obviously something I have to do. In fact, it seems I was literally born to do this.” Yu-No is so selfless it’s almost unbelievable. I wonder if Sayless possessing her has something to do with it? “All life is self-serving. It just so happens, I’m no exception.” Yeah, okay Ryuzoji, but how does destroying the entire universe serve you in any way? You won’t have any more people to destroy after they’re all gone! “Yeah, I know.” Amanda’s response when Takuya tells her to be careful is funny because of how obvious it is. Like, does Takuya not think she’s going to try and be careful in this situation? “Thank you for being with me on my last night here.” Amanda vanishing is sad and all, but I like how it does kinda match up with her willingness to die in the prison escape earlier. She’s definitely got some issues to work out.

The Promised Ritual shows how even the best of plans can go awry once you throw an intergalactic space criminal into the mix. This episode doesn’t go as far into developing characterization as I would like, but it was an entertaining way to set up the pins for next time. I’m looking forward to it unless Ryuzoji somehow enters our dimension and destroys the world before Funimation can upload the next episode.