Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we are returning to the field for one more challenge against God, as the brave champions of Yuki Yuna is a Hero face the potential destruction of their entire world. After three hundred years of stewardship, the Divine Tree is nearing the end of its life, and requires (surprise surprise) the sacrifice of a maiden “bride” to restore itself. Of course, even this wouldn’t result in the continuation of their current world – it would result in humanity joining the “land of the gods,” which sounds a whole lot like some instrumentality-adjacent death of human consciousness.
But really, have we come to expect any better from the Divine Tree or its intermediaries? As Nogi bitterly put it, truly embracing this cause demands a surrender of all human sentiment, of the small acts of charity and precious personal connections that define all that is good, all that is worth saving. This reorientation towards a denial of human consciousness is really nothing new for this faith; all along, the Divine Tree has sought to transform the brightest lights of humanity into fuel for its own perpetuation, seeing this as the highest calling to which humans might aspire. Thus stasis is maintained through the surrender of humanity itself, a variable which has no value in the Divine Tree’s cosmology, and which is accordingly drained from those who most fully embrace its divine purpose. But to live without humanity is to be an animated corpse, a semblance of consciousness with no greater conscience. It is the mission of the best of us to reject such a cynical ethos, and magical girls are the best of us made manifest, the living prayer that “if anyone says there’s no reason to hope, I’ll prove them wrong every single time.” Let’s get to proving!