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!

Episode 6

We begin where we left off, with that great magma stormfront floating across the ocean. This franchise is in general quite solid when it comes to depictions of cosmic horror, which is a distinctive strength, as one of the defining features of cosmic horror is that it is difficult to conceptualize visually – it’s too vast, too distant, too ominous and oblivious to our scale of existence to even come across as possessing malice towards specific individuals. Between the designs of the vertices and stuff like this, Yuki Yuna does a fine job of portraying threats that seem both menacing and incomprehensible, often coming off more as visually cacophonous natural disasters than active agents of destruction

“With this, everyone here will become one with the Divine Tree.” To their own acolytes, the church faithful don’t even pretend that their new world will preserve individual identities

Ooh, lovely composition with the twisted remains of the bridge caught in profile against the red stormfront. A reminder that this has always been a losing fight, a slow retreat from the inevitable

And at last, we transition to the Divine Tree’s spirit realm for the first and last time this season

“Only You Can Make Me Happy.” An episode title that seems to tie in to one of Togo’s statements from the preceding episode, when she told Yuna that even if she’s trying to protect everyone, her death would itself be a cause of great unhappiness to everyone who cares about her. Togo couldn’t be happy in a world without Yuna

Yuna does look pretty spiffy in her elaborate wedding robes

“Don’t underestimate me. I still have my Mankai left!” Oh boy, Karin. If they manage to resolve this conflict in a way that averts Yuna’s ceremony, I can’t imagine the Divine Tree will be so eager to bless them with fresh new bodies

“Thoroughly watch my once-in-a-lifetime rampage!” She’s certainly carved out her niche as the sort of self-serious jock of the group

“Itsuki, can I ask you to handle this?” A clear marker of development in the sisters’ relationship, with Fuu now trusting in her sister to handle such dangerous tasks, rather than always treating her as a dependent child

And of course, Togo’s way ahead of them, already racing towards Yuna in her Mankai barge

Between Karin, Itsuki, and Nogi, they actually have a balanced fighter-archer-defender party to hold off the forces of oblivion

Thus Fuu and Togo lead the charge back towards Yuna. Definitely some satisfaction in seeing this team finally turn their weapons around, and at last make their assault on their most persistent enemy

With its roots now writhing about like tentacles, the Divine Tree certainly feels like as much of a cosmic horror as any of the other foes they’ve faced

Solid color design differentiating these different forces at play, which is pretty crucial here – with no defining facial or bodily features separating these vague creatures of the abyss, color-coding them becomes a lot more important

Feels appropriate for Fuu that while her companions’ power-ups involve convoluted vehicles and bonus limbs, her ability is just Sword But Bigger

Thus we move to a direct parallel of this season’s first act, as Togo pierces through the barrier and enters a space beyond human comprehension, the root basin at the heart of the Divine Tree. Feels a bit like entering Ash Lake, actually

Rather than the roots of trees, Yuna is bound in an array of white snakes, creatures often framed as messengers or envoys of the gods. Toei’s very first theatrical film called on similar legends, and they of course also pop up in Nadeko’s Monogatari narratives

“Someone has to do this.” A persistent question in mythology and philosophy alike – what suffering must be endured to ensure a civil society, and how can that suffering be judiciously allocated? The power of the magical girl is to say “I disagree with this framework altogether,” but obviously our current world, with suffering largely distributed on arbitrary inherited lines of wealth and culture, has yet to discover a satisfying answer

“Yuna! Please say the truth. If you’re scared, just tell me.” Togo cutting right through Yuna’s desperate mantra from the last few weeks. Like the Divine Tree’s own scriptures, Yuna has been reframing whatever parts of the Hero Club’s tenets she can to support her current actions – but in truth, the overall philosophy embodied by those tenets is far kinder than her revisions, and focused on a spirit of mutual support and collective trust

“I don’t want to die!” At least, Yuna admits her pain. After a season of tricks determined to coopt her power through isolating her, she chooses honesty and solidarity, the club’s greatest weapons against the darkness

It’s a common and understandably resonant refrain, particularly for a collectivist society like Japan. It can be easier to do what society asks of you, what the world at large assumes is correct, even if it means embracing the collective suffering of others. But from Utena to One Piece to Madoka and beyond, anime champions the fundamental act of bravery that is declaring your independence from such expectations, and your determination to live and sacrifice according to your own feelings, not the will of the many

As ever, when the girls get too close to breaching protocol, their cutesy familiars step in to block their progress. The blatant “we love being evil” aesthetic of the modern right sorta undercuts this truth, but oppression has often clothed itself in a friendly guise, an offer to ensure safety at the cost of agency

“I don’t want a world you can only gain by sacrificing my friends and other people.” If that’s our only possible future, then let it end here. I appreciate that we’ve looped around to Togo’s final first-season stance, proving her initial fury at the nature of the Tree correct

“Divine Tree, there are many different kinds of people. If you really want to save them, put your trust in people!” Thus Togo’s charge is joined by all the magical girls who’ve sacrificed themselves, who trusted in their friends and fought till their last breath, who believed in a cause that was ultimately unworthy of their faith. The Divine Tree is fueled by dissidents, and now at last they will have their say

The barrier breaks in a great rain of golden leaves, echoing the imagery of the Divine Tree’s decay – but now it is a joyous image, like flowers strewn about Yuna in celebration

Gyuki at least seems to respect this decision, imbuing Yuna with a killer new form to fight the great fire

Nice reversal here too, as the tenets Yuna was misusing are again framed as a collective battle cry of the hero club

Rather than just defeating their immediate adversaries, Yuna’s attack actually seems to expand the Tree’s range of influence altogether, perhaps securing a larger sanctuary for humanity

Thus the Divine Tree is banished from this world, leaving humanity with few resources but no sacrifice-hungry overseer. And its followers, the first to embrace non-existence as a fragment of the tree, got their wish as well – they too are banished from this earth, lost in the collapse of their false god

It’s actually Aki-sensei who provides the final monologue, moved enough by Nogi’s words to believe in their future more than the Divine Tree

And Done

Whew! Well, it took three seasons and far more near-apocalypses, but in the end our magical girls successfully killed God. After attempting to bind innocents to its service through the dogma of religion, the optimism of ignorance, and eventually the hostage-taking of these last few episodes, a wholescale rebellion of its most distinguished warriors seemed to finally reach whatever conscience the Divine Tree possesses, and convince it to step aside and let humanity choose its own path. The universe is still a chaotic and hostile place, but when has that ever not been true? The important thing is that Yuna, the hero club, and humanity at large are now free to practice their most noble discipline: the simple act of kindness, of charity expressed towards your friends and community, of giving consciously and freely such that our collective path might be a little easier. There is more dignity and grandeur in our clasping of hands than in the dictates of any god or king; and when we rise together, even mountains can fall.

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