However, the women have detailed nipples, creating an unsettling effect where the characters are halfway human rather than fully stylized dolls. At risk of revealing myself to be, let’s say, cultured, if YU-NO must contain this material, pixilation is a better method for preserving the sexual anatomy. Even suggestive scenery censors, while goofier and harder to pull off, could raise the level of titillation well above the oozing body horror mannequins that are YU-NO’s characters. At least scenery censors could be creative.
Instead, the last shot of Takuya in YU-NO has him, naked beside his also naked daughter who is also his sexual partner, at an angle from which the player can clearly see he has no penis or testicles—nobody forced them to draw Takuya in this position, but I suppose, to really achieve the creator’s pure genius exhilarating artistic vision, every aspect of the ending had to be a piss take. Well, since he has no cock, perhaps this means Takuya “only” performed cunnilingus on Yu-no. What a relief. (It does not mean this.) Titillation lies in the possibility of seeing what is on the other side of Mitsuki’s thong. But there is nothing on the other side, so even visually these “erotic” moments are not hot but nakedly ridiculous (pun intended). YU-NO pulls off superior eroticism with characters sitting around fully clothed engaging in no sexual dialogue than when depicting foreplay and sex.
Most of the sex scenes are basically inoffensive and easily skipped through. A few stick out, erection-like, for reasons beyond repulsion. Kanna’s H scene revolves around a sexual fantasy I have not encountered elsewhere: the girl needs you to have sex with her to save her mental health by proving she can be truly loved instead of used or reviled. Takuya and Mio have sex because, trapped in a cave, despairing, and already having a crush on Takuya, Mio wants to lose her virginity before she dies. In the lighting, Mio seems corpselike. And it is odd that her bust and waist become markedly larger on her route than they appear in her normal sprites.
But the buildup to this scene, a time lapse of Takuya and Mio alone in the cave, at least establishes an emotional rawness before the corny conclusion.
