Critics and fans often mistake a long, detailed, and complicated story for a good one. Or, because video game culture seems more hermetic than the culture surrounding other media, critics and fans commit the perennial error of having little exposure to anything outside of video games and so, with a limited reference pool, mistake YU-NO for a particularly good story. Perhaps some let the overblown hype carry them away, as I did, but, unlike me, simply quit at some point before the Epilogue, satisfied with the beautiful world and scary moments and all the panties.
Among 1990s Japanese computer game porn, Kanno might be an above-average writer. YU-NO shares almost all of its writing and design problems with other PC-98 eroge. Finding an eroge with great music and a reasonable amount of intelligence in its script, as well as somewhat less pedophilia and substantially less rape than many of its contemporaries, ’90s coomers might well have had more than their loads blown with YU-NO. This media diet also may explain why they did not feel all the incest and misogynistic stuff detracted from the story’s beautiful genius. Forgive me if I consider this somewhat short of the standard for an outstanding true masterpiece not soon to be surpassed.
Whatever mojo one might extract from YU-NO comes through just as well in listening to Umemoto’s music, however intimately entangled it unfortunately is with the story, and looking at some of the moody and luscious pixel art. Whatever concepts one imagines based on these out of context will be superior to what they actually accompany. Even the lewd illustrations are more erotic without the script or narrative. Given the bloated writing, disappointing plot, frustrating and boring design, and overwhelming sleaze and gross semi-pedophiliac raise-and-fuck-your-kid weirdness, nobody except the most determined video game historians should waste their time with the overlong turgid hacky crass insensitive meandering point-and-click-everywhere-at-random-for-hours battle of attrition porn that is YU-NO. My warning, I know, might motivate some people to check what all the fuss is about, particularly as this review emphasizes relatively interesting portions. But having read this review, you cannot possibly have as bad a time with YU-NO as I did because you have an idea of what to expect—and you may not get genuinely invested in it. You will also probably play the Mages remake and be deprived even of good graphics to enjoy.
Depending on how one defines “badness,” YU-NO may not be the “worst” video game I ever played—after all, I played Potato Thriller. Is an incompetent and forgettable video game “worse” than a compelling video game with horrible messages? Is a mess from start to finish “worse” than art with potential that then veers off a bridge? If YU-NO has been so influential, so unsurpassed among visual novels, then the integrity of the very format must be interrogated. Or it would if YU-NO was a visual novel. YU-NO is an embarrassment. A more forceful takeaway you can find in the conclusion of “Reject Society, Embrace Incest.”
Ellison’s beast shouted love ironically. That “love” is the love of a power that would consign all other universes to suffering to benefit itself. This beast is the origin of “insanity,” by which Ellison seems to mean “evil,” an evil that afflicts humanity throughout history and wipes out human civilization in two nuclear wars. Perhaps the force-lines of Yu-no’s own madness still infect its medium and will also be our doom. Those who come into contact with Kanno’s work do seem to leave bewilderingly changed. If Yu-no chants about having sex with her father at the bound of this world, then I chant warnings to beware of the video game that bears this incestuous elf-child’s name.
YU-NO is on Switch btw. Please remember there is a Nintendo game about fucking your daughter.
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Bye-bye đź‘‹
