Aside from the goofy design of Kaori and occasional illustrations that are weird for reasons other than distracting or (particularly for the child Yu-no) distasteful eroticism, the character sprites suffer from a peculiar flaw: none of the men blink. Every woman’s sprite blinks, even in event CGs. The security guard at Geo Technics, an unnamed bit character, receives a blinking animation. Meanwhile, not a single man’s sprite, no matter how important he is to story, no matter how often he appears, ever blinks. Call Sakaimachi “Innsmouth” because it’s full of fish-men. Is this some weird bug of the translation patch?
By incorporating illustrations previously exclusive to the Sega Saturn release, the TLWiki translation introduces a new graphical flaw. The hackers opted to squish and stretch this artwork to fit within YU-NO’s attractive gray HUD, resulting in wonky character proportions and shoddy background details. While this method would not be optimal either, the TLWiki team should have cropped these illustrations instead to preserve their intended proportions.
This issue is most noticeable in the above artwork of Amanda lying beside the campfire, the moon egg-shaped and Amanda so long and thin one could snap her like a twig.
The strongest point of YU-NO is easily Ryu Umemoto’s incredible music. Some is pure magic, particularly combined with the evocative pixel art—at least when a goofier character or panty shot is not on screen. “Movement 2,” a kind of daytime overworld theme, reminds me a bit of Chrono Trigger, maybe for the bass. Somehow it sounds like how the sea breeze of Sakaimachi would feel, capturing the spirit of a journey beginning. YU-NO achieves moments of genuine wonder and beauty—finding the Hypersense Stone in Geotechnics (featuring the track “Rare Metal”), traveling through the woods to the well on Ryuuzouji’s estate, seeing Kanna waiting alone in the twilight—and Umemoto’s music and the soft light and softer eroticism of the pixel art bridge most of the distance to capturing this power.
