In the realm of anime- and manga-adjacent media, even outside of fetish pornography, YU-NO is not alone in sexualizing children or constructing longform scenarios about parents marrying their children (e.g. Usagi Drop) or other forms of incestuous romance (e.g. Vampire Knight). Nor, to defuse potential orientalist condescension, are the issues with YU-NO exclusive to Japanese media. Yu-no herself reflects a broader, international phenomenon of sci-fi and fantasy characters with child’s minds in sexualized adult bodies, what Jonathan McIntosh calls “born sexy yesterday.” If Yu-no stands out for anything, it is that she is such a naïve exaggeration of the character type that the underlying issues are laid bare as her body.
YU-NO’s flaws or questionable writing are far from rare among PC-98 eroge. What distinguish YU-NO are its length and deliberateness, its story far weightier than that of ugly pornography like Immoral Study, also released in 1996. But YU-NO is nonetheless what it is. The semi-pedophiliac incest fantasy at the heart of YU-NO is not just masturbation material as a taboo thrill. This romance is rather the culmination of a sprawling, sixty-hour-plus epic prioritized over every other relationship. In its relative sophistication, immense scale, and the great deal of positive narrative weight it attaches to the incest, YU-NO achieves considerable gravity. Its associated adoration, then, makes YU-NO concerning in a way that a standard incest-themed doujin, incest-themed porn video, or even an eroge low on consent like the aforementioned Immoral Study may not be. Assuming YU-NO is as deliberate and intelligent as its fans maintain, then this video game warrants being taken seriously. And, taken seriously, YU-NO uplifts an antisocial sexist solipsistic misanthropy and the infantile abandonment of one’s friends and responsibilities to impregnate one’s daughter-mother-wife, who looks like a buxom babe and acts like a six-year-old, as the embodiment of love itself. That YU-NO, now available on home consoles and still widely praised often without caveat as a masterpiece, remains a beloved milestone instead of an embarrassing relic indicts the entire media ecosystem in which it exists.
My review of YU-NO can be read here.