Every Magical Girl Warrior show owes a debt to Sailor Moon, just as all Comic Book Superheros owe one to Superman. Sailor Moon invented that genre, or Sub-Genre rather. Things existed before that you could compare it to (Cutey Honey, Mary Marvel, the 70s TV Wonder Woman and Isis), but Sailor Moon was the proper genesis of the Magical Girl Warrior.
But none is stuck in the shadow of Sailor Moon more directly then 1995's Wedding Peach. It's a show that's easy to glance at and see it as the most generic and egregious Sailor Moon copycat. But that is unfortunate because I think the show does plenty of distinctive interesting things.
First of all is the fact that the Mascot character is a minion of the enemies who changes sides when Momoko helps her. The fact that Momoko's father does eventually learn what's going on. And I feel like noting that this show predates certain western shows that did a similar, Heroine's Boyfriend has an evil demon alter ego twist, including Buffy.
I haven't finished Wedding Peach yet, I'm close to the end, but going through 50 episodes is a slog. And given the nature of Anime adaptations of Manga I'm not even sure I'll get a satisfying resolution to the story. It's far from being my favorite Magical Girl Show mainly because it manages to be the hardest to read any basis for my Yuri shipping into. But I've found a lot of it's character arcs interesting. And it's the only Magical Girl show that surpasses Sailor Moon in how sexy I think the girls look in their uniforms.
Miragephan has alluded to plans to do a negative review of Yuki Yuna is a Hero eventually. That seems to be the magical girl show that most enrages her.
It comes from a place of her not liking the Dark Magical Girl trend in general, which is odd to me given how she said in the Madoka isn't a Deconstruction video that she doesn't like limiting what a Magical Girl show could be, but whatever. If it's the darkness trend she doesn't like I feel like it should be the show that started the trend she is more mad at.
Meanwhile Magical Girl Raising Project is the show that takes the darker and edgier trend to it's most extreme conclusion. And from what I've heard the Light Novels get even worse in the future arcs where it eventually just becomes the bad guys winning all the time like on Game of Thrones.
But even from the point of view of liking Madoka and being annoyed by shows perceived as being pale imitations. I couldn't see why Yuki Yuna would be the one to single out.
Then I recalled how Digi placed Yuki Yuna on his Beginner's guide to Magical Girls chart "I want something exactly like Madoka". (Other things that bug me on that chart are including Utena at all, failing to include Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne in the Thief section, defaulting to HeartCatch as the entry way for PreCure, and not starting either column or even sub-route with Sailor Moon.)
Given how I recently said that Madoka was basically also the birth of a new Sub-Genre. It seems Yuki Yuki has become the Wedding Peach to Madoka's Sailor Moon.
Shows like Raising Project and Wixoss have their unique gimmicks visible right up front, one is Magical Girl Hunger Games, and one is the Trading Card Game anime version of Madoka. (Only thing we're missing is a darker revival of the Magical Girl Thief sub-genre) While Yuki Yuna is the easiest show on the Madoka bandwagon to write off as failing to do anything unique or distinctive, when in fact it does quite a bit, and is in my opinion far more imaginative then either of those two shows.
Sometimes I outright consider Yuki Yuna better then Madoka (which would make it my favorite Magical Girl show period). Especially now that I know the whole one character being stuck in an endless time-loop twist had been done in Anime before, something I didn't know in 2014 when I first watched Madoka. Two Fat Guys Talk are a pair of YouTubers who unlike me flat out hate Madoka, but are also big fans of Yuki Yuna, it's biggest fans possibly, they are for Yuki Yuna what Digibro is for K-On. So clearly Yuki Yuna has an appeal independent of simply wanting more Madoka.
The thing is, much of what's distinctive in Yuki Yuna are twists, twists I don't want to talk about without a Spoiler Warning.
But besides the spoilers, I do find the characters distinctive. Toga gets compared to Homura but that is totally unfair. The only criticism I've seen of Yuki's character is practically a word for word repeat of the common ignorant reasons people "can't relate to Superman". Fu like Mami can be compared to Manga Minako, but in a very different way, since the point with Mami was she never got to be a team leader even though she was meant to be one. Fu is my favorite character from Yuki Yuna.
Actually that the show is set in the future not the present isn't supposed to be a spoiler, it's just something people often miss at first.
And I also feel like no other proper Magical Girl show is nearly as rich in Shintoism.
Most importantly, Yuki Yuna like Madoka (before the movie) does have a happy ending. A Happier ending arguably. Maybe Yuki Yuna will repeat the mistake of ruining that with the sequel, we'll see this fall.
AnimeFeminist has an article on Dark Magical Girl shows. The author of the article was quite hostile to the genre, but what I like is it's comments section. A lot of perspectives come up there, people who only like Madoka, people who like Yuki Yuna the best, and at least one person who hates Yuki Yuna the most. That person's issue had a lot to do with comparing it to military propaganda, which I think is unfair, no one hates military propaganda more then me. It even has someone defending Raising Project. It's a pretty insightful comments section.
Here is another really good positive review of Yuki Yuna.
I don't expect everyone to like Yuki Yuna as much as I do. But don't dismiss it. It is far more unique and special then many would have you believe.
Spoiler Warning!!!!!!!!
The main twist, that this Island is all that still exists of the world after the Kami destroyed everything else, is quite fascinating to me. It makes this an Anime I want to recommend to fans of the Truman show. (I know some people who are Flat Earthers obsessed with The Truman show.)
I wish I was more willing to read all the expanded universe stuff, which gets into this idea more. But fan translations of Light Novels are generally not easy to read.
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