Table of Contents
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Youjo Senki
Reviews
Iâll note that Youjo Senki is an ongoing series. This is important, because I tend to not want to write reviews for stuff that I have not finished yet. However, as itâs ongoing, I figure I may as well.
Also, another note: I started reading the Light Novel, but didnât finish the first volume. I found it kinda infuriating to read. This is mostly because the anti-religious themes are cranked way up in the LN, even when compared to the manga and anime. And that anti-religion angle comes off as Reddit Atheism (which is extra annoying). Thatâs the main reason I stopped reading it, since I didnât like getting lectured to.
Manga
The manga is my favorite part of Youjo Senki and, while I donât see myself ever finishing the LN, I will continue reading this. It has beautiful artwork (although the art style keeps changing seemingly at random) and the story is told very well.
The obvious anti-religious themes of the LN are not as visible here, which means it isnât nearly as infuriating to read as the LN. Of course, the manga is still ongoing, so Iâll mostly leave it there.
Anime
The anime is a bit of a weird adaptation, but might be more faithful to the LN than the manga is. This is mostly because Tanyaâs prettiness is turned way up in the manga. In the animeâŚ
Well, I wonât comment on that too much. Another (possible) change from the LN is that Tanya is obviously evil/sadistic in the anime. In the manga Tanya is not a sadistic person by nature. She does a lot of her âevilâ mostly because itâs the most efficient way of doing things (efficient in the short/long term). Tanya is a bit like me when playing Valkyria Chronicles, GFL2 or Warcraft 3: the solution to every problem is to kill everything. Once theyâre dead, they canât bother you anymore.
Thatâs at least the impression I get. In the anime, however, she specifically transfers two people away so they would die and then snickers about it later.
Speculah & Analysis
Religiosity
I had almost forgotten to mention this, but itâs a pretty big deal.
Youjo Senkiâs premise is that Tanya pissed off God, claiming that religiosity is a direct result of hardship. So the modern day, which has a big chunk of humanity not living in hardship, will obviously produce less faith for God. God then isekais Tanya to see if Tanyaâs right or notâŚthen Tanya dedicates her life to proving God wrong.
However, this is all built on the assumption that wealth/prosperity = faithlessness. This is also sometimes argued in the primary worldâŚbut, yeah, no.
The large-scale decline in religiosity didnât really happen until World War 1âŚparticularly in Europe. In America the decline can be attributed to Boomers and their support of Post-Modernism. And, well, depending on how you look at it, the Boomers were a result of prosperity, though itâs perhaps more accurate to say the Boomers were the result of catastrophically bad parenting advice based on bad understandings of psychology.
The idea that wealth/prosperity = faithlessness is largely a myth.A) I mean, the Victorian Era is mostly remembered as âsteampunkâ, but it was also a super religious time period. In fact, Americans stuck to religion as official justification until, at least, the end of WW2âŚsince MacArthur specifically promised to convert Japan to Christianity by pumping them full of missionaries. That was also a thing the European powers did in their colonies: promote Christianity by encouraging missionaries to move in.
Iâm pointing to the Victorian Era specifically because that was a period in time where Science was viewed with a lot of prestige and people (particularly the British) were getting significantly wealthierâŚyet it didnât seem to erode their spiritual beliefs at all. Even Darwin remained religious after discovering evolution.
Youjo Senki is actually, probably, depicting a fairly accurate version of the First World War (and prior), spiritually speaking.
SoâŚuhâŚyeah. If God in Youjo Senki is having problems with declines in religiosityâŚthat really is his fault.