Youjo Senki: Parallels and the Mistake of Being X

Youjo Senki’s finale was utterly fantastic. It concluded its story in a way that felt like the creators had accomplished everything they set out to do while still leaving it open to future additions, which is no small feat. It didn’t end in a spectacular battle, despite its intense depiction of war being among its strongest elements. It ended dramatically, thematically and decidedly through dialogue and monologue. One of the things that made this finale so fantastic was how it tied its conclusion back to the beginning of the show through the use of parallels, while providing us with further insight into the show’s more subtle narrative.

The parallel it establishes with its premise is displayed most prominently in Tanya’s conversation with the Lieutenant Colonel at the beginning of the episode. She begins by claiming that the Empire’s Strategic HQ was doing a poor job making use of their victory, inviting future conflict, to which the Colonel quickly responds by pointing out that the situation Tanya was suggesting, a country deciding to sacrifice itself to prolong a meaningless war, would be ludicrous. Tanya readily agrees that his assessment is logical and rational, but incomplete. She begins by claiming that despite the Empire’s team of strategists being brilliant and knowledgeable, they were unable to grasp the full weight of the situation because they approached it from a strictly rational perspective. She goes on to explain that humans are not driven primarily by rationalism, but by emotion, specifically hatred. Later in the show she goes on to describe how the collective hatred and fear harbored within the defeated nations of the victorious Empire created the first world war. What the Empire’s strategic team had failed to do was account for the emotional response that would surely follow their victory, and it cost them everything.

The Empire’s strategic team was unable to understand primary human motivations because they had been separated from the battlefield and human desperation for so long that they had forgotten what those foundational motivations are, and Tanya recalls a time in her own life when she too failed to understand the dual nature of humanity as both rational and emotional, and had paid the ultimate price for her ignorance. However, the Empire’s soldiers, despite being first hand witnesses to human desperation, were unable to see its full repercussions because of their lack on analytical expertise. In her reincarnation, Tanya is not only a brilliant analyst, but a soldier working on the front lines with the experience leading to her death still fresh in her mind. As a result, she witnesses more acts of human desperation in defiance of rationalism and logic than the country’s strategists, and therefore understands them more fully. Her knowledge of strategy and human nature were what allowed her to see the temporary nature of the Empire’s victory while everyone else was completely oblivious. This is a fascinating expansion of her character in of itself, but there’s a parallel in this dialogue and the rest of the episode that’s easy to miss but present nonetheless.

Hidden beneath the alternate historical war setting fused with fantasy and the supernatural is a psychological and ideological battle between the worst of human nature and God, a contest between creation and creator, humanism versus theism. As the two exchanged blows throughout the show there was crucial mistake that God, or Being X as Tanya calls it, made that only served to prolong the ideological war, and it’s the exact same mistake that the Empire’s strategists made: they failed to understand human nature and motivations. Tanya’s struggles with working within the military are a parallel to her much bigger struggle against Being X.

It isn’t extremely difficult to imagine how this situation came about. Being X, like the Empire’s strategic team, is separated from the harsh realities of human nature. Just as Strategic HQ keeps themselves protected from outside influence inside the government’s richly decorated meeting rooms, Being X, if truly God, keeps itself separated from mankind in the celestial realm, and by admission rarely interferes with his creation personally, its actions concerning Tanya being a rare occurrence. Additionally, in just about any religious text, encounters with God or angelic beings almost never fail to bring mankind to their knees. However, in episode two when the two have their first encounter, Being X expresses his surprise that despite experiencing a physical revelation of the power of God, Tanya refuses to accept it. Tanya’s ideological beliefs and humanistic philosophies have been so hammered into her throughout her life that the concept of God, even as a physical reality, does nothing more than make her laugh.

Nothing about her position makes rational sense. Originally she attempts to raise logical arguments against Being X, but by the end of the show she’s filling its vessel with bullets, an act of violence that serves as a stark contrast to the refined, rational businessman she had been in her previous life. Despite her inability to logically argue against Being X’s existence she still refuses to accept its identity or authority as God, which confuses and baffles it to no end. The post credits scene in the finale make Being X’s mistake more clear than ever before. Tanya’s actions are no longer rationally driven, but the result of pure, untainted hatred, and Being X completely misses it.

This psychological warfare is what makes Youjo Senki such an interesting show that appeals to me both on a surface and conceptual level. Despite the obvious fact that Being X is far more powerful than Tanya, she completely has the advantage over him because of his ignorance concerning human nature, and the question I continuously asked myself throughout the show was “which side is going to learn first?”. Would Tanya finally see how her emotions have clouded her rationality and accept her defeat? Such a plot twist would negate the show’s whole premise, but I did consider it to be a possibility for the end game, and the way Tanya lowered her rifle in the church scene in the finale almost made it seem as if this she had gone soft. Or on the flip side, would Being X realize his mistake in being ignorant of the stubborn, emotional driven nature of his creation and choose to accept his defeat, either by letting Tanya live on or by eliminating her? Since the story is ongoing, neither of these conclusions came to pass within the show’s run, so the question still stands for each viewer to decide for themselves. Which is the stronger force, hateful and irrational man or ignorant and rational God? Instead of answering this question for us, the finale leaves us with Tanya’s redeclaration of war against Being X, a reminder that she’s as psychotic and unrelenting as ever, and this powerful dialogue scene between her and Erich that, while not directly about the ideological narrative, provides us with a parallel that allows us to better understand the nature of the battle the two entities wage with each other.

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