Yona of the Dawn (Crunchyroll) had as good an ending as we could have reasonably hoped for. Since this is based on an ongoing manga, and has apparently been following it pretty faithfully, there was no chance that it would end with the heroine fulfilling her quest. Instead this turns out to have been the story of how a naive young girl becomes a hero, and how she decides what her quest is. Viewed in those terms it seems quite satisfactory.

This has been a high-quality show with great production values and smart writing that constantly surprised me. It has an unusual mix of romantic fantasy and hard-headed realism that I somehow find very appealing.


I don’t think that this qualifies as a “Great Anime Classic.” To achieve that they would need to add some additional seasons to tell the rest of the story while maintaining the same level of quality. I’m sure that the production staff would like to do more seasons. The level of quality displayed in this series shows that it was a labor of love. But the business realities of late-night anime dictate that a new season will only be ordered if the previous season generated a lot of DVD sales. And a shoujo series starts out with two strikes against it in that respect since the market is so much smaller than the shounen market.

(Most long-running shoujo series that you might think of were daytime anime series, where the network covered the production costs up-front. This makes it much more feasible to have a lot of episodes.)

We are only likely to see more seasons if this show can attract a large crossover audience of male viewers. I think that is possible. It’s basically an action-adventure show. Even if it does contain many elements designed to appeal to girls, there are plenty of things for a male viewer to appreciate.

In any case, even if this turns out to be all there is to it, the series is well worth watching.

Earlier posts:
Yona of the Dawn–Anime Early Impressions
Yona of the Dawn–Midseason Thoughts