Discussion of Yusa’s character in Angel Beats! and Angel Beats! Heaven’s Door. As of now all known information about the Angel Beats! anime and the Heaven’s Door manga may be discussed without the usage of spoiler tags, so be wary if you’re not familiar with them.
Have at it~
The Hype Train rolls ever forward.
So I was just saying in the Skype chat today that, considering her backstory, Yusa doesn’t really feel like a Key character… This is a bit of an incoherent rambling but I’ll try to elaborate.
Most Key girls, often as a by-product of the visual novel medium, start off happy, but as you get to know them you unveil some trauma that the male lead is confronted with, and works with the heroine to reach a resolution. But with Yusa, we have someone who’s completely deranged from the very beginning, when we first meet her in Heaven’s Door. Oh she has a traumatic backstory for sure, but she never really woke up from that nightmare. She still continues to be tormented by her hatred of males, and acts on that in cruel and horrific ways. Her very first introduction in the story is of a horribly tragic yet unspeakably cruel villain. Someone who not only doesn’t want anything to do with the male lead, but wants to kill all men in the world (and acts on that desire). Even in a world where everybody dies, that’s pretty damn hardcore. It feels so unlike any typical Key girl we’ve grown accustomed to.
And you know what? I love it. I love how different her story is. We get thrown into the deep end very early, and only through some as of yet unknown intervention, was she able to become a different person. Was her trauma resolved? I don’t even know yet! I’m still very intrigued by her, and want to know more about her. It’s almost as if they’re doing this to build up interest in the visual novel (and it’s working!). I can’t even imagine what her route might be like, but I’m sure eager to find out.
So, I personally find Yusa to be a very good personification of my Angel Beats! hype which makes her more than worthy of our first character discussion thread for the series. This character brought a lot of new things to the table in Heaven’s Door, ranging from basic things (that were sorely missing), like, you know, development, of which hers is very unique and thought provoking even with how little we have- as well as a collection of new questions and insight about the AB! setting and relationships between the characters.
Given what we’ve seen, I can say that I am immensely interested in seeing her route. Possibly the most of all.
Let’s not forget that, unlike most Key characters, her problems weren’t really… resolved. She was altered by a program, and became tame after that. The details around it are foggy, but I think the development of her character is definitely an outlier, even for AB.
Yusa is definitely an interesting character and, for those who have read Heaven’s Door, everyone can agree. It’s just that it constantly frustrates me that I have no idea what was going on to cause her “transformation.” The VN better elaborate on that as I am not good at stories where I am not spoonfed haha
At this point I’m almost certain this is just a big tease for the VN. They didn’t tell us anything or resolve anything, they just drop it on it’s head and walk away from it.
Isn’t it great? * 3 *
Best part? It’s only one character. There are still so many unknowns when we seemingly have a conclusion. Angel Beats! flips a lot of things on their head when it comes to the perspective and presentation. We may wind up with the same Key-like body, but the method of which information is provided is really… Exciting. Lol.
Hm Ill join in this one. I havnent read the heavens door yet so what Im writing about is mostly the anime Yusa–
There is really something different about Yusa. First off in the anime series, we just know that she is obeying yui’s orders n stuff…
Also what was really interesting to me was that, she has this kind of a “emotionless” face all the time. But also with that emotionless face, she is joining in the stuff like GirlDeMo, and we can see signs of emotions, like foot tapping with music etc.
THIS is really interesting to me, usually Key female characters are mostly happy, lively etc. But Yusa is … mysterious in every way possible imo. We dont know her how she appeared in the angel beats world and also what her problem was… Sometimes she just feels like a robot or something.
I think a lot of things are said in the heavens door, but this is my view of her as a guy who knows about her only from anime.
You’re only scratching the surface with the anime, I swear 
I know, Ill get to the heavens door for sure!
Absolutely read Heaven’s Door. If you haven’t read the spoilers posted just above yet, then it’ll blow your mind. We still don’t know EVERYTHING, but what we do know is pretty crazy
Yeah but too bad her character route isn’t in the first beat :(.
Well, she will get a route eventually and I’m looking forward to it.
Actually the most routes I’m excited about are yusa’s and T.K’s
