While many future SOS segments will go into the specific physical characteristics of a character’s design or appearance, sometimes I’ll take the time to pause and talk about their personalities or interactions with other characters instead. Today marks the first of one such Speculation, Observation, and Summarization segment, and one that will likely get much longer than the ones that will only look at physical aspects of characters or what they reference, so without further delay, let’s bring out today’s guest: 
Yumi, of the Senran Kagura video game series.
Yumi was introduced in the third game of the series as well as its first entry on the Playstation Vita, Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus. Yumi is the leader of the team of ninja girls from the Gessen Girls’ Academy, which, like many things, was also introduced in Shinovi Versus.
Longtime fans of the series have criticized Yumi as being a boring character as well as one that has come to take up too much of the spotlight since her introduction. The reason for that is, ironically, because she has become incredibly popular with a large portion of the series’ fanbase, leading to her appearing in a great deal of promotional artwork as well as landing a lot of special merchandise that older characters don’t always get to have.
This creates a rather strange seeming situation. How did a character who is criticized so often for her lack of development and personality become one of the most popular ones in the series so quickly?
Some suggest that fans of Shinovi Versus, and Yumi by extension, are simply more shallow, only caring about elements of cuteness and so on, while others suggest that Yumi herself is just a boring character and other Shinovi Versus newcomers, even some of Yumi’s own Gessen allies, are fine.
Whatever she is, suffice to say, Yumi has become a polarizing character indeed.
Seeing as outside merchandise is unrelated to how the actual character is handled in the games, and seeing as not all of the games where she appears in as a major character have been localized, for today’s SOS, we’ll be looking at some of Yumi’s appearances in the games. In particular, the game we’ll be looking at is Shinovi Versus especially, and the goal will be to decide if she’s really as bland as people say, or if there’s maybe something more to this story…
Speaking of stories, let’s discuss how Shinovi Versus‘ story is formatted.
Not unlike many arcade, brawler, and fighting games, the game’s story is split into four, one story mode for each of the different teams of characters. Each story varies based on which set of characters is taking the helm, and there are also shorter story modes with a more light-hearted feel to them based on individual characters that can be played from within each team’s story as well.
In their own story mode as well as in the story mode of Hanzo Academy (Hanzo’s team being the protagonists of the first game), Gessen act as instigators to the conflict between the two. Hanzo and Gessen are both considered schools of “good” shinobi in the game’s universe, and would traditionally be considered potential allies.
Having learned of the Hanzo students’ recent fraternization with “evil” shinobi (as a result of the first two games on the Nintendo 3DS), as well as after having an encounter with the founder of the school that went extremely poorly, Yumi has chosen to deal with the corruption within Hanzo and get rid of them.
It’s interesting that this course of action is typically met with negative reactions from Western fans, but this is the first one I would like to take a more in depth look at.
All in all, is what happened really such a big deal?
This is the kind of question most probably ask when they come across how the scenes that lead to most of the game’s battles.
A dirty old man playing around with some young girls. That’s all. This shouldn’t be worth challenging other girls to battles with so much on the line, should it?
To many, this might come off as a sign that Yumi is either being used as a plot device or simply has such a weak character that she’ll overreact to teasing and start a war over it. In a series where friends due this sort of thing as a manner of course, why get so upset over it? Well, I believe that this is just an example of one of Yumi’s most important traits: her beliefs, and more specifically, her reliance on those beliefs and how strong those beliefs are.
Over the course of her time in the story, we are able to witness Yumi’s strong beliefs in action, which she inherited from her adoptive grandfather, who we learn towards the end of the game has died very recently. That information alone gives a much greater context to the initial scene where the old Hanzo teases the Gessen students, but we’ll return to that topic in due time.
These beliefs of Yumi’s — that good is absolute and that evil cannot be accepted — drive her to great lengths, and make her initially unwilling to consider the possibility that there might be more to “evil” than “evil.” Her beliefs are central to her character, and they make up just about everything she does in the game.
There is even a moment when she blames “evil” for a silly mistake she makes in a light-hearted moment early on. This trait of Yumi’s is meant to show us that, while Yumi can also take part in less serious moments with her friends, “evil” at times is almost more like a boogeyman to to her rather than something that exists.
Through this, we can see how Yumi’s beliefs are, in some ways, misguided in more ways than the base narrative and first impressions lead us to believe. Yumi’s beliefs are strong, but they are also extremely traditional. You could almost say that Yumi’s way of defining “good” and “evil” at this early point in the game isn’t unlike a more devoted religious character might feel, and this is an important thing to realize about her, as it isn’t a mindset the rest of her team completely shares.
Note: This is not suggesting that Yumi sees “good” as a god and “evil” as a devil, but that how she acts is not unlike how overly religious characters would act in this position.
This position is similar to some of the positions that the protagonist and antagonist characters of the first two games (of the Hanzo and Hebijo schools and then the opposite) found themselves in. The major difference between Gessen (Yumi in particular) and the other schools is that the other schools don’t take it to the lengths that Yumi takes it to.
This is because Hanzo, and by extension his granddaughter, the protagonist of the first game, had a more open outlook on this sort of thing, whereas Yumi did not receive this same outlook from adoptive grandfather. What Shinovi Versus adds through Yumi and her other Gessen allies, thus, is a character with very defined beliefs who then is forced to have them challenged.
Whereas Asuka (Hanzo’s leader) questioned the differences of good and evil from early on and Homura (Hebijo’s leader) had already experienced both worlds and needed Asuka to remind her of the one she had left behind, Yumi simply rejected one outright.
Senran Kagura is a series that, thematically, often relies on the idea of balance to tell its stories. There cannot be good without evil, and there cannot be evil without good. There is always light within shadow, and so is the opposite.
A character who rejects half of this formula adds a lot more than people realize, and by the end of the game, we can see very clearly that Yumi has grown a great deal. She is able to exchange banter with “evil” shinobi, and she even offers her friendship to Asuka rather than declarations of war. Through fighting good shinobi, evil shinobi, and shinobi who are somewhere between, she and her Gessen allies come to learn a great deal.
Yumi’s development as a character and subsequent friendship with Asuka parallels how Asuka and Homura’s friendship formed. The events are there, and if there’s anything to complain about, it’s not so much that she doesn’t develop, but that she did so in a very similar way to ones that previous characters in the series already had. 
So we can see that Yumi develops over the course of the game. Perhaps her overall personality doesn’t go through a drastic change like that of, say, Luke fon Fabre of Tales of the Abyss, but it’s not as though many other characters in this series have done so either, even the ones accepted as good examples.
We can still clearly map out where she started and where she ended, and that is the mark of easy to define character development, no questions there.
Let’s return to the topic of Yumi’s recently deceased grandfather.
In the scene that set off the game’s events, Yumi and the rest of the Gessen students are heading to their shared adoptive grandfather’s grave with an offering of his favorite treat. Hanzo appears out of the blue and antagonizes them, stealing the offering and eating it before their very eyes and then proceeding to make a grab at all of them, before dashing off.
This is, I believe, the foundation of the issue most of the Western fanbase has with Yumi, as it is usually their introduction to her. 
Whereas a character like Asuka would get flustered and chastise her grandfather, a character like Homura might challenge him to a fight, and a character like Katsuragi might get defensive in a more raunchy way of her own, as seen in Senran Kagura Burst and even Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus itself, Yumi’s response was to go to what amounts to inter-school war over it.
This contrast, combined with what already might come off as the offense not being a big deal, likely puts Yumi at a disadvantage in the eyes of many players before she’s barely had a chance to do anything.
What people tend to forget is that what Hanzo did, especially in Asian cultures, was really bad. Disrespect to the dead like that is a serious offense, and we already talked about how big a part Yumi’s beliefs are to both her character and development.
Yumi was well within her rights to be upset with Hanzo’s actions, and given her beliefs at the time, it’s no surprise her actions were drastic. Here she was presented with a good shinobi of legend who acted foul beyond belief and disrespected someone she holds more dear than anyone else. The fact that we later learn Hanzo fully expected her to do what she did only cements this.
Now, before I continue further on Yumi down this train of thought, I believe it would be beneficial to briefly pause and discuss Yumi’s relationships with her fellow Gessen students, as those relationships are another seemingly hot topic with both fans and goes of Yumi alike. 
Yumi has been described as something akin to a dictator when it comes to her friends and fellow Gessen students, and if you were to only look at the outside of their relationships, perhaps it isn’t too hard to see why that is. Why not pause for a moment and look a little deeper than that, though?
Yumi is more strict with her allies than Asuka and Homura are with theirs. These things are true for certain, but there are some very key differences to consider when comparing Yumi to the other leaders. For starters, Asuka and Homura aren’t the eldest members of their teams. They’re both more in the middle, whereas Yumi is the oldest of the five.
Going off on this tangent, Yumi would actually be better off compared to characters like Ikaruga or Haruka, and she actually has quite a few similarities to both of them as far as personality and interaction with her team goes. Ikaruga and Haruka both, in their own ways, watch after their teammates, pushing them to grow and helping the younger members with their training.
Likewise, despite Haruka’s seemingly openness and teasing, it is actually a plot point in the Hebijo storyline of Senran Kagura Burst how she’s opened up and begun to care about her friends. As a puppet master, she kept her allies at more of a distance, which closed over the course of the game, and got to the point that she would rather work things out and talk than take control, despite being fully capable of doing so. As for Ikaruga, she is very noticeably on the quiet and composed end of Hanzo’s students, and as much as she does try to help her friends, she doesn’t do so as blatantly as the likes of fellow Hanzos Asuka and Katsuragi might.
This isn’t unlike how Yumi is with her own teammates, at least as we see them. One key difference between Yumi and these two is obviously that Ikaruga and the rest of Hanzo have a teacher to rely on, while Hebijo, which Haruka was a part of when we see her in her more maternal role, has a more harsh training environment. What’s more, neither of them are the leader of their respective teams, though Ikaruga does make attempts to act as class president.
Conversely, Yumi is both the leader and eldest “sister” of Gessen’s quintet, and Wang Pai, the acting teacher at Gessen in the girls’ grandfather’s stead, is absent for most of the game, seeming to imply their teaching doesn’t require his presence as much as Hanzo’s students require their teachers — that, or perhaps Wang Pai wanted Yumi in charge during the game’s events…?
Incidentally, Ikaruga held the title of “most popular character” prior to Yumi’s introduction to the series, and even with Yumi’s presence, both of them have their share of popularity with fans. 
As with every new team as of Shinovi Versus, Gessen is introduced in a fairly easy to understand way. In the first chapter of their story, each of the team’s members is given a mission, paired with different interaction with other team members before and after. While not all of these involve Yumi, the ones that do give more than enough insight into her relationships with the rest of Gessen to show us just how close these characters are.
With the group as a whole, we find the team going to visit their grandfather. This initial scene gives us a small taste of each of the character’s personalities that then are expanded on later, like when Yumi oversees Minori and Shiki’s training or their lazing about. Yumi’s position as eldest and leader make this a situation perfect to show us Yumi’s leadership skills, which she does fairly well.
Unfortunately, many interpret this kind of scene as Yumi simply being controlling or not having attachment to her friends. While these scenes aren’t that different from similar character/relationship establishing scenes in the Hanzo stories of both Burst and Shinovi Versus, perhaps there is a “bluntness” to them that isn’t there in those other scenes that deserves addressing. That “bluntness” is a mix of what I feel are two things that show just how close Gessen’s characters are to each other, though there are a few instances that are more a result of localization, but that is another matter that perhaps deserves a separate posting such as the one discussed here.
The first of those things is a sense of routine. Despite the fact that this is the first time players are meeting these characters on their own turf, they’re not going through any special introductory motions or trying to act “new” and “special” to them.
The irony in that is that this, in itself, actually is that exactly.
The characters grew up together and were raised together. With this sort of backstory, some expect more blatant sisterhood to show from Gessen, particularly from its leader. The problem with that mindset is that isn’t actually how families act all the time. Families, which is something that, in many ways, Gessen is, will eventually just settle into a routine.
What we witness in this initial chapter is not some grand introduction, but rather, a slice of Gessen’s normal life as they prepare to go after Hanzo. Yumi, as the eldest and as the one taking charge of the training of her fellow students, would thus obviously be less inclined to be smiling and having bouts of sisterly love in this situation.
The point here is to show that these characters are naturally attached, and are well past the point of needed to have how much they care about each other put on display as if it needs to be proven. Yumi’s watching after her “sisters” or gushing about Yozakura’s training after an intense fight between the two both speak volumes about all of that.
The second piece of this puzzle is simply where Yumi stands, and how she was designed. Looking at her transformed in combination with her place in Gessen’s base of operations should give insightful readers all the explanation they need in regards to this topic.
When Yumi transforms, she dons a kimono, and when she fights, she uses a fan. When she rests, look where she sits. To a Japanese player, without a single word being spoken, Yumi’s position here could potentially say more than five cutscenes could, to the point that it might not have even been intentional it’s so built into Japanese culture and history. This subtle placement in a room gives Yumi, and Gessen as a whole, a depth to them that blew me away the first time I caught it.
Depending on how much Japanese history and/or media you’ve been exposed to, the emphasis I place on this in particular should clue you in to what I’m getting at or leave you totally lost, so I’ll just move on now.
When at rest, Yumi is taking the position of the lord of her home. If you’ve seen historical Japanese portraits or watched historical pieces, this position is a very typical one for, among other types of home owners, political leaders, and even yakuza bosses… feudal warlords.
This comparison might seem hypocritical to make given my comments about Yumi’s relationships with her Gessen sisters a few moments ago, but it isn’t nearly as farfetched as you might think.
The fact of the matter is, the relationship between a lord and their retainers can mean any number of things, but in Japanese culture, it is one that has come to have a lot of meaning, particularly in fiction, and is often portrayed in stories as one that is full of devotion and mutual respect, something the Gessen students, Yumi included, all clearly have for each other. It’s a relationship that still permeates a lot of aspects of Japanese culture to this day.
In this case, Yumi is the “lord,” and the rest of the Gessen students are her “retainers.” Contextually speaking, this makes sense. Not only is Yumi seemingly more “business” oriented than the rest of Gessen, but she is the oldest of them, as well as the only one who is related to their grandfather by blood — making her the one who would inherit the position of “lord” from him, as it were.
This is supported by the fact that the Gessen students all live in their grandfather’s “castle,” follow his teachings, and fight in his name even now. Their story, with Yumi at the head, is not unlike that of an old samurai drama.
Just… maybe a little bouncier.
Returning to the subject of Yumi herself, while not wholly unrelated to where we are now, as far as Yumi’s supposed lack of expression during the early part of the game, there is another element to it all.
It’s an element that was perhaps overlooked throughout all of this. It is the element of Yumi’s deceased grandfather. Specifically, the deceased part. 
Throughout the course of the game, we are treated to flashbacks from his perspective, only finding out towards the end for sure that he is in fact dead for sure. It’s not completely impossible to piece it together beforehand, even from the very first scene if you’re even remotely familiar with the idea of visiting graves with food, but to some, it might come as a shock.
This is not only a moment that gives more justification to Yumi’s actions, as she may just have been going to visit him with the other Gessen members in that early scene before players become fully aware of this, but it also acts as closure to a lot of plot threads in the story.
One of these, that is fully realized right at the end of Gessen’s story, is that Gessen’s teacher had been Hanzo himself all along, and he had planned the entire series of events of Shinovi Versus in order to assist his old deceased friend’s grandchildren in the man’s stead.
And therein lies an element of Yumi’s character that is always overlooked. While many players will look for how she interacts with other characters, and perhaps criticize her for how she interacts with some of them, the events of Gessen’s story mode are in fact a form of her interacting with her grandfather himself.
In both the first and final scene of Gessen’s story in Shinovi Versus, Yumi is reaching out for her grandfather. The beliefs that drove Yumi throughout almost all of her appearances in Shinovi Versus and that are a core part of her character in later appearances are ones that were passed down to her by her grandfather.
The flashbacks and brief pieces written from her grandfather’s perspective show the player throughout Gessen’s story are able to make their story mode one that is both about the girls of Gessen learning to accept the balance of the Senran Kagura universe, as the Hanzo and Hebijo (now Crimson Squad) characters had before them, as well as to help them become their own people beyond their deceased grandfather. The flashbacks and perspectives of their grandfather would add nothing if this sort of intention was not there.
The simple fact of the matter is that Yumi had not yet completely moved on from her grandfather’s death yet. She clung to his beliefs, now hers, as they were all she had left of him, and that made it all the harder for them to be so fiercely challenged by the existence of characters like Asuka and Homura.
All she had ever known, and all she had left of all she could rely on, was being contradicted. For a character whose everything was her beliefs, this is a tremendous thing to have to deal with.
Thanks to Hanzo’s assistance and pushing, Yumi is able to become her own person and let her own beliefs start to take shape. She ends up more developed, expanded upon, and even just happier than she had been before the start of the game. 
If you ask me, Yumi is perhaps one of the most fleshed out and interesting characters of the Senran Kagura universe. If anything, I fear the series may be undercutting her or may be forgetting some aspects of her in favor of others going forward, but we shouldn’t mistake popularity and merchandise for a lack of character or shallowness on the fanbase’s part.
There is a lot to be said about Yumi, but her being bland or boring, subjective as those claims admittedly may be, just aren’t the things that should be at the top of the list.
Her background as a good shinobi that took issue with other good shinobi primarily rather than evil gives her an interesting contrast to the more basic good versus evil conflicts we saw in previous Senran Kagura stories, and Gessen and Shinovi Versus as a whole added a great deal of growth to the world of Senran Kagura.
Which forces us to return to our original question. If Yumi has all of this going for her, much of which likely being why she’s become so popular… Why is it that, at least the Western fanbase, just can’t seem to stand her?
If I had to speculate on it, I would have to say it’s a combination of one character over others having more exposure, alongside Western tastes compared to Japanese ones.
When it comes to Senran Kagura‘s audience, at least the Western equivalent of it anyway, fans here seem to favor more flamboyant female characters compared to in Japan. Senran Kagura is an excellent example of this.
While many fans in the West pine for characters like Katsuragi, Haruka, Asuka, Homura, and other more open and outgoing characters to get attention, Japanese fans seem to gravitate towards more traditional, even at times soft-spoken characters like Yumi and Ikaruga.
I don’t believe that Yumi is at all as boring or bland as many Western fans suggest that she is, I believe, if anything, she simply appeals more to a Japanese audience because she was made to be more appealing to one. This doesn’t make her more bland or more shallow, it just means that it makes sense why the Japanese fanbase seems to prefer her so much more than the Western one.
Don’t take my word for it, though. Gessen’s classroom and most of their designs speak volumes to this suggestion.
Yumi and Yozakura either wear outright or modified kimonos, Murakumo wears a modified costume resembling a warlord’s battle armor and a mask, and Minori wears clothes that resemble the school uniform of younger Japanese students — a stark contrast to the uniforms and clothes of Hanzo and Hebijo characters, most of which have a somewhat more universal appeal.
Even Shiki, who wears a cowboy hat and seemingly appears to be more of a vampire than anything traditionally Japanese, fits. With her blonde hair and way of speaking, her transformation not fitting with the theme, because of her personality and appearance, still fits this theme.
This pattern is not even one exclusive to Shinovi Versus characters. To name one such example, many of the new characters of the upcoming Estival Versus have designs based off of Japanese festivals to tie in to the summer theme of the game. What sets them apart, for now at least, is that none of them have taken on the level of popularity that Yumi has, meaning they’ve avoided the exposure that is likely the other tremendous reason for distaste of Yumi in the fanbase.
There is also the minor issue of console loyalty that 3DS owners feel towards the series leaving it for Shinovi Versus, but that doesn’t have a place in a discussion about a character, which is why I left it out until now, and also why it will not be elaborated on beyond this minor recognition of said issue as this second entry of SOS reaches its conclusion. So… Is Yumi bland? My answer to this question is decidedly no. That doesn’t have to be your answer, or anyone else’s answer, but I would hope that what I’ve provided here will make at least someone think twice before judging such an interesting character. The series is already judged enough as it is, so I wish people who have already made it past that barrier wouldn’t go on to just do more judging.
Whatever you feel? Love her, hate her, don’t care about her, it’s time for this incredibly long entry of SOS to wrap up!
This is The SWOOORDSMAN, signing out!
Until next time!
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