Blue Reflection Ray

Blue Reflection Ray is an anime spinoff for the PS4/PC game Blue Reflection released in 2017. From my understanding none of the main characters (Yuzu and Lime are recurring side characters) and plot points carry over from the game, so it definitely qualifies as a spinoff that uses the concepts from the in-game universe but nothing else. So it should be fine watching this without playing the game. Disclaimer that I actually haven't played Blue Reflection, so someone who actually has can correct me on this because their opinion will be more valid than mine. Getting into reviewing the actual anime, you have already probablynoticed my score is very high for this show. This doesn't mean that this show is some hidden gem of an underrated masterpiece that I think literally everyone should be able to enjoy, far from it. The rating reflects (haha this guy is funny) my bias that comes from how I interpreted the narrative and plot points of the show. The singular reason why I personally enjoyed Blue Reflection Ray so much is because this show is the closest thing we have to a Kingdom Hearts anime adaptation. Let's go over the similarities between Blue Reflection Ray and the Kingdom Hearts series. -main characters that fight with weapons and powers that are the manifestation of their emotions? check. -the main conflict of the narrative centers on opposing ideologies on how feelings and emotions should influence relationships with others? check. -over the top light/darkness motifs that really hammer home how edgy this is? check. -a grand collective entity of emotions that holds absolute authority over all emotional power? (The Common = Kingdom Hearts) check. -emotions being used as a resource or catalyst to reach this grand collective entity of emotions? (Fragments = Hearts) check. -memories being altered, influenced, or erased by being tied to emotions? check. -the side characters and antagonists are much more interesting and fleshed out than the happy-go-lucky main character who is a walking plot device? check. -very slow and seemingly nonsensical story that only makes sense as the narrative approaches its conclusion? check. This very biased framework was the foundation for how I went about watching this show, and is probably the only reason why I didn't drop it after a few episodes. Blue Reflection Ray as a standalone show isn't very impressive. The art, while unique and fluid, is really inconsistent and looks unappealing to the average 2021 seasonal anime consumer; though, I do give props to them for continuing to draw out every scene regardless and not using some ugly ass CG to fill in the gaps. The soundtrack was good but not outstanding compared to shows with higher production value. The characters I thought were really good, but unfortunately the two weakest characters by far are the two main heroines Hiori and Ruka who we are stuck with for like the first few episodes. Only after a while are we properly introduced to the much more interesting antagonists, and Momo and Miyako become more involved in the main narrative. The strength of the cast in this show is their chemistry together and how they organically come to rely on each other like a very big family, but this also does not occur until the second half of the show. There are a lot of yuri undertones in the show, but there is a whole mountain of shows better for that, so people who are here just for lesbians will likely be disappointed. Blue Reflection Ray is a show that takes a long time to ramp up and can appear as slow to most anime consumers. The narrative also doesn't make much sense which can be frustrating for most anime consumers as well. The thing with Kingdom Hearts is that while it is quite popular, it's a very flawed series. The writer for Kingdom Hearts, Tetsuya Nomura, oftentimes writes stories that are so far-fetched that we can only imagine what he smoked before working on the script. And Kingdom Hearts fans have come to just simply tolerate or even embrace how ridiculous and nonsensical the franchise is. So when watching Blue Reflection Ray, a lot of the downsides of the show like the very slow pacing, the beginning of the show not making any sense, and the two main characters not being nearly as interesting as the other characters, were less like flaws to me than they were features of the show due to its uncanny resemblance to Kingdom Hearts. To get to the heart of things (haha this guy is funny you should really check out his other reviews), that is the main reason why I enjoyed Blue Reflection Ray so much, flaws and all. I ate up Hiori's monologues about feelings and how precious they are, just like I ate up Sora yelling "Kingdom Hearts is light!" as the light engulfed Ansem. I had blind belief (okay I believe you) that the nonsensical narrative at the start of the show would all come full circle so I could see the whole picture, just like I had blind belief that understanding the story of the Kingdom Hearts mobile game would fill in the all the plot holes in Nomura's writing. I got hyped over every fight scene where the characters were talking about the weight of their feelings while literally hitting each other with their feelings. I embraced the ridiculous flawed nature of Blue Reflection Ray because it was flawed in just the same way as the Kingdom Hearts series, and I had a blast every single episode. So what does this mean for you as the reader? Most likely, nothing. This review isn't here to change your opinion. If you didn't like Blue Reflection Ray, then it means you probably will hate Kingdom Hearts as well. However, if you are an avid Kingdom Hearts fan, then I'd very much so recommend giving Blue Reflection Ray a watch. Vice versa, if you liked watching Blue Reflection Ray, then you would probably really enjoy playing through the Kingdom Hearts series. Thanks for reading.

You know what I hate about game adaptations? It's not the final product that's the anime itself, but the production staff, or more precisely anybody who has the cheek to say that they can prolong these works to something like a 2-cour show (meaning 24 to 26 episodes). Please Japan, even if you won't listen to the Western fans that we absolutely DO NOT NEED shows like this, at least please consider that making a show is not cheap at all, and you can make-do with another show that will serve your budget better and have a better audience reach. I've never even heard of BlueReflection the video game itself, but based off of Metacritic scores for the original 2017 game, it's "mixed to average reviews", but the same could not be said for the anime adaptation, which is a spin-off of the main series. And boy oh boy, I suffered through this hellhole just to make this review to tell you the TL;DR that this show is already doomed for failure from the start. And if the anime Blu-Ray release was cancelled mid-way through the show's life, you know that the message to completely skip this show is warranted, even if it's for "various reasons" (it's clear that it wasn't popular, geddit?). To be clear, magical girl series are a dime a dozen. We've seen this with Madoka Magica, Assault Lily and many others like it, but not all of them hold the distinction of being a rip-off imitation of (especially) Madoka Magica and one of my favourite recent underrated masterpiece shows of the modern age, Granbelm. There's just something about Blue Reflection Ray that kinda divulges from the whole Mahou Shoujo formula, but yet have no staying power because of waning interests that "nothing else is going for it". Look, like some people who can recognize that this show is good for them, it's that it tried to be emotionally mature with its setting, and it's a decent start and ending all things considered, I'll give it that. But to pad it out in the span of 6 months, man, does this become so tiring and boring to look at. If it was a game that I cared about, I'd not mind if it was that long if the story and plot had some substance to it, but Blue Reflection Ray, unless you played the game before, as an anime-only, your interest is as good as "Dropped" after the 3-episode rule. The plot is so barebones; the characters feel like one-toned characters (especially the main female MC Hiori Hirahara because she's just a walking plot device and nothing more); this is kinda the best of the worst that J.C.Staff (that stands for Just Crap Stuff) could muster without much effort and all; and the music really is the only aspect I'll call decent from reputable music artistes like EXiNA, Eir Aoi and ACCAMER (especially the 1st Cour OST set I really vibe to it a lot, that set was really good). I am not disappointed, it's kinda to be expected when Japan tries to pump out game adaptations to its own audience, and got the short end of the stick when even the anime fails to capitalize and influence people to the relevant IPs. For the rest of the world, you can pretty much just skip this one, there're other noteworthy Mahou Shoujo shows that will make your time investment a lot better than this turd.

I do feel that this show has gotten kinda of a bad rap, especially by people who write 1/10 reviews for attention and publish them the moment a show ends in Japan before subs are even out. But Blue Reflection Ray has been a rather captivating, if flawed experience that actually made me interested in the greater franchise. Full disclosure, I never played the original game, and without knowing the show is actually a sequel to the game's events and it fully expecting you to understand the plot of the first game, I didn't have a good time the first time through. After reading and watchinga quick synopsis though, I began to appreciate the show more. The animation is lousy, and unlike Sonny Boy it doesn't have much of a cinematic flair to it to compensate for it. But perhaps because of that, I ended up appreciating the plot and characters a lot more. The show does feel quite aimless in the first half, up until the 10th or so episode I wasn't actively engaged; but come the second half, the show starts becoming a lot more focused in the story it's trying to tell, and by then I was hooked until the very end. Up to the point where I'm even seriously considering to get Tie to see where it all continues. Hiori and Ruka are really cute as leads and I do like the charm their social awkwardness adds to the show. I will say that the show does have one of my personal pet peeves, with abuse victims being main antagonists. It's not depicted that well here too, with it basically giving a lousy justification to Shino's actions. But aside from that, the core cast is still likable enough through and through. It is a shame the Blu Rays were cancelled for this. I think maybe giving the show more polish can help in its presentation, but hey at the very least, the show did its job in convincing at least one other person out there in the world to give the series a proper shot. 6/10

When I found Blue Reflection Ray, I watched an episode or two and decided it wasn't for me. This was well before I sunk my teeth into multiple magical girl shows such as Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Yuki Yuna is a Hero. With Crunchyroll announcing that an English dub was coming out almost a whole year after it's initial release, I decided to give it another go! Minor trigger warning: This show does contain an instance of self harm and suicide, so please be wary of this, should you decide to watch. They're not really shoved in your face, but they arepresent, regardless. Story: The main story line here is that everyone has a physical flower, deep within them that contain their human emotions, known as Fragments. These emotions include the strong ones such as grief, anger and sadness. Reflectors are those that have very strong Fragments, which allow them to equip special rings, that allow them to fight for those that cannot. When any person experiences extremely strong emotions, they attract the attention of any of the Reflectors. Then, one of two things can happen. Those that hold the blue rings calms the souls of those individuals who feel erratic. There is also an organization who posses red rings, who seek to steal those Fragments. Once lost, humans who have had their Fragment taken away become emotionless, and steadily mentally degrade until they fall into a coma. Blue Reflection Ray seeks to show us what happens when our group of blue Reflectors, headed by Hiori and Ruka, seek to calm the world's emotions, and stop the red reflectors, by any means necessary. The story itself doesn't break any barriers with regards to creativity. However, they do execute on the story, quite well. The first few episodes have us following around our main pair on learning how to be reflectors, and to fight with the powers given to them by their rings. Much of the story will continuously use the words 'feelings', and it does admittedly sound somewhat awkward after a few times. However, this does allow the audience the chance to know what's going on all the time. This eventually transitions quite nicely to the point where our Reflectors start helping every day school girls who are feeling deep sadness within themselves, usually caused by an external force. While this is going on, they must fend off the Red Reflector group at the same time, and it creates multiple moments of tension that I really enjoyed. Some of the girls that they attempt to help actually have pretty solid backstories too, and it gave me an extra reason why you cheer for Hiori and Ruka to succeed. As you get through the story, you'd steadily introduced to the world on a more macro level, almost like how your world opens up in a video game as you get through more and more of it. This is another really strong step in the storytelling that I enjoyed. As your understanding of the world starts to expand, you are introduced to more characters with more meaning to our main couple, and many of them have solid backstories behind them to. In fact, they take pretty significant screen time to go over a few of them, and again, it makes us care what happens to them. As you start to unravel the main story that our girls are fighting for, you shortly realize how the organization that runs the Red Reflectors goes about their business. A lot of the central themes almost flows like a more mature version of Sailor Moon, and the way that their bosses, Mio and Shino, go about their business keeps you guessing. Magical girl anime have a very fantasy-like storyline, so trying to guess where they go next is always a fool's errand, but I do believe they leave you with enough that you're not yanking your hair out at trying to piece it all together. The ending this story ultimately goes for isn't one of excessive flair or creativity itself, but regardless, it was a really nice way to end a story that I enjoyed a lot more than seemingly much of the community did. This isn't to say there weren't a few bumps along the way, as the script, at least with the English version, did start to sound a little more repetitive than I would have liked. There are also moments when there's a bit more down moments as well - times when there's just information, without it being either strong, or shown to us. These are minor problems at worst though. (8/10) Characters: Ruka Hanari is the first character that we start to meet. She seems pretty quiet and has a hard time reaching out to others, so her mother worries for her when she needs to move into a dorm at school. For a series that had characters with very deep backstories, Ruka really didn't have much more going for her. I get that she has a hard time connecting with others, and that her thing is that she wants to be a little more people-oriented, but they didn't do more with her character than that. It's not say that she didn't break out of her shell during her time as a Reflector - she clearly did. But she lacked something else to make us care more about her. Hiori Hirahara, however, has much more going for her. Not far in, Ruka realizes that Hiori is her roommate, and they quickly get acquainted. Opposite to Ruka, Hiori is a very happy individual and quick to make friends, while having very strong morals to boot. Her backstory connects quite well with her sister, Mio, who we meet a few episodes in, and the connection these two have, as well as their story before the events of this series, were extremely well told. It connects really well with the themes of this series. There are some real winners for our side cast as well. Miyako Shirakaba is a pretty regular human being at the start, and when she joined up with our main couple early on, I didn't think she was going to add much, just because she seemingly doesn't possess any strong character traits. I was wrong. She basically pushes the story along as much as she can, while not directly solving the Fragment problem herself. She's strictly behind the scenes, but adds so much that Hiori and crew simply didn't. Momo Tanabe is a more senior Reflector that helps us get the story going at the start. Her role starts to diminish as the series goes on, but for the screen time she has, she's another strong character. Yuri, Ryoka and Ameru join in about halfway through, and they were nice adds, though I'd argue Yuri had less of an effect on the story than the other two. As far as the Red Reflectors go, I mostly enjoyed their stories and why they were seeking the Fragments. Some of them have really strong backstories, and they really do the job quite well. Shino's backstory is simply horrifying, and what makes it worse is that it's not even a fantasty-like story - it COULD be real. Hate her all you want - but wait until the end. Mio and Nino are more involved in the plot as the story goes on, and while their story isn't as deep, it's still a solid inclusion. There was one that, unfortunately, doesn't seem to have much in the way of motivation, and she more-or-less acted as a faceless puppet. They do try to rush in a few characters like Ryoko and Yuri that they add in a little too weirdly for my liking, but it can't all be flawless. The group as a whole had a pretty straight forward motivation themselves, and fleshing that out as the series went on, was also a strength. (9/10) Art: The obvious area that Blue Reflection Ray suffers is the subpar animation. The style looks very flat and lacks much in the way of polish and finish. Action sequences were okay at best, which is really unfortunate when you consider the powers that the rings give our cast. Even though this magical girl series didn't have excessive fighting scenes, like a few others, cleaner, more realistic action scenes would have gone a long way. That's pretty disappointing for a large studio like J.C. Staff, and it makes me think that they tried to mirror what the games were looking like, way too much. (4/10) Sound: One thing that didn't disappoint was the sound though. I quite enjoyed the OST, though you could tell the quantity of tracks for a double cour feature was starting to run short in quick order. Both OPs and EDs were quite strong, with DiViNE by ExiNA likely being the strongest of the bunch. VO work was top notch here too, likely in part to the ADR Director, Peter Hawkinson. Two VOs who are well known for upbeat, always-happy characters are Brianna Knickerbocker (Ruka) and Sarah Williams (Yuri). Neither of their characters were that, however they were both fantastic here, especially the former. I did not expect that out of Knickerbocker. Kayli Mills (Hiori), Erica Mendez (Momo) and Katelyn Barr (Nina) were also exceptional here, with this being only my second experience with Barr voicing a character. I couldn't really pinpoint any problems within the VOs, because up and down the roster, it was exceptional. (10/10) Overall Enjoyment: Blue Reflection Ray was a very strong series within the genre, one I especially didn't expect when I saw how poorly it was being received. There are clearly some points that are weak such as the subpar animation and Ruka's lack of backstory but past these, you have a very strong series. My understanding is that the ending leads into one of the games, so if you want more Reflectors, that might be a route worth exploring. However, I'm very glad I gave this another shot! (8/10)

Merchandise

Links may contain affiliate references

Studio

Producers

Themes