Lycoris Recoil

“You’re gonna become sad just so you can meet someone else’s expectations? That’s boring.” - Chisato Nishikigi Is there such thing as true peace in the world? Even if peace doesn’t exist though, should we be despondent and grow cynical of anything and everything? Lycoris Recoil, while at the surface, is about cute girls with guns, fighting terrorism, its true identity is trying to tell us, the viewers, how to approach living in a world where things aren’t as uplifting as they seem. It’s about a whole lot of things, such as how to live your best life every day, and how to live for yourself, andnot for others. The main characters, Chisato and Takina, come from different walks of life, and have polar opposite personalities. Chisato is very positive and never lets anyone keep her from being as happy as possible, while Takina is very steely and keeps to herself. After these two meet each other and work together, you can see their personalities develop, and it makes for such brilliant chemistry that warms my heart. I have to admit, I dismissed this show as a “cute girls doing cute things at a cafe” show and didn’t even watch it at first, but after seeing the response in the anime community to this show, I had to try it out. The striking balance between slice of life and dark elements really works well. My grading criteria: Story: /25 Art: /10 Music: /10 Characters: /20 Enjoyment /15 Thematic Execution /20 STORY: 19.3/25 The plot itself isn’t the strongest, as it can get quite ridiculous and nonsensical at times, but for this show, I think that’s fine. It’s more of the story about Chisato and Takina, rather than the overarching plot throughout the series. However, to give you a little overview, the plot is set in modern (or possibly futuristic) Japan, where a false sense of peace is instilled among the citizens. In fact, crimes and terrorism have never been more prevalent, so, to counteract this issue, a syndicate called Direct Attack (DA), raised orphaned girls called Lycoris, to assassinate these criminals. Following a mistake in action that resulted in danger, Takina Inoue, a Lycoris with great skill in battle, gets her transferred out of DA and into LycoReco, a cafe with a twist. It is here that she meets Chisato Nishikigi, a happy go lucky, but prodigious Lycoris. While Takina wants to do whatever it takes to get back into DA, Chisato teaches her that life is more fruitful than just killing, and that life can be beautiful. It’s the chemistry between characters that shines the brightest, and the plot is alright too, with its share of tense moments, combined with some cute slice of life elements. Some shows fail to execute these tonal shifts effectively, but Lycoris Recoil does these shifts in a very nice way. The slice of life elements get you invested in the characters, the comedy is fun, but the tense moments have you at the edge of your seat, wondering about each character’s fate in apprehension. The best thing is, this is an anime original, so no one knows what’s truly going to happen, and that’s the best part, the speculation, the potential deaths that may or may not happen… ART: 9.1/10 A-1 Pictures have really been on their game recently, with Kaguya-sama last season, and 86 last year. The animation is pretty solid, with vibrant colours and darker colours for different atmospheres. The action sequences are also done well. No complaints here. MUSIC: 8.9/10 The music compliments the show well, with slice of life music when it’s calm, and nice action or sentimental music when it’s serious. The opening from ClarIS is pretty good, and it gives a sense on how the show is going to go, and Sayuri’s ending was one of my favourites this season. CHARACTERS: 19/20 I believe it is the characters that are most worthy of the utmost praise in this show. Chisato’s character is brilliant, plain and simple. In a way, she lives as positively as I aspire to. She doesn’t care about the opinions of others, she doesn’t worry about things she can’t control, and she’s an incredibly positive influence. She has an interesting trait, which is valuing people’s lives. She doesn’t shoot to kill, contrary to any other Lycoris. She sees the value of human beings, because of various reasons in her past. While some people might get frustrated over her “stubbornness” not to kill people, it’s really a good writing decision in my opinion, as it’s a distinct personality that makes for good plot points. Takina, on the other hand, is a realist that desires results. She isn’t the most talkative, isn’t the most happy go lucky, and certainly isn’t as carefree as Chisato. Through working with Chisato though, she undergoes some changes in her lifestyle. She slowly opened up to her, trusted more people, and even developed a love for people. It goes to show what a positive influence Chisato can have on people. Aside from these two, the side characters and villains are alright as well. Kurumi and Mizuki have their comedic moments, and contribute a decent amount to the action. The villains are also quite memorable, because they have interesting intentions, and felt multi-layered. ENJOYMENT: 14.3/15 Most episodes were very enjoyable, even the slice of life moments. Every moment added to the story and I loved the chemistry between the characters. THEMATIC EXECUTION: 17.8/20 This show executes themes quite well, ranging from comedy, action, and emotional moments as well. The comedy works so well in this show, and for that, the voice actors are to be praised, as you can tell they’re passionate about their work here, and probably had quite the fun time recording their lines. The action is nicely done, and has tense moments. The emotional sequences, when they occur, are hard-hitting and feel significant. The one small flaw has to come from some of the more ridiculous bits of “plot-armour”, and no, I’m not talking about Chisato’s ability, it’s more the events that occur, such as the timing of certain events that were questionably executed. Overall, still quite thematically brillant. Great balance between the light moments and the dark moments, with tonal shifts that didn’t feel awkward. OVERALL: 88.4/100 Definitely one of my favourite shows from 2022 so far, and one of the best cast of characters I’ve seen this year. While it isn’t completely flawless, I still enjoyed it through and through. A-1 Pictures continues to deliver, and it’s great to see! Alright, time to see if I can create that LycoReco signature parfait…

Lycoris Recoil is and anime that is prioritizing action and characters over a story and while there is nothing wrong with this approach, it still requires at least a bearable story which won't distract us with its flaws. Let's start with what this series does best which is characters, main cast is good. Colourful personalities and good interactions are the biggest strength of this anime. Antagonists while having flaws which I will discuss later, are made to challenge the ideas and motivations of our protagonist. We also see some growth in the side characters which was satisfying. High quality of production makes this show even nicerto watch. Animation is pretty soundtrack was ok and scenes of action had good choreography. Unfortunately while speaking about action it is important to bring up plot armour, which is big in this anime. As we are dealing with shootouts the aim in them depends on what story is demanding. If someone has to escape or live then its a series of misses, even if skilled shooters are involved. We need to get rid of cannon fodder? Then every shot lands. This is a big problem for me. Not only it is obvious what the authors are doing, pulling me out of the fight, but it also sucks all of the stakes out of the fight. Now to the main complaint, the story. Whole plot is depending on antagonists with stupid/generic motivations and on the most brain dead mob in the history of anime. The things that happen in the last episodes made me suffer a headache. We also need to deal with a hole lot of plot convenience in this show. At one point protagonists literally forgot about the main antagonist. Even worse Lycoris Recoil has an accidental strong pro censorship message. With how stupid the masses are and how quickly they descend into chaos in face of truth you start to think that it's better to keep those sheep in the dark. The fact that show presents undercover secret organization so simplistically is hurtful. To sum it up Lycoris Recoil presents you with great characters and nice, mindless action. Whether you will enjoy it or not depends greatly on how much weak plot can bother you. If like me you get bothered by those types of stories, don't watch it. Otherwise feel free to try it out, characters might make it worth it.

Sigh, tricked by the score. Here I thought it was something special because of how much attention it has clearly been getting. It was a bit painful to watch this trainwreck right from episode 1. Don't get me wrong, the animation quality, sound, VA wasn't bad at all. It was great. The problem is the story, seemingly a lot of people think that cute girls and action can justify such horrible writing. This anime is a mish-mash of clichés, cute girls doing cute things, stupidly illogical gunfights and one of the worst secretive organizations I've ever had the displeasure to be exposed to. It's idiotic on somany levels. We have the secretive organization that trains orphaned kids so that we can have high school/middle school girls(for some reason pretty much exclusively cute girls) running around with guns while using school uniforms and skirts while fighting crimes to pretend to be a part of the public. Oh, and of course they all use the same uniform all the time outside, as if to scream at enemies to attack them, so much for secrecy. These girls actively kill terrorists everywhere and "make japan safe and peaceful". I guess guys just aren't cut out for this(though the male version does show up in a minor version in an antagonistic fashion, they're still just kids though, stupid that there's an all female and an all male faction). Also, I guess immature kids in the midst of their teens(or preteens) are so damn well suited to special ops, they're not even well disciplined. Also, I guess adults just aren't fit for this either, gotta have cute, below 18 females, can't have any guys that aren't old and not a possible target for romance. This secretive organization is also so high-profile that there's no way it'd be a secret, it's run as if the leaders have shit for brains. There's clearly no proper structure. Then, of course, the super hacker, the best in the world, is a cute little loli that appears 10-12. I was of the impression from the dialogue that this person was present since long ago but I guess not, her reputation is insane, maybe she started using her laptop to hack stuff while in her mother's womb. Overall, she just acts like a typical cliché loli, except she's "sooo smart and collected". As usual the "hacking" is her playing it like it's a game, literally, even including game graphics and mechanics. photo analystics are 1 button auto, she can get everything she wants easily. Not a smidgen of realism. The other girls also act like typical high school girls in anime. Honestly, I can't stand the two main character girls. The black haired one show barely any emotions and is so stuck in her ways and inflexible it just makes her boring. The other platinum/blonde haired girl is the COMPLETE opposite. She's so high paced, hyper and my paced that she makes someone with actual ADHD look very normal and calm. I really dislike her moronic outbursts, extremely exaggerated expressions and gestures and I also hate that she refuses to kill people despite the kind of organization she is in and how dangerous the situations are, nothing more moronic than using non-lethal means that doesn't even knockout people properly, she's basically she's bringing a banana to a knifefight. Another thing about her, I just don't buy her ability to 100% avoid any and all bullets. Even rapid fire is avoided like it's nothing. I can kinda buy avoiding slow handgun fire by predicting the trajectory from the barrel position and hand movement, but what she is doing is a pure supernatural ability and that doesn't even explain how she can avoid strafing fire where there's no room to evade... These character templates aren't too bad normally, but the issue is that they're trying to bring seriousness into what is clearly a cute girls doing cute things anime. They fit more into a school setting. I've rarely seen animes that are so bad that I just feel the desire to drop them all the time. Anime that suck from the first few minutes all the all the way to the end. I fail to see what the hype was about. This is just plain bad, the 3/10 rating is just for the good animation/VA/Sound. I regret watching this.

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