#but like Lycoris Recoil has a lot of stuff happening in it and none of it actually ends up mattering

[hoodiedoodles]

lycoris recoil is a really cool yuri anime that is one of the biggest nothingburgers of all time

its set up to have this commentary about "learning to live" or "the pains of living in a surveillance" or maybe something about gender identity or "being raised as a weapon" and then nothing about it matters

there's this secret organization that's implied to be some kind of super-wealthy shadow operation that exists to discover, maintain, and develop "talent", spending millions of dollars to preserve the life of unique individuals that are believed to be somehow special. anyway they're completely irrelevant except for explaining the main pro and antagonists backstories. like they only exist to justify Chisato being able to dodge bullets

the government kidnaps and raises orphans as living weapons-- both male and female-- in order to maintain a standing army of hidden weapons, snuck into the populace to strike anytime and anywhere they need. our deutragonist, Takina, is raised like this, along with several side-characters, and through Chisato learns to embrace her "humanity" instead of just being a tool for lycoris. right? well no actually the show doesn't really say anything about that beyond it being set dressing so these girls can go on cute dates with each other. like there are undertones about it but it doesnt feel like the show concretely says anything

or what about the ever-present surveillance state that deigns itself to be judge-jury and executioner of anyone they deem a threat? eliminating them even before they can commit a crime using a hyper-advance Minority Report styled AI? so advanced that they can generate propaganda in real time to keep the public complacent and their activities hidden? it's just fluff to explain why we have 16 year old assassin highschoolers shooting at dudes

like with that last one this super-powered AI straight up gets hacked and is used for evil-- you'd think the show would then say something about how a surveillance state that can be compromised and used by the bad guys reveals the fallibility of such a system. or that it's bad give them blank-cheque to kill people. or even that the existence of such a pervasive system is, in itself, evil for it's violation of rights and decency

but at the end of the show nothing meaningful actually happens, nor does the world change

in a lot of ways the ending actually implies that a Surveillance State is good, actually, and that it's existence is a good thing because it stops the Bad Guys from blowing up a building. The Surveillance State and it's Army of Orphans should be maintained because an angry guy with green hair might have a bomb idk

like numerous times this system straight up doesn't work and does nothing to seriously stop the actual terrorist forces. they still bring in guns and bombs and various illegal shit all the time. but hey, now we can track and send a hit squad after 16 year olds on the internet!

there's a ton of history about this previous building that Chisato fought in in the past-- it's shown all the time. it's literally held up by metal scraps, a monument to the frailty of the Lycoris system preserved only by the actions of a single girl who wanted to live. It's an eternal symbol of her victory, yet it's completely irrelevant to the world. It' just an empty husk designed to look nice. It doesn't mean anything unless you pretend it does, because the story is void of actual meaning or intent beyond a very heavily worldbuilt yuri plot.

[dlamp-dictator]

Quick Thoughts on Summer Anime

Somehow I was able to finish about 3 anime over the summer season, and given that I’m a 28-year-old man that only watches anime for fun and to pass the time that’s a bit of a surprise for me, even more so that three shows got enough of my interest to keep up with them weekly instead of just waiting and binging them on my day off. So before we move into Fall I wanted to talk about them for a bit in some small (or not-so-small) blurbs.

Overlord IV

This season was good. Not incredible or something I’d consider a must-watch, but I enjoyed just about everything that was presented before me. I know think it was mind-blowing as some of the other stuff I was hearing about this season, but I do think if you like Overlord and want to see some kind of conclusion to the whole Re-Estize situation then this is the season to watch. With that said, I was hearing a lot of talk about this season skipping about two or three volumes within the light novel proper to keep the focus on Re-Estize and its neighboring kingdoms. While I can understand the frustration of skipping content given what I understand about the skipped volumes I find it an unfortunate but necessary measure. Keeping things toward Re-Estize instead of moving around the world too much helps keep things focused, especially when some of the earlier volumes seemed to to have been really setting up Re-Estize for a big event in later volumes. Skipping ahead is unfortunate, but it’s very common in anime story telling. Sometimes arc 6 is a better conclusion for the season than arc 4, so you have to skip around to keep things focused in terms of the anime. This might just be the last season of Overlord we get until the light novel finishes and we can have a proper conclusion. I hear this series is about 4 more volumes from finishes, so I say expect a final season in about two-ish years.

Lycoris Recoil (Spoilers Ahead)

I’ve already discussed my opinion of Lycoris Recoil here and none of my thoughts or feelings have changed much, especially my criticisms. Chisato still feels like too much of a manic pixie dream girl for me to fully be interested in her development, especially with how that final episode ended and more or less did nothing to fully challenge of her morals or take on life aside from “killing is bad, and people should live how they want so long as they don’t harm others in the process”. A good mindset and lesson, but coming from someone that works in an assassin organization the words ring a little hollow. The worldbuilding around DA and the Lycoris Recoil world as a whole feels kind of weak as well(especially after that climax). Given how things ended DA should either had been completely disbanded or completely reworked as a non-killing organization that followed Chisato’s mindset in order to keep public perception of the group with as little suspicion as possible. But that didn’t happen and I know the finale ended the way it did for either a movie tie-in or a season 2 outright, there is no other reason to have things end that... “cleanly” unless that had plans to continue this series either in movies, another season, or some light novel. I still think this anime is dumb fun, but that’s really it. I’d put this a level lower than Kill la Kill in terms of narrative, but overall a good show to watch.

Black Summoner

I also already talked about Black Summoner here and my opinion has only lowered. To keep things brief Kelvin as a character isn’t that interesting to me and I feel like the anime should had kept itself to the first two volumes of the light novel and do more to expand on the world building. To go down the list, Kelvin’s battle addict personality is neither truly challenged nor punished aside from the finale and even then not by much. While I’m fine with a power fantasy I feel like to make it work you need to either make the main character a fun, charismatic person to watch blast through challenges effortlessly (The Misfit of Demon King Academy), make their seemingly underdog victories a matter of how rather than if (No Game, No Life), or deconstruction the powerful character to be seen as more of a threat to the world than a boon (Overlord). Kelvin just doesn’t meet any of that to me since his personality traits are so... normal until a fight happens, and even then since he isn’t challenged that much until the finale the victories feel neither earned or worth it. Also, a small side thing, but Rion also feels like a useless character to me since her appeal as both a reincarnated human and someone with the title of hero forced upon have been done in more interesting ways by other shows and media, along with the fact that she’s just meant to be the little sister character for Kelvin. Honestly, there’s a lot about the last fourth of the anime that left me disappointed and I think I’m going to wane off the isekai for awhile.

And that’s really it for this anime season. I’m currently rewatching some of my older comfort shows for the fall seasons instead of keeping up with the seasonal chart, but if something catches my eye I might give a peek. But anyway, that’s it for me.