Arknights: Touin Kiro

Rebel organization Reunion has reduced the city of Chernobog to ashes and despair. That is only the beginning of its uprising against the nations prejudiced toward those infected with the highly contagious and deadly disease Oripathy. Now, the rebels have set their sights on Lungmen—a prosperous city infamous for its inhumane treatment of the sick. After witnessing Reunion destroy her homeland, Chief Ch'en of the Lungmen Guard Department's Special Inspection Unit leads her squad to defend her city.

Meanwhile, Amiya, the Doctor, and the rest of the advanced pharmaceutical company Rhodes Island continue to oppose Reunion on all fronts. However, they soon find themselves in a deadlock against a powerful enemy: FrostNova, a Reunion commander whose fearsome wintry powers cause anyone unfortunate enough to stand in her way to slowly perish in frost.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Amiya Main

Kurosawa, Tomoyo Japanese

Ch'en Main

Ishigami, Shizuka Japanese

FrostNova Main

Takagaki, Ayahi Japanese

Doctor Main

Kaida, Yuki Japanese

W Supporting

Taketatsu, Ayana Japanese

Texas Supporting

Tadokoro, Azusa Japanese

Exusiai Supporting

Iwami, Manaka Japanese

Kal'tsit Supporting

Hikasa, Youko Japanese

Hoshiguma Supporting

Yasuno, Kiyono Japanese

Liskarm Supporting

Ishikawa, Yui Japanese

Pei, Yanjie Producer

Watanabe, Yuuki Director, Sound Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Nishikawa, Masaki Episode Director, Assistant Director

Douge, Shintarou Storyboard, Assistant Director

Reviews

Nov 24, 2023

shield_01

Recommended

Arknights season 2 anime covers episodes4, 5 and 6 of the main story line of the game: Burning run, necessary solutions and partial necrosis. among the players of the game these episodes usually are known for game finally picking up it's long and slow pace a bit and getting amusing. with anime focusing on characters like: Amiya doctor and chen with Frostnova in main spotlight

there is much to say about the story adapted for this season. adapting 3 different story episodes with near 200000 words into 8 episodes of anime sure makes feel those who read for themselves feel some parts are missing. ... but it is notable despite the fast pacing of some parts, no major part of story is lost through adaption. though some parts such as necessary solutions could really get more attention to clarify the cause of Reunion movement reason to attack Lungmen and why characters chose to drop some fights

as for animation it was generally good and they have struck a great balance with game original art style and the quality was stable for most of the time

fight scenes were either packed with action that would really made blinking hard or go completely blank and fast paced with some of them being already over. and I personally felt a lack of crowd and people. the city of Lungmen could be portrait more damaged and clashes between LGD and Reunion felt somewhat empty like they could really use more people just like how it is in ending

voice acting was just perfect and full of emotions

over all despite existence of room for improvements. Arknights anime was great and worthy of watching

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Nov 24, 2023

ShinodaChan

Mixed Feelings

Well-written

For a long time, Arknights has had a cult following; myself included. We praise the game for its worldbuilding, hold its characters near and dear, and cherish the game as a part of our lives. Why is it then that the anime fails to convey this appeal? Why is it that Perish in Frost, which is in many ways an improvement over its predecessor, is still so critically flawed?

The truth, put simply, is that it's a flawed story mixed with extraneous circumstances.

Now, I won't talk about gacha syndrome here, nor the limited episode count. These issues should be fairly apparent, and though Yostar has ... tried to work with them, they both tie back to the same problem: the problems with the source material. To give a few examples of what I'm talking about:

- Prelude to Dawn (Chapters 0-3) was poorly written across the board. Amiya gets a weak introduction, the first main antagonists (Misha/Alex) are respectively naive/insufferable, and most critical of all: Lungmen's issues weren't made apparent sooner. Reunion largely gets painted in a negative light up until this season, meaning that Prelude to Dawn lacked the nuance in its conflict that it desperately needed to convince viewers. By the time viewers finish Perish in Frost the story will make sense in retrospect, but it should never have been 'in retrospect' to begin with. Context clues should have been planted way sooner, and Yostar failed to make these adjustments to what is commonly perceived as the worst arc in the original game. You'd think that this wouldn't matter, but look at the viewership drop between seasons. No matter what Perish in Frost does, it can't change Prelude to Dawn's bad first impression. This gutted most broader interest in the anime, and it's unlikely to come back.

- The story provides very little payoff. Payoff can take multiple forms: visual results, character development, and callbacks to previous scenes. Where Arknights suffers is in its inability to make the conflict seem worth it. If the tragedy only gets worse, and there's no real light in the dark, what's the point of any of this? Why depress viewers further if there's no clear ray of hope? One could liken it to torture porn where, instead of things getting better, the situation somehow only seems to get worse for the mere sake of getting worse. Rhodes Island rarely 'wins'. Instead, it's constantly dealt pyrrhic victories that take more away than they give. If that's the precedent across not just one, but two seasons, why should viewers still care? Players may know the answer, but for anime-onlies it's more difficult. To put it one way, we live in a time where depression is more rampant than ever, and escapism is highly preferred. If your emphasis is on confronting reality, and said confrontation rarely yields positive results, then that's not enjoyable in the slightest. While it's from a completely separate genre, consider that part of the reason Bocchi the Rock is so popular is because it relates to and instills hope in its core audience. It tells introverts that the world isn't all darkness, and that if they take a chance to step out of their shell, they'll be able to pursue what they truly want. Arknights doesn't have a similar message, it's merely a surface-level commentary on discrimination and injustice. Considering that, maybe it's not such a good idea to tell viewers the truth insofar that injustice is a systemic problem, and it takes an eternity to properly address. Again, people don't want to face the grimness of reality, and that's exactly what Arknights is: the wrong story at the wrong time.

- Arknights arcs have too many characters. This is a problem that only worsens as the story develops, but for all of the intricacy of Arknights' worldbuilding, it gets too many faces involved. Gacha syndrome plays a part in this, but in general it's a mistake to focus on more than a few characters at a time. Character development takes nuance, conflict, and screentime. If you distribute your points across too many skills, you're not going to level anything. What's even worse is when the investment DOES happen, but the character is subsequently killed off. Suddenly we're back to stage 1 of depression, only now the viewer is left frustrated. Where is the win? Where is the hope? Where, in this godforsaken Earth analog, is a sign that things are getting better? Tolerance has a breaking point, and a failure to acknowledge this is a failure to keep viewers interested. Characters need to be meaningfully developed AND maintained for sake of continuity, otherwise it's a wasted effort. You could argue that in some cases a character's death is narratively significant, and in both seasons this is certainly the case. The problem is that there is nothing BUT death, leading to the aforementioned issues.

- To add onto the above, Arknights prefers the 'big picture' with its storytelling. It focuses on providing a broad view of all the main players, like watching chess pieces move on a board. This is great for building a comprehensive image, but draws the focus away from individual characters. Ironically, part of the problem is in situations where the seeds for payoff are actually planted. Without getting into spoilers, this season has more than one occasion where a character's arc is foreshadowed for later, preemptively justifying their screentime. This works if your viewers are already bought into the narrative, but when the story is already as flawed as it is, the biggest concern should lay in fixing the present; not setting the stage for the future.

If you take anything from all of this, it's that Arknights' story is too broad and overly depressing. It does a poor job in retaining viewers because there's little to be found in maintained progression. You can see the progression in recurring characters, but with gacha syndrome in full swing, those examples are few and far between.

None of this is to say I hate Perish in Frost. As I said at the start, it's mostly an improvement over Prelude to Dawn. The animation has improved, the fight scenes are (generally) better, there's more focus on fewer characters, and the central conflict has grown much clearer. Viewers can clearly see how Amiya, Ch'en, and even the Doctor have developed, even if Ch'en's arc was gutted through pacing. This season's antagonists are far more enjoyable — barring a certain little shit — and the emotional beats are starting to hit. There are still problems, namely when it comes to the pacing, soundtrack, and inconsistent censorship, but those are things that can be improved without relying on the source material. Unfortunately, the anime is crippled by its first season, as if gacha adaptations weren't scrutinized enough. It'll be a long road for Yostar Pictures from here, and with the mixed quality of future arcs (starting strong then getting worse), I have my doubts for future seasons.

Life lesson, folks: Don't screw up your first season. It'll undermine everything that comes after, simply because viewers won't view anything beyond it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Nov 26, 2023

Looxornk

Not Recommended

Horrible adaptation of another gacha game. But beware of a long-read. If you not sure whether to read or not, check my profile for highest and lowest rated things to know how differently we perceive the media.

First thing I want to mention is my background, to help you understand my thoughts. I am a big fan of huge detailed worlds, with or without magic, of logic, of drama, and of course of quality. By being open minded, I value things no matter it's genre and medium, whether it is a game, mobile one, series, books or anything else. And while in my gacha-world-exploration time I ... tried lots of games. The most notable of them were few months of Azur Lane, Girls Frontline, few weeks of PGR and almost 3 years of FGO (yeah, I ate some shiet). But in the end I dropped all of them, and chose to become a true fan of Arknights for many, many reasons. And the first and foremost reason was the strategic gameplay, where the skills of the player are valued much more than the grind, core thing of the game. It also has great visuals, optimization and if you will follow lore long enough (through boring exposition of Misha's ark and few things beyond) it will show you a magnificent world. It is vast and pure, detailed and diverse, with truly different nations, governments, problems and in the end people, who react not heroically, comically or cool, but realistically, by being sometimes afraid, angry, foolish or naïve. And in such a world a tens and tens of different stories happen, without anime persistent boobs, magic of friendship or this powerful dude from highschool. And by being lore-great, in addition to great gameplay and visuals it has lots of amazing music in a huge variety of genres, fair monetization and a fair gacha rates. As a person who loves long stories, strategizing and music, this game was a real gift from above.

But the anime was announced.

After the ONA, with just demonstration of well-known characters in a decent combat, everyone was hyped, me included. I thought: "Can't be, the ones who show the amazing quality in almost everything title-related, will show us more animation?" And yes, as you may guess, it could not become a reality. The first season was extremely mediocre. The animations of characters, and whole first episode were kinda good, but everything ended here. Action scenes were bland, all meaningful scenes were going without any logical pauses between them one after another, leaving exposition, tempo and simple deomstration of said things out of equation. By dumping information that was already too vast even inside of a visual novel, they turned series into fast-paced mindless paraphrase, which was a horrible mistake. But overall both those variants were kinda equally boring, that's why I put a 6(Fine) mark on the first season. Perfect for ones who don't want to read, but want to play. Sadly, as an advertisement it failed.

But the second season... It is a literal crime against the lore and fans. While already finished with exposition, in-game tempo normalized itself, and from now on focused the readers' attention on the events and characters. Touching things from afar, walking their line of life and choices, it showed an amazing, yet dramatic story about Reunion, leaving unnecessary things like descriptions of places or exact actions out of picture.

And here it is, the train of pain, Arknights: Perish in Frost. List of each carriage:
THE GRAPHICS. Nothing changed from the first season. Faces are really good, movement of hair and clothes were really detailed. Also liked the extreme angle shots from time to time. But backgrounds, rare 3D models and fights were comparatively unreasonably plain, for the difference was obvious and annoying.
THE ACTION. Bad, as bad can be with such a budget. All of the scenes were basically static. One movement of hand, one run, one object flying. That’s why zero cooperation (which by the way was the core of the original game), zero interaction with freaking environment (in a story about war conflicts and life’s fragility! Yes, really). "Instead lets alter characters’ abilities, so it will nicely blend with the rest of junk in the anime industry’s trash bin".
THE SOUND. Can’t say it was good. By being a bad child from a literal record label it showed us good 3D sounds, but… mediocre music, while still making bangers outside just as operator themes or boss fight backgrounds.
THE STORY. Oh, how wrong I was, when thought that adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire was an easy task, thinking Benioff and Weiss just had a good source material. In terms of story adaptation, it is a… violent sexual assault:
-Characters. Dead dolls, who have no time. “They must say, act or teleport from scene to scene, saying things we have no budget and time to show.”
-Tempo. “More episodes must be pretty expensive, let’s make 3 long, rich and difficult for comprehension chapters into 8 episodes.”
-Scale. “Oh, I don't know what it is, really. We are trying to show everything, but because of a few story limitations from above we will just slideshow the unconnected places, blend events, making them undetailed and simple as much as we practically can. If it adds mystery to the books, why shouldn't it add mystery to anime too?”
-Development. Previously I wanted to divide it into plot development, characters’ and something more but I’ll just say this: “We showed the main checkpoints, so it will not deviate from the game. Whether you want to believe in such development or not, it’s just your problem for it's just an advertisement, go play the game itself.”

It’s bad, so freaking bad. I have a few friends who are afraid of the mobile gaming world, and I will definitely not show them my favorite game in such a horrible state. The original thing, made by dozens of designers (try to google new events' trailers, just the video sequence alone is stylish as puck), ended up turned into this — pitiful money abuse victim, made by the hands of those, who couldn't care any less. On the bright side the franchise will not branch with such an advertisement, so the skillful hands will not be distributed god-knows-how among potential Arknights projects, yet staying as it is will just push potential new fans away.

Shame. Really.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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