Shaonu Qianxian: Renxing Xiao Juchang

Right, well here we are. The Girl's Frontline anime we all waited what? Half a year for? And it's just a meme one, nothing like the actual game PV ;-;. That said, the non-chibi art is actually very well done like the M4 in wonderland scene. I was anticipating a semi-memey, semi-serious military anime. Got nothing I was expecting at all, apart from cute chibi sleepo beepo, I guess you can't complain too much about that.

I honestly believe the best aspect of this anime is probably the character, the anime gives a very clear image of the personality of each Anti-Rain and 404 member.

The story....well ... is there one? Nope, well maybe the M4 in Wonderland scene but that's cryptic for newbies.

Sound is good because, who doesn't like cute Soppo and Beepo sounds?

Overall, I give this series a generous 7/10, I'm sure if a proper anime was made, based on MICA's manga they are currently serializing after the Girl's Frontline story, with a bit of meme and non-chibi character design, I'd probably rate that 10/10

Yikes how do I even have time to be writing this review, I should be levelling my dolls for Singularity 😓

Girls' Frontline, along with Azur Lane, is the most popular Chinese-made gatcha out there. Naturally, with this success, comes the inevitable jump to animation. How well did it turn out? Well this series is the story of two halves.

Healing Chapter comprised the first half of the series. Something that stuck out was the sheer amount of great character interactions and heartwarming scenarios. For example, in one episode, M4 SOPMOD II creates a miniature replica of herself via the flesh of her enemies. The bond between this replica and M4A1 is surprisingly genuine for a short-form anime, and this replica ended up making a cameo later ... on. The humor is relatively simple but quite well done, with a charming artstyle and surprisingly good voice acting.

The second half, known as Madness Chapter, is a bit of different tale. Based on 4koma comics that were released as fun little stories, these segments are far more fast-paced and humor-focused. And there are more of them. But naturally, the platitude of "quality > quantity" comes into play. The shorts are far too hit or miss for me. Some, such as the one with the plant fairy, are charming little snippets. Others devolve into "geddit dakimakuras" or "OOPS the cats ate the food", or just have zero build-up. It comes off a bit too childish for me at points. The animation here also wildly ranges, quite a few times stuff barely moves and in other times there are weirdly fluid motions of cat people. Character interactions are present but barely explored in favor of the previously mentioned quick gags. The voice acting is still pretty solid though.

The characters themselves are in general likable but fairly one-note. I can sum up some of them as "cat", "lazy", "drunk", and "crazy". That's unfortunately the problem you get when you focus on too many characters. Healing Chapter made up for this with bouncy dynamics, but as mentioned before Madness Chapter half-assed that part.

Perhaps I'd get this more if I liked the game enough, but I don't gamble on jpgs and as a secondary to the franchise, this unfortunately couldn't get me on board. If you want absurdly short, silly cartoons I could cautiously recommend it, but just know you won't be getting the most consistent experience.

At first lets say I haven't played the game, so I don't know much about it and can only imagine what the game is about (the Anime gives a good overview though).I don't expect much from Anime, which are made to promote games, but this one is even more bad than Azur Lane.
There is not much story, or even much something, if you get what I am saying...

Every episode is just around 3 minutes long, has an intro and an outro and often also is split into 2 or 3 clips.
So there is not much space for any character development, interesting story telling or great ... animation.
It had potential and the animation and graphics at the first few episodes were quite nice, but soon they got more and worse.It looks like, they don't have much budget or time anymore.
I liked some ideas or situations of some clips or some credit scenes, but there was to much boring, poorly made or unimportant stuff between.

The Series is split into two parts with always 12 Episodes, featuring different groups of girls.
The first halve was Japanese, the second one Chinese language.

The first halve was okay with the little episodes where at least some of them were built on top of each other, but the second one was just some random clips where nearly everything could have happened to every Anime character, I don't think you need the ones from the game for this.

And the last episodes just felt like a tutorial for the game mechanics.
I think no one needs this, everyone watching the anime for the game, would already know the mechanics and everyone else doesn't need this episode at all either.

So the Japanese part was at least trying to be good, but the secound halve dragged down my rating for this show.
I think it would have been better without it.