Blue Reflection Ray

Individual pieces of human emotion usually take form as flowers known as "Fragments." The select few who possess strong enough Fragments can become "Reflectors," beings who equip specialized rings that allow them to connect their thoughts, memories, and emotions to those whose feelings waver. There are two types of Reflectors—those who wear blue rings to protect those falling into depravity by preserving their Fragments, and those who wear red rings to prevent negative emotions by stealing the Fragments of those who begin to develop severe woe.

Despite wanting to socialize with people around her, transfer student Ruka Hanari's shy and introverted personality always gets in her way. In a chance encounter, however, she bumps into a woman who happens to drop a blue ring as she hurries away. Unable to return it, Ruka brings it back with her to her dorm. There, she meets the outgoing Hiori Hirahara, who also has a blue ring. They find themselves in several conflicts against red Reflectors, slowly realizing the true power of the rings that they hold.

Now striving to become Reflectors themselves, Ruka and Hiori must learn to work together and become stronger so that they can save not only the people around them, but also themselves from the emotions that hold them back.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Hanari, Ruka Main

Chisuga, Haruka Japanese

Hirahara, Hiori Main

Iwami, Manaka Japanese

Hirahara, Mio Main

Ueda, Reina Japanese

Komagawa, Uta Supporting

Tanabe, Rui Japanese

Yamada, Nina Supporting

Tamaki, Nina Japanese

Tanabe, Momo Supporting

Takakura, Yuka Japanese

Shirakaba, Miyako Supporting

Oowada, Hitomi Japanese

Mizusaki, Shino Supporting

Izawa, Shiori Japanese

Saiki, Yuri Supporting

Sakura, Ayane Japanese

Tachibana, Ryouka Supporting

Hirayama, Yurika Japanese

Aoi, Hiroyuki Producer

Takashino, Shuuichi Producer

Okada, Kouji Producer

Yoshida, Risako Director

Reviews

Sep 24, 2021

VentusBrawler

Recommended

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 probably ... noticed 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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Sep 25, 2021

SanaeK10

Mixed Feelings

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 watching ... a 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

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Sep 24, 2021

KANLen09

Not Recommended

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 Blue ... Reflection 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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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