Lycoris Recoil

Lycoris Recoil the number 1 most hyped anime of Summer 2022 folks. Where Recoils strengths lie is its animation and Chisatos character, her bubbly energetic personality carrying nearly 100 percent of the entire show. The sequences between Takina and Chisato are what make this anime and will be the big reason you even watch this show in the first place. You also get some really cool action scenes but unfortunately there are some glaring flaws with the show that you just cannot ignore and really drag down its potential unfortunately.

Lets start with flaw number 1. The DA, I don't know what scarier here, the villains ... or the fact that such an incompetent agency has more power than the govt and constantly has to cover up their screw ups from the public which happens well quite a lot. Without Takina and Chisato to unscrew things the DA would just be another useless hack agency that is collecting a paycheque.

Speaking of the DA, lets also talk about Takina. Shes one of the only two competent Lycoris in the entire show. She at least understands her job and her purpose yet gets reprimanded time and time again for it. Were it not for her besides Chisato of course DA would be useless and Chisato would not be able to do her job nearly as well. Despite all of this she carries nearly the rest of the energy for the show.

Flaw number 2, Chisatos obsession with not using lethal force/ "saving lives". For the record no Chisato is not a "female John Wick" not even close. Wick wouldn't hesitate to go lethal when it calls for it. Having this mentality is fine if there's an order to bring in a target alive or the character in question is of great importance. However, sparing the lives of unimportant low level dangerous terrorists and treating them like petty criminals who committed a nonviolent crime not only adds nothing of value to justify the goodness in Chisatos character it is corny and stupid. As if that isnt bad enough her point is contradicted on multiple occasions by her recklessness and letting dangerous terrorists go unsupervised. Her actions in episode 9 alone is enough to make you roll your eyes.

I know what a lot of you are saying "so what is action show who cares"? sure, other shows lack in plot or don't have even close to the best plot but they don't draw near as much of your attention as Recoil does because Recoil keeps reminding you so its not like you can ignore it. Is the show bad and you shouldn't watch it? No, however I recommend you temper your expectations a little bit and try to see through all the hype.

LycoReco is a show about girls with guns, doing gun things. The premise is quite okay. And to be honest, the fights are very fluid and fun to watch. If you're only planning to watch this anime for that, then stop reading further and enjoy.

It would've been good if they just took the cliche route of good vs bad. However, Chisato's personality/beliefs ruined the show for me. Initially, I thought it'll be a serious anime with the main characters making rational and practical decisions. The norm with law enforcement is to capture the criminals alive as much as possible, but not when the person had ... become dangerous. I haven't seen agents irl, but I expect them to kill when necessary, especially if it's a terrorist who shoots people out in the open and blows buildings. Meanwhile, Chisato likes letting terrorists live. What did these terrorists do after surviving? They make an even worse plan and murders a lot more people.
Then, there is that scene where a random citizen picks up a gun. That's just weird. Do people suddenly just become incapable of thinking after finding a gun? I think they'll either get scared and throw it away, or immediately bring it to authorities. Of course, there are some who will keep it. But in most cases, I don't think someone who picks up a gun will suddenly shoot people.

These things, they really felt awkward. I'm not sure if the show wanted to tell me that killing isn't necessary to reach a goal, or that it just wanted to make Chisato saint-like and cool.

Thanks for reading my review and God bless.

LicoReco is a fun lazy anime.

But not lazy in regard to its production. Actually, the animation is superb, and the fight scenes are really well choreographed. The voice acting is awesome too. The real problem is the anime's lack of creativity.

The plot seems AI generated. It has interesting elements, but it prefers to ignore them. Instead, we watch many episodes more mission focused, which are progressively more linked. That was the best part of the anime, the more slice of life styled episodes. Chisato has so much charisma, so it's just too much fun to watch her doing stuff. Her Seiyuu did very well. When ... Chisato appears, it's fun. When we have other things happening, it's boring. It has to be said, though, that she's a Mary sue.

In addition, char design is lazy too. Nothing different from other anime. The villain, for exempla, seems like a generic villain, something that contradicts in some way his motivations and his porpoise in the plot.

In the end, my impression was that the anime is loaded with sakugas: "waifu" women sakuga, fight sakuga, shooting sakuga, guns sakuga. For all that, the producers thought that it was not necessary to do more than this. The result: the last 4 episodes (more plotwise) were terrible.

Review em português:

LicoReco é um anime preguiçoso e divertido.

Não preguiçoso em questão de produção. Na verdade a animação é muito boa, com cenas de lutas bem coreografadas e empolgantes. A dublagem também está ótima. O problema é mais a falta de criatividade desse anime.
O enredo parece que foi gerado numa IA. Tem elementos interessantes, mas praticamente não são trabalhados durante a obra, como a organização das meninas infiltradas na sociedade.

Acho que esse é o ponto. A obra até tem pontos interessantes, mas prefere não trabalhá-los. Em vez disso, temos vários episódios mais focados em pequenas missões que aos poucos vão se interligando. Acho que foi ai que o anime brilhou mais. A Chisato tem muito carisma, então é muito legal ver ela conversando, interagindo. A dubladora se garantiu muito. Quando temos Chisato, é divertido, quando temos outras coisas fica muito fraco. Embora ela praticamente não mude por ser basicamente perfeita.
O design de personagem também é não tem nada de mais. Nada de muito diferente. O vilão tem mó cara de vilão, o que até contradiz um pouco a ideia por trás dele eu diria.

No fim, a impressão que tive foi que o anime estava tão cheio de sakuga, de mulher "waifável", de luta, de tiro, que acharam que não precisavam de mais do que isso. Resultado foram 4 episódios finais bem ruins e arrastados.

En français:

LicoReco est un anime gai et paresseux.

Mais ce n'est pas paresseux en ce qui concerne sa production. En fait, l'animation est super, avec très bien chorégraphiées scènes de lutte. Le doublage est aussi très bon. Le problème c'est le manque de créativité.

Le plot semble généré par l'IA. Il y a des éléments intéressants, mais l'anime préfère les ignorer.  Plutôt, il y a beaucoup d'épisodes concentrés sur des missions du jour. Ça, c'était la meilleure part de l'anime, la part plus Slice of Life. Chisato a charisme en abondance, donc c'est super quand elle est en scène. La seiyuu est magnifique ! À cause de cela, quand on n'a rien de Chisato, l'anime est fastidieux. 

Le design de personnage est aussi paresseux. C'est la même chose des autres animes. Le méchant parait comme un générique personnage mauvais, ce qui contredit son rôle dans l'histoire.

À la fin, mon impression, c'est que l'anime a eu assez Sakugas, qu'il n'était pas nécessaire d'avoir autre chose. Le dernier quatre épisodes ont été terribles.

Lycoris recoil is one of those anime that you will forget after a week. It had a strong start with an interesting setting, amazing main characters that is chisato and takina. The best thing about lycoreco is undoubtedly Chisato. She is a very lively and happy-go-lucky girl that anyone can't hate. I absolutely adore her chemistry with takina. The second best thing about lycoreco is fluid action. Almost every episode has action scenes which are animated beautifully. Wonderful choreography and clean animation throughout the whole show. Final arc is a bit disappointing although the conclusion is satisfying. That's it, it's not a masterpiece nor completely ... unwatchable.

The essence of this anime story is a gay couple (teacher and Chisato's savior) who educate children to become agents of a secret murderous organization, which ends with an abnormality in one of their students who is super over power (can dodge bullets) but can't kill resulting in the antagonist terrorists who should have died from the first episode until the end of this anime did not die. The only ones who died were many NPC characters (ordinary people) who were killed by the antagonist. If you like weird justice and defense organization shows then this anime will suit you. Story ... plot rating: bad,
action animation: good,
voice actors: good,
anime ost: standard

Short Review (Spoilers-free):

At this point, if you even search the Youtube for opinions on Lycoris Recoil, all you can find are endless praises. Some even labelled it "one of the best original anime ever". That might be the case for you if what matters the most to you is moe girls acting out their puberty/girly stuff all the time. However, if you value plot coherence/tonal consistency the most, you are probably like me--not the core target audience for this anime. In that case, Lycoris Recoil might feel like someone throwing all their favorite ingredients into a blender without much thought to proportions of ingredients.

Expectations/before ... I watch: according to the popular opinions, Lycoris Recoil is a "John Wick meets K-on". Well, since I like John Wick 1 and 2, plus I am okay with moe comedy, I wanted to give Lycoris Recoil a try. After watching all 13 episodes of Lycoris Recoil, I can safely guarantee you that this is most certainly not John Wick, even if all you want from it is just sleek protagonists mowing down 1000 goons in increasingly ridiculous fashions.

Baseline Quality: 6.5-7 for me. Uneven quality across the different genres it tackled. If the moe comedy department of the show is a 9/10, then its mystery/suspense department only gets a 4-5/10 from me. Action/thriller elements are 6-8/10 fluctuating across the episodes. Drama in this show is a joke which gets a 3/10 from me.

Recommended to: fans of moe comedy. Those who value anime graphics over everything else. Or if you are Hideo Kojima (whose game direction I have admired for decades by the way).

Not recommended to: those who demand some authentic stake/tension in the story, or those who take themes/messages in anime more seriously.

What worked for me:

+ When it gets moe, it really has some of the most effective moe/cutesy stuff in recent anime. Chisato and Takina kicking each other's butt as a homage to Stand By Me is a nice touch, and that's already iconic in a lot of anime fans' memory. You can feel the physicality of the main duo's bodies when they move stylistically.
+ Like the butt-kicking scene from OP, most of the motions/actions in the show are meticulously drawn, with character art being stable and smooth across the whole 13 episodes.
+ Some action sequences are gripping and tightly composed. These sequences are somewhat comparable to those chase/evade sequences from the Bourne movies, albeit with anime-ish outcomes.
+ Decent OP/ED songs. I like the ED song better than the OP, but taste in music can be very subjective, so your mileage might differ.
+ Its lighthearted overtone is sustained and handled with care.

What did not work too well for me:

- The show's single-minded commitment to moe comedy and relentless pace can be a double-edged sword. It tries to short-sell its moe elements a bit too hard that characters lose their believability in a high-stake underworld setting. I mentioned that the entire show feels like someone throwing all their favorite ingredients into a blender without much thought to proportions. Another metaphor is imagine yourself ordering a beef steak combo in a luxurious restaurant, and getting a very sweet and cute appetizer. However when the main course is served, you realize it's covered with gummy bears as if to conceal the burned steak. You still enjoy the gummy bears until the end, but you get a bad aftertaste in your mouth when you really think about it. To put it in plain words, the whole of the multiple genres Lycoris Recoil tackled is less than their sum. An example is a seemingly high-stake scenario in EP12 foreshadowed over previous episodes. Yet the crisis in the said scenario was averted so quickly and cleanly as if it's a joke. Same thing goes with Chisato's personal crisis. The melancholy/tragedy was hardly given time to sink in before over-the-top moe stuff hits your face every 3 seconds. Perhaps there is only a very subtle difference between lightheartedness and ignorance. Lycoris Recoil, in my opinion, leans towards the latter when it tries to tackle drama. "Shadow official organization training orphaned minors to be covert assassins" shouldn't be treated this lightly, but that's just my two cents.

- The themes and conspiracies don't make much sense. For example, you only get a very vague sense that the illuminati-like powerful conspirators pulling strings behind the scene are playing multiple sides and are up to no good. However, there's not much depth beyond that. The same applies to the main antagonist/boss characters. I get what the writers intend them to be at the end, but I don't really feel them.

- Personally, I found Chisato tiresome and annoying. Yes she is pretty and powerful. Yes there is a character twist explaining her reasons for always acting out with a hysterical and ultra-high-pitched voice (I need to express my respect for her VA though, it's not the VA's fault), but to quote the live-action Netflix series "Russian Doll", Chisato is literally "her own party", who does not need anyone else. I don't think the show would be that different even if they deleted most of the supporting characters. Also, a signature stunt she pulls (by this point it has become a popular meme) eliminated all the believable stakes or tensions in the anime for me. If your main character could just waltz casually in a blizzard of bullets, why even bother with CQC or any real-world techniques?

- Very predictable. By episode 9 and 10, I was already conditioned by the show to assume everything will be resolved in a lighthearted way. "Everything will be OK when you sprinkle moe stuff on it". With that in mind, I told a fellow anime fan that I wouldn't buy into any "Holy crap they really did that" moments in the climax. And now with the ending out, unfortunately that is exactly the case.

In the end, it boils down to this--if moe comedy is all your want, just ignore my review and go for the show. If you are a big fan of the show, please also take my words with a whole pack of salt. There's no shame for loving something that genuinely speaks to your heart.

I rated this anime a 9/10, but I gave "Mixed Feelings" for this anime. This kind of anime usually fails to maintain audience retention. I believe this is a story that comes first as an anime adaptation, which is this.
You can clearly see that there is a director behind the scenes of every episode. Each episode always has a direction to where it is going with the story; no episode is meaningless or a filler. The plot curve that I learned in middle school comes up in my mind. The anime rolls very faithfully to that plot curve. It starts with an exposition and ... conflict, which are parts of the bottom of the plot curve. They are parts in the anime that is too boring and almost failed to make me hold on to watching and continuing this story, hence my late review and completion of this anime.
Fortunately, the ED of this anime is by Sayuri, whose songs I tend to like. The song played a little role to my continuing to watch this anime, and I don't regret it.
The greatest element of this anime is actually the theme. The theme is not shallow; it isn't about pleasing the audience with sexual images or thrilling moments. There is a fairly deep theme concerning the culture of some societies that exist or could exist. It pleased me to find that I watched an anime with a watch-worthy theme.
The characters are like monotone. I didn't develop any deep connection to any of the characters except for maybe the main protagonist. I could see that the director tried to make the viewer develop a connection to them, but unfortunately, he was not successfull. But I did develop some small feelings towards the cafe they run and made me wish to continue watch the characters bloom in their lives in season 2, which means the director was slightly succesfull, ... I guess.
Overall, you should watch this anime if you don't have any other important stuff to do right now. It should probably be worth your time...

Mixed feelings for sure. About 75% of this show is great but the plot is a little too flawed to recommend uncritically. What's left is executed extremely well, so this show shouldn't be completely written off either. Come expecting a good time but don't expect that good time to last the entire series.

The good: The art is gorgeous. The premise and world building is tons of fun. And this is one of the only shows that actually understands how guns work! They get it more correct than other shows that are specifically about guns. Like that other one about girls near a front line. The ... choreography is fantastic and learned the right lessons from things like Equilibrium and John Wick. Scenes are easy to parse and you're rarely left confused about what's happening. Action scenes are plentiful and they consistently look good. The supporting cast is fun, and when they get side arcs those episodes are also fun. The show has some near-future sci-fi trappings and those are utilized effectively in the story without feeling cheaty or out of place. On the whole, the early show feels a lot like a Ghost in the Shell: Stand-Alone Complex sci-fi investigative drama with a lethal amount of moe slice-of-life injected into it, and it manages to do both at the same time successfully. When this show is on a roll it is a LOT of fun.

The bad: The plot. Imagine John Wick but you find out midway through that his parents are getting a divorce and that's the focus of the movie now. It's not a total derailment, but it squanders the opportunity to keep doing what the show was already doing extremely well. It's also not so offensive to shut the whole show down, but there's a point where I was wondering what happened to the fun show I had been watching. It's a hard enough pivot that people coming for the action or the moe parts of the show will probably be put off after the story kicks in. The characters central to the plot aren't strong enough to support a character drama of the type it's attempting.

The ugly: The role of villain is assigned somewhat arbitrarily and even the show asks itself why the main villain is the villain instead of one of the other, obviously villainous people. The plot as a whole is structurally airtight but this is a hole it doesn't resolve successfully even after spending a lot of time on it. This is a non-spoiler review so specific characters won't be named, but some central characters are obviously villainous even by the ethically skewed standards in this universe. They explicitly hide in the shadows and manipulate people to avoid anyone finding out about the evil things they do. The show kind of tries to sell this as a good thing because one of the victims of it doesn't mind? Meanwhile the show's stated villain has some very credible complaints about the extra-governmental child death squads running around and he's treated like a monster. This is presented as ambiguity but it comes off more as dissonance between what you're watching happen vs. what you're told is happening, and it's bad enough to weaken the show.

Closing: This show would probably shine in a season 2. Its main weakness is the central conflict, and the central conflict is now resolved and out of the way. The cast is good, the setting is good, and the premise is fun. Keep it simple a la Akiba Maid War and there's the makings of a solid 8 or 9 show in here somewhere. This show, by itself, does not really warrant a total recommendation, but parts of it do shine.

I think the show has some potential. Sadly, the story needs a bit of work. I like the main character, she has a cheerful outlook on life. Most supporting characters are just there to create some mess so that the main character can save the day. And near the end, some of the plot development isn't that sensible. At the very end, there is a poorly constructed tense moment that maybe was meant to make it look like someone didn't make it, but to the keen observer, you can see it a mile away. It was a bizarre moment for me ngl. I don't mind ... if the studio goes for another season. I think the main character and the major support character work but I hope they find a different writer for the storyboard because that's one thing that doesn't work for me.

TL;DR: If you're one of those people who get hung up on a good story then this is a skip. but if you don't care about any of that the animation, soundtrack, and the fight scene are pretty good. It's just the story that's a mess.

Gunslinger Girls, but with less trauma, less thoughts... It's cheap, off brand, temu Gunslinger Girls. More plot holes, absolute zero understanding of hacking - what was funny in Cowboy Bebop doesn't work anymore. Many annoying things.

Budget went mostly for first and last 4 episodes.

Tropes. Not the worst case but if you've seen a couple of action/cgdct you'll roll your eyes.

If you are tech savvy beyond incorrectly putting batteries into remote, your eyes will hurt from rolling.

If you understand basic physics, you'll hate this show.

If you know anyone after heart surgery you'll facepalm at certain plot points which could have been omitted with single internet ... search.

Soundtrack is generic and safe, with perhaps one or two tracks being a bit better.

Backgrounds are ok.

Chara design works but it's clear which character is what (more tropes), and annoying girls got that tired edgy, brushy fighter girl half-buzz cut overused in the past 3 or 4 decades now.



It's ok show, got its moments. There's action, easy to follow story, plot twists made by a 4 year old child, and that's that.

Or just watch "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA mite kure" memes.