Arknights: Touin Kiro

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.

The animation is stunning, especially the fight scenes and the backgrounds. The music is also impressive, with catchy opening and ending themes by MYTH & ROID and ReoNa, respectively. The voice acting is well-done, with Tomoyo Kurosawa and Yuki Kaida reprising their roles as Amiya and Doctor, the mysterious leader of Rhodes Island.

The anime is mainly aimed at fans of the game, as it assumes some prior knowledge of the characters and the setting. However, it also provides some exposition and flashbacks to explain the backstory and the motivations of the main characters. The anime also introduces some new characters, such as FrostNova, a ... powerful ice mage who is the leader of the Reunion’s Frost Corps.

Enjoyable anime for those who like action-packed and emotional stories set in a dystopian world. It has a compelling plot, a colorful cast, and a beautiful art style. It may not be the most original or innovative anime of the season, but it is certainly worth watching.

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

Arknights is a masterpiece. There are very few games that come even close to the level of quality and consistency that Arknights has; that said, the anime is... not nearly as "perfect." Let's start with the good and work our way down to the bad and even the ugly.

The Animation. For a small studio that has mostly only done short PV's and maybe some OVA's here and there, to come out and make full-length episodes of this quality is impressive, to say the least. The backgrounds and scenery, the art style and close-ups, the fight scenes and atmosphere—everything is executed beautifully, they really tried ... to give it a certain "movie quality" which made for a very enjoyable watching experience. Now there are some parts (or even entire episodes) that are lackluster, but, besides one exception, I feel like all the important parts have been adapted extremely well. Overall, the animation was great, and it really captured the dark/depressing setting of the game quite well.

The Voice Acting. To me, there's nothing worse than bad voice acting, and fortunately, this anime has some of the best I've heard. Maybe I'm biased on this one as I really love the characters that appear in this season, or maybe I just like it when voice actors try their best, even though that may lead to overexaggerated emotions, but one thing is clear: the voice acting in Arknights is anything but average. You can really feel the characters' emotions behind every word they say; you know that they've been through a ton of stuff just from the way they talk, props to the VA's for nailing *almost* every line.

The Story. It's rare for any writer to make a world as in-depth as the one Arknights has. The lore and sheer amount of potential this story has is overwhelming, but of course we don't really get to see that in the anime, as with the end of this season, we are barely at chapter 6 in-game. The first season was really... rough. Fortunately,  this season is a massive step up. We got to see so much more about the characters and how the world operates, but this is only the foundation. The story really picks up from here. Now, I can't really comment on that as I don't want to give spoilers, but trust me when I say that this is only the beginning.

And now for the bad:

The Pacing. It was horrible; cramming 3 in-game chapters in 8 episodes is very unfair to the story, and it really hurts it in the long run as they skipped over some scenes and dialogue that I feel were quite important to really flesh out some characters. I guess we got some more flashbacks in return, but there were a lot of unnecessary scenes that really did not add anything to the story.

As for the ugly, this anime was very clearly made for the people who already play the game. While there's nothing wrong with that, there are some things that not everyone can appreciate or care as much about, so in this regard, I think it really shot itself in the foot.

In conclusion, this anime might not be for everyone, but as with everything in life, you don't know until you try, so yes, it gets a very strong recommendation from me, and if you're into Gacha Games, maybe even give Arknights a try. As for what I think of it, it may not be perfect, but it'll always hold a special place in my heart.

So far I'm really positively surprised with the anime.

Each episode feels like a part of a movie and tells its own story in its own way, with some significance to the overall story and continues the characters.
This is supported by the great animation and drawing style, which is one of the things that makes Arknights special and beautiful.

It is an anime that is not full of action scenes or has many epic scenes, as is already normal in some other anime, but rather tells its story slowly and with a certain love.

However, unfortunately the narrative is often confused and one expects the audience to have ... played the game a little.
You can see this especially in the last 2 episodes, as locations are changed very often and characters react in such a way that, as someone who hasn't played the game, you might wonder why the person is so very sad now.

Unfortunately, among other things, places are often shown that have hardly any meaning and only last 10-15 seconds and then they change immediately and you ask yourself why they are shown at all.
It gives me a strong feeling that they had to show these parts because they were "special" in the game, but in the anime they have little importance because either you don't know the characters well enough or you've seen something else before that explained something else.

So far its a 7,5-8/10 for me.

This is probably the most polarizing anime of this season. Arknights: Perish in Frost delivers very powerful messages of unity and peace in a time when our real world really needs it the most. However, this message is muddied within the very bizarre execution of all the narratives. I like character depth in storytelling, but when that screen time is diverted away from the main plotline, especially in this case since there are only 8 episodes for the season, it becomes a problem. This season focuses more on fleshing out the side characters, and typically I wouldn’t have an issue with this, but they have ... very little connective tissue to what’s currently going on in the story. There are several episodes of this season focused on some Reunion side characters, and although the writing is surprisingly really good and tragic, they have very little to do with the main threats present, like the Shadow Guard and FrostNova. Speaking of, FrostNova, the character that is the source of this season’s subtitle, is supposed to be the main antagonist of Perish in Frost, and although she has a lot of depth on her background, she honestly feels more like an afterthought when there are more pressing issues in Lungmen city. There is barely any time for her or the other subplots like the introduction of the Shadow Guard to find their proper footing. Yeah, FrostNova is a very intriguing villain with a good backstory, but she barely even gets to be an actual villain. Barely any of these characters get time to fit into their proper roles in all of the narratives in the story. Hell, Amiya feels more like a background character outside of maybe the last two episodes of the season. It might seem like this season is bad, but it really isn’t. Outside of all the plotlines fighting for screen time, the writing devoted to the focused characters is done really well and the visuals as a whole are underrated outside of a few iffy 3D models. I said this before for Season 1 and I’ll say it again: this anime needs more episodes because 8 is just simply not enough.

Arknights Perish in Frost is a solid substitute for the game's main story, elevating certain parts but dropping the ball on some. This season was produced fully in house by Yostar Pictures, an experimental decision and it shows as the quality of the drawings, cinematography and animation has clearly improved compared to season 1, though despite the improvement, Yostar Pictures is a young studio that couldn't maintain the high quality for all episodes, and one episode in particular suffered severely for it. The pacing was a bit too fast and could've used 2 more episodes for more breathing room, but at times the faster pacing ... also cut some weak content from the game, and the rearranging of events helped the story flow better than the disorienting pacing and perspective shifts the game has at times. While season 1 lacked blood at some key moments, season 2 was more than willing to show some brutality, even surpassing the game at some points.

Through the impressively expressive character drawings, immersive atmosphere and tension filled scenes, they manage to draw you in and get you invested in characters you barely know or only just met, ally and foe alike. You get to understand both sides of the conflict and their flaws. How those in control weaponize fear and anger to make people fight and kill each other when they would otherwise share mutual interests.
This isn't a story where systematic problems are easily solved by the protagonists, this is a story that doesn't fear stating reality, the reality that conflict won't just disappear if today's problems and issues are solved, but that's not to confuse the story with being overly cynical or depressing, there is always someone fighting for a better world, slowly, but surely making change, carrying the torch for those who've lost their lives for a better tomorrow they'll never see.

The voice acting is absolutely top tier with Ayahi Takagaki playing Frostnova especially giving a heartbreaking performance, headphones recommended!
The art style is strikingly good, the atmosphere, the multiple layers of rain to give it that realistic depth, the subtle rain drops slowly running down a window, the way things are framed like it's live action, how visually dark it's willing to get without compromising the amount of fore/background detail, the music being spine-chilling and the realistic sound effects rather than bass boosted sound effects that feel inescapable nowadays. Yostar Pictures has done a fantastic job in all these, though my biggest complaint here would be that we don't see many civilians that inhabit what should be a very populated city.

Since the start of Studio Yostar Pictures they've worked on both these seasons like it was 1 season split in 2 cours. They've done a solid job so far, but there's still plenty of room for improvement. Now that they've hopefully had some breathing room I'm looking forward to the next season with high expectations.

Lots of potential, but ultimately falls a little short. I think the anime could have been significantly improved if they made one or all three of the following better:
- Fight scenes - they seemed particularly boring, and with the budget they had they should have focused on at least one or two good ones
- Characterization - I feel like we should've had more time with people on reunion's side, but honestly a longer runtime would've been necessary for that. Fleshing out Frostnova a little more could've been done and maybe the Rhodes Island operators too.
- Worldbuilding - the backgrounds and background characters are noticeably dull, ... in fact we only ever see civilians a few times in what is essentially downtown Hong Kong. Rooms are empty, roadways clear of all debris, etc. Doesn't feel very "lived in". Why doesn't Lungmen have any aircraft like R.I.? Why is the only thing the security forces or even enemies do is stand around? Why do they just fight in blobs and not in formations? Honestly if they nailed this it would've just been an automatic 10/10.

Only writing this review cause I love the world Arknights is set in and unfortunately the anime doesn't do it much justice. At least character design is on point.

The first season was somewhat okay for me, but ever since the second season started, I have had issues with this anime.

The explanations provided for things were present in the first season, so a good deal of stuff did not make sense to me.
The characters were introduced in a hurry and the show barely gave time for the audience to feel any sort of connection with the characters. The anime is full of female characters, strangely (mostly on the good side). The fodder and the bad guys have got male characters.

Everything was super forgettable and did not ignite any interest for me. ...

Story (4/10)
Honestly, if it were done properly, I think it'd be lots better than what we got. The story has an interesting concept, but the way it was portrayed in the anime was really subpar.

Soundtrack/music (7)
Background music was fine, but I mostly liked the ending song more. It was the only part of the show that I was actually looking forward to every week.

Characters (2)

Like I said before, good ones are mostly female, and the bad ones are mostly male, except for a few.
I don't think anyone got any sort of proper character development except for Amiya.

Animation (5)

Lots of panning animations and scenes where we don't see characters talking. Sometimes it'd be focused on their upper half of the face to avoid animating their mouth movements.

Art (9)

Easily the best thing about this show apart from the ending song.

Arknights is a good animation that meets a horrible story. It is such a boring show because of the no-brainer story that any 5-year-old could write. You don't get any real action, nothing. Most episodes feel so boring and when it comes to action scenes they are the most boring ones I have ever seen. They would be even more enjoyable if they straight-up inserted a tower defence scene from the mobile game. The enemies have such boring personalities with no real character, fights make no sense and on top of it, most of the time you will be more like let's play the actual ... game then watch this.
The only plus about this show is a good-looking animation.
If you enjoyed the previous Arknights series and still can remember anything from them, you will enjoy this one too because it's exactly the same copy-paste boring anime as the previous iterations.

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.

Rewriting this now as I've finished the anime. I assume if you already like Arknights, you'll have a bias that'll help you enjoy this show but otherwise it's perfectly said as subpar in my opinion. There are a lot of flaws from characters, pacing, and the story which irritated me. I don't expect an anime to be realistic, however I also don't expect it to be comparable to a middle school theatre class. I don't mean to say that insultingly, I just feel like that's a good representation of the quality.

Pacing is incredibly slow or decently fast, there's no consistency however except in the final ... episode where the pacing is done rather ideally. I found it odd at some points the characters that should be fighting would just stop to or stall to monologue to each other. Moments that carried stakes or momentum would suddenly lose it or scenes that didn't would rapidly gain it and it was hard to follow without losing my attention.

Animation wasn't the worst, however it for sure was somewhat disappointing as well. It was subpar animation quality in most areas except for some stellar background and setting designs, they really did know how to set the atmosphere. However the character animation itself was stiff, some characters would move awkwardly or with overly exaggerated movements that looked odd. CGI was abundant in some of the episodes and it was terrible quality, copy and pasting of the same animations which weren't even entertaining.

Characters themselves were horrid, most characters were at best two dimensional with the lot being rather predictable and agitating. There were some interesting characters such as Faust and Kal'tist, though most of them didn't get a lot of screen time. Those who did were incredibly one dimensional that had everything you need to know about them explained in one scene same from the previous season such as Amiya or Mephisto. Decision making by the characters is god awful, considering the enemy is pretty much a terrorist organization hellbent on genocide I don't know why they show so much sympathy to them. Not to mention they just let enemies monologue openly without doing anything, I hate that so much.

Story doesn't seem bad, just poorly executed. First event in the anime the antagonist just had super poor decision making and could have easily ended the anime there and then. One of the antagonist in the second event is super overly emotional and whiny, yet is supposed to be a leader of the bad guys in the event. It's really annoying how they just feel like throw away bad guys put up against already stiff and one dimensional main characters.

This review isn't really written the best but overall the anime is pretty poor. Want something dark and gritty which also has a fair share of action? 86 is a good alternative to this I'd recommend and has a better cast of characters, handling topics such as racism and hopelessness. Unless you are an INCREDIBLY patient person, I'd advise you watch something else.