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.
