Posted by OP Sequence
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OP: 「Sacred world」by RAISE A SUILEN
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「スイレン」 (Suiren)
“Water Lily”
Ahh fall: new season, new shows, and lots of surprises. Case in point is one of fall’s first contenders in Assault Lily: Bouquet, because while this one seemed fully understood from the beginning, appearances have definitely proved deceiving once the real thing finally graced our screens. I’m not about to make any major predictions here, but this one has me firmly interested.
As the handy-dandy RC Preview highlights, Assault Lily is pretty much your textbook all-girl battle academy setting with an alien invasion flair. While notably an anime original (at least in terms of story), you’d be hard-pressed really differentiating Assault Lily from the likes of Battle Girl High School, Symphogear, or hell even a mecha musume-less Strike Witches. Our main girl Hitotsuyanagi Riri (Akao Hikaru) is about as vanilla as this story type’s leads go for example, bouncing between idealistic visions of saving the world and letting friendship win the day, while immediate friends Kaede (Izawa Mikako) and Shirai Yuyu (Natsuyoshi Yuuko) are effectively Riri’s yin and yang; while Kaede goes overly aggressive on relationship building, Yuyu is the reserved one who’ll wind up being a major focus of story events. As for everyone else, well, pretty much nameless faces for the moment, because you damn well know by now appearance and personality archetype are how you wind up remembering who’s who in these sorts of tales—although shout out to Futagawa Fumi (Nishimoto Rimi), because nothing says fun like enthusiastic geeky fun.
While derivative on the surface, the thing helping set Assault Lily apart from its compatriots is the meat on its bones. Take the animation for example; first episode or not, there’s some serious coin being flung at this series given how those battle scenes are looking, and that’s before noting how decent the panning shots and transitory scenes are in practice. Also is the choice of aesthetics. I doubt few have missed the aesthetic similarities between this and Madoka, with everything from environment to dress and even weapon style more or less emulating that franchise. Although easy to think this is just Shaft being Shaft and falling back on previous experience, I wouldn’t think that’s all there is to it in this case. Between the heavy teasing of girls’ love going on and the symbolism of lilies and likely deflowering there is bound to be plenty of psychological shenanigans going forward (remember Yuri Kuma Arashi anyone?), and when you factor in the formation of so-called Schutzengel—i.e. guardian angel—pacts as well it’s not difficult seeing this one head straight down into the rabbit hole.
Mind you it might not play out exactly this way (god knows we’ve been burned before), but I’m fairly confident Assault Lily has quite a bit under the hood still left to reveal. After all, it just wouldn’t be a show about magical girls without some significant suffering for spice now, would it?
Preview
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ED Sequence
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ED: 「Edel Lilie」by Hitotsuyanagi Team
End Card
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Oh look, a second mixed media project this season about a large cast of girls using magic to take on an extraterrestrial threat.
If only all seasons could be like this
Hey at least these girls keep their pants on 😛
Nanoha meets Madoka… Sign me up please…
Hope I don’t loose my head by episode 3
It’ll be interesting seeing if any of the cast wind up losing theirs by that point, I honestly suspect death is going to eventually rear its head in this series given the atmosphere.
The cons: The premise is cliche and the the characters aren’t that interesting.
The pros: It’s Studio Shaft and there’s Yuri afoot.
And not just Shaft, Shaft with a fairly impressive budget lol
Me: Oh look, a simple yuri-ish schoolgirl action semi-superheroish sort of series. Just what I need to sit back and enjoy for some light fun.
Pancakes: Compares it to Madoka.
Me: SCREW THIS I’M OUT!!
Don’t deny Wanderer, you know you want to see what comes next 😉
Madoka is an abomination that has brainwashed the entire anime community into accepting an entire generation of torture/murder porn shows. The suffering spawned from that one series is utterly horrific, and I pray that one day the person responsible suffers exactly the same way he made all those poor girls suffer. >:(
So… no. If this show is going to be ONE OF THOSE, then it can go screw itself.
So its Nanoha just more assault lily.
lol
I’ll stay for the “plot” sure.
But let me throw in a wild mass guessing after the first episode viewing:
HUGE are related to either the CHARMs or the contractor for some reason.
The real mystery is why do they have to be quarantined after getting covered by a HUGE gunk of goo?
Probably the reason why we got a moody protagonist.
Very likely her previous partner turned into a HUGE herself.
Guaranteed there’s some sort of catastrophe with it, although I don’t think it involves transformation. That would be infringing too much on Madoka territory 😛
No one commented on the OP song which is done by one of the bands in Bang Dream anime called Raise A Suilen? Their songs are pretty good especially their latest track in season 3.