Reviewing anime adaptations of gacha games, Part 2 (Blue Archive and Girls' Frontline)

See part 1 here

This is part 2 of a series where I review anime adaptations of gacha games. This week I'll be reviewing Blue Archive the Animation and Dolls' Frontlines, 2 popular "Girls with Guns" games that have received an anime adaptation in the past 2 years.

I've been a big fan of Blue Archive for the past 3 years, being one of my favorite side gacha games. The great selection of characters and its interesting setting and story is what made me quickly fall in love with BA, so the announcement of an anime adaptation was very exciting for me and the Blue Archive community at large. Having finally took the time to watch the show this past week, I came away feeling disappointed. Blue Archive the Animation is definitely not the worst gacha anime adaptation I've watched, but it wasn't good either.

First I do want to praise some things the show got right. The cast and general vibes of the characters feel on point here, and the anime shines whenever they make funny scenes with the cast, notably the absolute chaos that is Problem Solvers 68. I also need to give praise for the opening and ending animations, as there is a clear respect for the source material showing the themes and sisterhood of the Foreclosure Task Force in stunning animation here. Unfortunately, this is where the praise ends for the anime.

There are several issues that plague this adaptation. While I won't list them all, there are 3 main complaints I have:Lack of worldbuilding: For as complex and mysterious of a world Kivotos is, the decisions made to barely explain any of it is very confusing. The show decides to skip most of the prologue and fails to show any background information that is crucial to understanding the world and story of Blue Archive.Terrible pacing: While it is true chapter 1 is short, pacing of the story here felt very off. The show opted to rush several events in the story while also dragging some for much longer than it needed to be. This left the show feeling very boring at times with not many satisfying moments in between.Sensei felt pointless: Once again while Sensei in game wasn't very prevalent to the story of chapter 1, this is something that should have been expanded or fixed in the anime. Several times his scenes were replaced by Shiroko scenes, and in general felt very uninvolved, even more so than the game itself. There needed to be more reactions and interactions from Sensei and it was not found here.

Overall, Blue Archive the Animation is disappointing and frustrating. What should have been a slam dunk given its source material, ended up feeling like a boring, expensive advertisement for the game than rather standing out on its own. If they ever plan for a season 2, I hope the result is a much better effort, one that Blue Archive fans deserve.

Rating: a light 5/10

After seeing the comments about how badly received this adaptation was, I had second thoughts about doing a review, or just do this review about the ONA shorts series. But given that it's been a long time since I've read or played the GFL manga/game, I felt that it was best to give a fair shot to the anime and come to my own conclusion.

My conclusion? It's bad.

First, and like Blue Archive, the opening is pretty great here. Great visuals and a kickass song in "BAD CANDY" by Sakamoto Yuka made me feeling oddly nostalgic, calling back to early 2010s anime openings. You can tell they put a ton of their budget on the opening, because you can tell the show itself had no budget at all.

The animation is wildly inconsistent in quality here, there's some times the animation looks acceptable and other times where it just looks downright awful. The quality of animation doesn't start degrading half way through like most anime either, from episode 1 onwards the quality was poor and inconsistent. This isn't all to blame on the studio, given that the budget here was very low, but never once did I feel the animation had any great or even good moments (a lowlight of particular interest were how the guns are drawn...and yeah...)

Dolls' Frontline has a lot of action scenes, and most of them are pretty bad, mainly due to the poor animation quality and the poor choreography. Every single fight this show has devolves into a storm of bullets being hailed from both the Sangvis Ferri and T-Dolls. For an elite squad, the AR Team loves to magdump their enemies, most of the time missing their targets. Every single character here feels like they have stormtrooper aim, not to mention that the sound effects for the guns are missing or just plain wrong at times.

For me the story and writing was meh. I viewed parts of the in-game story and manga for this review, and while I think both are much better, the anime isn't as awful as it's made out to be by a lot of people. It should be noted that pacing is pretty inconsistent here, taking the anime until the last few episodes to get out if its "villain of the week" but ultimately having an ending that clearly sets up for a second season that will probably never come.

Overall, this show makes people want to check out the game, for all the wrong reasons. An unimpressive story, poor SFX, lazy action sequences, and inconsistent animation quality made a shit stew of a show, one that pissed off fans and is widely forgotten by its community (besides its beautiful opening). I do not recommend Dolls' Frontline, and while the show's low budget doomed it from the start, it still ended up being a poor experience.

Rating: 4/10

I'll be honest this was a pretty rough week of shows I had to watch, no offense to the BA or GFL fans. You guys deserved more than what these adaptations had to offer. Next week/2 weeks I'll be hopefully cleansing my palate, and will be choosing between D4DJ/Kemono Friends or S1 and S2 of Priconne. Also I might look to also review adaptations of gachas with tie in anime made months before the game, such as Revue Starlight or Idolmaster Cinderella Girls.