Review of Blue Archive the Animation

Blue Archive the Animation is more of an anime project for fans of the game than a stand alone adaption. This is mostly due to a lack of world building and sometimes poor story. You should give it a try if you play the game or have had any prior exposure to Blue Archive. There is very little world building so anime only watchers will be left with lots of questions. Core concepts (like why they have halos, why are they immune to bullets, and where are all the humans) are completely ignored. Plot points, characters, and other content from the game is mentioned, but neverexpanded upon. For fans of the game it's fun to see content adapted, but anime only fans will be left with a hollow experience.

The plot is decent, but the story was poor in some parts. Several times enemies were introduced as being "unbeatable" just to be stomped with little resistance by the end of the episode. Mercenaries and soldiers suddenly had terrible aim or completely stopped shooting when main characters would rush into the open or needed to carry out a conversation mid-fight. At one point a character whispers to another character, leaving the audience questioning what they just spoke about, just for it to be explained 2 seconds later. I would imagine that in game sometimes you do run into enemies that take several attempts to beat, and when characters do have conversations in battles it is not blatantly obvious that they are in the open. IMO they did not adapt it well, but those are also just common story tropes so whatever.

Overall, it feel like an anime where cool OCs (original characters) were created first and shoehorned into a world and plot when it was time for storyboards. Personally I only enjoyed things that I had prior exposure too (Unwelcome School and thunder thighs Yuuka), and sat stone faced or impatient for everything else.