Review of Blue Archive the Animation

Imagine going to an anime convention. The moment you step into the hall, your eyes catch an amazing cosplay of your favourite character. You approach the cosplayer and say: "I would never imagine I would see such an authentic cosplay of ." In response, the cosplayer takes your spirit and breaks its back over her knee, which sounds like: "Sorry, who?" This is exactly what this anime is: a cosplayer without the knowledge of the character. It looks like Blue Archive, it sometimes sounds like Blue Archive, but it is not Blue Archive. Though I gotta give it an extra point for tastinglike Blue Archive, which is the taste of Iori's feet in Sensei's mouth.

So what's the problem with the anime? Unfortunately, there isn't one.

Firstly, the Volume 1, which served as a base for the anime, unfortunately, doesn't have much to offer for a 12-episode anime. So the result is that good half, if not more, is just unimaginative gunfights. There is only one fight in which Sensei comes with some kind of a plan to defeat the opponents, while the rest shrink down to Sensei giving directions at the beginning of a fight or saying "Shoot" or "Now", or even not doing anything at all. Moreover, the production team skipped a number of scenes that could have been used for air time instead of fights, but apparently, repetitive action is move valuable.

Then there is the problem of missing assets. There introduction of Sensei to Kivotos is completely omitted, which can only be explained by the anime being targeted EXCLUSIVELY at the game fan base. No outsiders allowed. But if it is so, why did they also skip the Adult Card scene, which only Blue Archive players understand with its underlying meaning? It feels as if the production team didn't even know what the target audience of the anime is.

The impression is further worsened when you start thinking about what is happening.Like why does Hoshino doesn't do anything when she seesAbydos district destroyed (feels like the "Guess I'll die." meme)? Or Black Suit summoning Sensei for cooperation, which doesn't make sense at all, because it was Sensei who found Black Suit and confronted him, which MAKES sense (did they not know how to make Sensei find Black Suit? how about "Arona, trace the movements of Hoshino for the last week"?)

The music is just bland. Which is a special disappointment since Blue Archive soundtrack is one of the, if not the best, soundtracks I've ever heard. Except the OP and ED, one of which at least was written by Mitsukiyo.

I'll close the downsides with my personal disappointments: the confrontation with Gehenna. Firstly, most of it just dumb nonsensical action (how did Aru and Shiroko happen to land in the middle of Gehenna mobs?), then they skipped the scene where Hina pretends to be elsewhere while communicating with Ako, which would be hilarious and would have added value replacing the screen time which was instead allocated for the aforementioned dumb action. And lastly there is no tension, no suspense between Hoshino and Hina, Hina just acknowledges Hoshino and that's all.

On the bright side, I was positively surprised they had the balls to depict the feet licking scene. Extra points for bringing in flashbacks with Yume and Hina's flashback showing wild first-year Hoshino. And the overall quality of the animation is pretty good. That pretty much sums up the upsides.

Bonus points to whoever answers the following question. In the game, Shiba Seki serves Problem Solver 68 an overfilled bowl of ramen to justify that this is a standard 680-yen ramen, which he might have added some extra to. And in the opening we can see this overfilled bowl of ramen. So why in the actual episode it is instead a large luxury bowl of ramen, which hardly can pass as a cheap ramen?

It's watchable, but just once, and it doesn't leave any lasting positive impression. The anime is more a commemoration of the game that cannot exist on its own. I'll close this with a famous quote from Geralt of Rivia: "If I were to choose between no anime adaptation and poor anime adaptation, I would rather not choose at all."