Review of Blue Archive the Animation

Blue archive is a rather strange anime. First things first: I have never played the source game, but I have some experience both with games like that and their adaptations. So, what does this anime have? Pros: Visuals. Unlike most promotional anime, this one looks pretty solid. Not only do the characters themselves look good, but the backgrounds are nice, and even the action is properly animated. Sound. OP/ED are chill, VAs did a really good job, I have nothing to complain about here. Characters. They are distinct, they have their own personalities, even though there isn’t much time to get some development - those are still entertaining. Iwill mention that the villains are somewhat meh, but considering those are some game bosses to go through - I didn’t expect them to be good in the first place.

Cons.
Worldbuilding. Where is it? Cause I didn’t find any. 12 whole episodes ended and I still have no clue why the girls have halos, why are they armed, how they are just knocked back after catching a slug from a shotgun to the face, why is there a mix of humans, those halo-girls, some humanlike dogs and robots living in the city in the first place - none of those things is explained. While for a gacha game that has dozens of chapters, events and a lore on the wiki this situation is not a problem, for a short 12 episode anime it is - cause through the whole thing I was confused about the world and this confusion didn’t really go away.

Mixed:
Story. How do I put it? If this anime wants to be an action - this amount of story is not enough, as there isn’t much story to begin with. However in my opinion this is more of a “cute girls doing cute things” show, and for that type of anime story isn’t really required, so I am willing to give Blue Archive a pass and not judge it for lacking a good story.
Fighting scenes. While the animation is good, the structure of the fights is strange. In most fights there are basically 2 stages: nothing happens, heroes are pinned down, enemies are shooting at walls for whatever reason, and after that the main cast says something like “we can win/I have a plan” - and the real combat begins. The second part looks cool and is well animated, but I still wanted to mention the existence of the first part, cause it does feel strange.

Overall: if you have played the game - I can bet that you will like it, cause you already know the world and will not have questions that I had. If you haven’t played the game - your enjoyment will depend on your ability to ignore the holes in the worldbuilding and the story. As for me - I enjoyed the show. It was cute, it was nice and it was fun to watch, even though I still don’t know what the hell is going on in their universe.