Lycoris Recoil

[Ryllharu]

Description from Official Website: "LycoReco" is a café with a traditional Japanese twist located in downtown Tokyo. But the delicious coffee and sugary sweets are not the only orders this café takes! From delivering packages short distances, to pick-ups and drop-offs on the lonely streets at night, to zombies and giant monster extermination...?! Whatever your problem, we're here to help! We will solve any kind of "trouble" you may have!
Waiting for you are the ever-smiling poster-girl and the cool, serious newcomer. A petite girl who never wants to work and a young woman approaching thirty who wants to get married. And the manager is a nice guy who's obsessed with Japan! Whatever your order is, leave it all up to us


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First two episodes are out, I really don't want to spoil the cold opening still, so I won't give any more synopsis about the series other than the above.

It's not a slice of life series though, or a particularly a gig episode of the week thing. Heavy on the action similar to Black Lagoon, Vivy, or even Psycho-pass. There's an overall plot, and the worldbuilding to date has been perfectly blended in with the content of the episode. I'm always left wanting to know more details when they slowly drip feed us them through the episodes.

It does a lot of things really, really well.

[neflight86]

Very good, indeed. The two main leads play off each other well and the action is well animated and inventive.

School girl assassins is nothing new, but is usually played a lot more on the tragic/somber side, so a slice of life light heartedness is a welcome departure for a show where people actually die. It reminds me a lot of Princess Principle, and that makes me very happy.

I especially appreciate that main girl has more personality than the naïve 'don't let anyone die' characters normally get. She is familiar with death and is confident in her ability to ward it off and complete her missions satisfactorily. She then shows off that her confidence is warranted in some earnest if not convincing gun-fu that mixes John Wick style competition shooting and reading recoil to dodge bullet trajectories, it looks like. I'm too old to buy into it, but the effort makes it fun to watch and hand wave.

The characters are more interesting, sly, and interwoven than you might think at first blush, and the pace is good. Don't sleep on this.

[KrayZ33]

I saw some videos with it and one of the girls hold the weapon all tacti-cool and stuff, so I'll watch it for sure at some point. Looked like it was really well animated.

[Ryllharu]

Episode 3

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Hands down one of the top 2 series of this season, at least at the Three Eps Test timeframe.

This show is so good, so tightly written, and a perfect example of how to execute a Show-Don't-Tell progression on the details of its characters and overall storyline.

Excellent callbacks and further overall plotline developments include:

- Chisato scolding the boyish Lycoris in their training bout for sticking her pistol arm out too far, and subsequently grappling her. This is a callback to Chisato's close-quarter gunplay, especially in the first episode where she's moving around the van and holding her own gun practically to her stomach.

- All the experienced Lycoris in DA and their management know Chisato is a bullet dodger. It's confirmed during her medical training where she's at least twice as fast as Fuki. They do finally explain it if the other previous hints hadn't gotten a viewer there, but only at the very end of the episode. They even show us in a more controlled manner that the more shooting discipline you have, the better Chisato will fare against you, explaining why the reasonably-well experienced mercenaries the previous episode couldn't hit her, even with a full-auto rifle.

- Showing us through marksman training that Takina is an exceptionally good shot. I would have liked to see her compared to another Lycoris though to really sell it.

-Nice worldbuilding that Fuki personally knows and admires a lot of the LycoReco staff, continuing to show us without telling us that this world was alive before the audience started to look at it, like the references to Chisato being well known as the Lycoris responsible for "destroying" the tower.

- Chisato knowing that DA and their super important AI 'Radiata' got hacked (implying there is a legitimately huge threat and vulnerability to that critical government asset) that they're using Takina as a scapegoat for. This hacking was done by Walnut, but I'm not sure the rest of the LycoReco staff know this at this point. The evil organization with the owl pins commissioned her to do it though...so we don't yet know what they're up to. Point is, the series is continuing to slowly tease out what implications there are out of this weapons deal incident that started the entire show, which is a great way to handle tension without constantly upping the stakes from event to event.

- We finally see the DA dorm, and the peaceful, orderly, and communal space it exists as. It makes sense why orphan girls want to be there so bad. It's an actual home for them. We've seen the hints about it before, but it finally comes together. They segue perfectly from this into the character development for Takina with Chisato helping her realize that this is more than one home available for girls like them.

- Chisato's personality is perpetually reinforced, including the girlfriend lift that she gave Takina as a side-eye response to the ugly rumors the DA girls keep spreading about Takina. But even though she wants to teach Takina to open up a little more, we also see the side of her where she wanted to fulfill Takina's request to go back, speaking up for her on Takina's behalf to scold the commander.

All the things shown on screen constantly tie back into each other. There is some serious masterwork writing and storyboarding at play in this project.

[shinta|hikari]

Not really liking this as much as I thought I would. Chisato's crass behavior is turning me off. Lively, rambunctious, fine. Crude, annoying, nope.

- Showing us through marksman training that Takina is an exceptionally good shot. I would have liked to see her compared to another Lycoris though to really sell it.

They don't have to sell it. Takina literally got a perfect score. She was intentionally shooting different parts of the target area to avoid shooting into the same holes she already made. She filled the target area up, and you can't really get better than that.

[neflight86]

I'm really enjoying Chisato- not quite pushy, but know knows what she wants. To each their own...

Another excellent episode that has context and world building in spades, as Ryll demonstrated.

It's so easy to watch and so fun to take in (I'm never going to turn down a boardgame night) that the show has to remind me that there exists trauma and sadness and that these girls are/were orphans, because the accommodations and well adjusted range of personalities gives it the 'after school club' vibe. Animation is holding up nicely as well. Things are going so 'good' that the girls have to annually opt into license renewals to keep performing as Lycrois. Adorable.

[Buffalobiian]

I like Chisato.

What didn't make sense was Fuki saying "you won't hit her if you shoot randomly". That's probably how you'd ACTUALLY hit her.

The only two scenarios that would work would be if you deliberately make a bullet hell web with like 100 machine guns or if you shot randomly and she gets a bad RNG roll.

She doesn't seem to require seeing the target to deduce trajectory though, which makes her even more OP.

[Ryllharu]

I took that line as you have to deliberately trick Chisato into getting hit.

She looks at the barrels, she looks at the shooter's eyes and hands, she's good at guessing when someone will actually pull the trigger to discharge a shot. Fuki implied that the more confidently you are at shooting, the more deliberate you are, the more advantage Chisato has over you. I took shooting "randomly" in the context of aiming at different spots instead of center of mass or head.

Fuki almost hit Chisato by blind firing at her over her shoulder.

Chisato is probably weakest against people who are firing guns and have had no practice with them (bad control).

[shinta|hikari]

Except people who have no practice with guns will just get pawned immediately.

@Buff - I think she needs to see the enemy to predict the bullet trajectory. She isn't psychic. She saw the gun when Tombitch did a no-look behind-the-back shot (which she still dodged), and based on her position and field of view, she would've also seen Tombitch when she dodged the bullets right after pushing away Noobitch.

@Ryll - You are right. Tombitch meant that shooting at Chisato with no plan won't work because she will just dodge it. You have to corner her or overcome her reaction speed with your shooting. Funny enough, shooting from farther away would be much harder to dodge for Chisato because the shooter can move the gun a millimeter and hit a completely different spot/area, meaning the shooter can fire at a much larger area with little time lag between shots.

The closer Chisato is to the enemy, the more impossible she is to hit.

[Buffalobiian]

@Buff - I think she needs to see the enemy to predict the bullet trajectory. She isn't psychic. She saw the gun when Tombitch did a no-look behind-the-back shot (which she still dodged), and based on her position and field of view, she would've also seen Tombitch when she dodged the bullets right after pushing away Noobitch.

So she would have been shot by Fuki if Takina didn't show up with the punch then.

I went back and they did show Chisato turning around just before the AK47 and hair tie were fired those two cases check out.

[shinta|hikari]

So she would have been shot by Fuki if Takina didn't show up with the punch then.

Yes, so Tsunbitch actually saved the day by stopping being emo.

[Buffalobiian]

Episode 04

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I can't imagine they made an episode about boxers and carried it through the entire 23 minutes.

When they did the Terminator music, I thought for sure she was going commando, as impractical as that would have been.

[Ryllharu]

It was a filler and bridging episode, but it certainly didn't feel like one.

Honestly kind of refreshing that Chisato's reason for not killing people is that she doesn't like it. Nothing more, nothing less. It also wasn't before she left DA. She's been using them since she was 7. She's always been different from the other Lycoris I guess. Never as worried that she would lose her place in the organization (we still don't know how or if they "retire" Lycoris) and be an abandoned orphan with no place to go.

In terms of composition, a nice bookend as well with Chisato worrying about Takina getting found out for wearing boxers, drags her through a shopping montage, and then Chisato burns herself with the curiosity of Takina's statement about wearing men's underwear.

[neflight86]

Nothing much to add, just another well executed episode. Its remains entertaining and hold my attention throughout.

I can't imagine they made an episode about boxers and carried it through the entire 23 minutes.

Its like a flex at this point: "look what we can make a good episode out of", or the like.

[Buffalobiian]

Episode -05

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So when Shinji mentioned delivering geniuses to the world, including geniuses of killing - he was referring to Chisato. Maybe the messy-hair-terrorist as well, but we now know he saved Chisato with every intention of her becoming a killer.

The chair made ventilator noises while the old dude was using regular oxygen was slightly distracting. Almost as much as Kenobi series not matching his ventilator noises with his actual chest rise.

[Ryllharu]

So when Shinji mentioned delivering geniuses to the world, including geniuses of killing - he was referring to Chisato. Maybe the messy-hair-terrorist as well, but we now know he saved Chisato with every intention of her becoming a killer.

The chair made ventilator noises while the old dude was using regular oxygen was slightly distracting. Almost as much as Kenobi series not matching his ventilator noises with his actual chest rise.

It was fake, so maybe that was actually a nice touch? The majority of LycoReco aren't going to notice. None of them are medical experts.

Shinji is a real fucking monster. He had his assistant (same earrings from episode 1 so you can visually see all the places she is) hire an assassin, kidnap a random man, and then use him as a remote toy in order to tempt Chisato into murdering someone. He desperately intends for her to be the world's greatest assassin or something. But she took the exact opposite lesson from them saving her, much to his astonishment. He's got a real twisted personality. I kind of expected the other guys to kidnap and torture the low-level DA Lycoris they lured into a trap, but I guess their plan is to just hunt them.

Silent Jin ended up being a fairly ethical assassin. I like those kinds of nuanced takes. He didn't kill Mizuki when he easily could have, and was generally aiming for Takina's legs as well. Mika and Jin had a remarkably pleasant discussion considering he had just attempted to kill Mika's proteges. He's not some noble assassin, just a very professional one.

It's also very neat that they gave Chisato a pulseless artificial heart (they're real things for those that don't know), and I'm guessing she was shot through the chest during the tower incident.

[neflight86]

He had his assistant (same earrings from episode 1 so you can visually see all the places she is) hire an assassin, kidnap a random man, and then use him as a remote toy in order to tempt Chisato into murdering someone. He desperately intends for her to be the world's greatest assassin or something.

Glad to see the reasoning behind the contrived scheme. Though it will probably take Takina being a hostage for Chisato to seriously consider killing someone at this point, but I'm sure we'll get there.

[Ryllharu]

Glad to see the reasoning behind the contrived scheme. Though it will probably take Takina being a hostage for Chisato to seriously consider killing someone at this point, but I'm sure we'll get there.

My guess is that Shinji was saved by a super young Chisato, back when she was still killing, and since he's a very much a sociopath, probably thought a very efficient genius-level loli-assassin was the most beautiful thing he'd seen. She got wounded, he replaced her heart, and wants to see her go back to killing.

But Chisato was never the person he wants her to be.

[neflight86]

Apparently, Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid series and Death Stranding) accidentally watched it and gives it two boxer-briefs up:

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/int...ves-it/.188097

[Buffalobiian]

Episode 06

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So much fun and cuteness in one episode.

Chisato being the loose cannon that she is, getting excited about sleepovers and getting pissed about losing a poncho.
Takina just trying to rein in all in and have some control somehow (and winning a 33% game of Rock Paper Scissors!)