The eight-episode animation begins with the story of the mobile game, but if you haven’t played the game, is there a lucky draw? Steve and Nick discuss what the series is about, and the pros and cons of joining a militarized medical workforce of veterinarians.
This series is streaming on Crunchyroll DISCLAIMER:
The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chat record do not represent Anime News Viewpoint Network .
Spoiler Warning discusses the previous series.
|
@Lossthief |
@BeeDubsProwl @NickyEnchilada @ vestenet
Nick
Steve, considering everything I know, this column There is only one tonal and themed way to turn on.
“Hmm, what’s the matter, Doctor?”
Steve Sorry Nick, no time for jokes right now. A new event just ended and I’m trying to pull off a new super powerful 6 star unit called Ligma.
Guys, this is a joke. There are no 6 stars in the game called Ligma. They’re 5 stars, obviously not as good as Bofa, a true 6 star, whose E2 M3 totally licks anything a Ligma can do.
Look, we all know that the upcoming limited carrier Sugma will clean up both of their clocks. But we can always talk about turkeys and their perfectly sane codenames. Now, let’s wrap up this year’s “Anime Week” by reporting
, the long-awaited anime adaptation of the popular gashapon game! It has some action and all the depression!
So while Steve and I are brain rotted to the brink, here’s the lowdown for the uninitiated: this is mobile based The game has been running for about three years, and it’s built a very strong niche for itself, especially for an original property, not spun out of an established franchise like yours
Fate/GO and
Fire Emblem Heroes . Much of that success can be attributed to the fact that every character is sexy and furry.
It pays to have strong fundamentals. In this case, those fundamentals are kemonomimi girls in cool tech outfits and rock cancer. Just look at Amiya, the series’ poster girl, with her oversized coat, donkey bunny ears, and crystal lesions. Like any gacha game, the character designs are all over the place, but I really like the “core” aesthetic.
This is undoubtedly the biggest attraction of this game to me! I’ll admit that a big part of the reason I want to watch this show is to collect beautiful new drawings of my gacha wife. Boy am I eating and drinking right now?
You tell me! Check out these common Anime W.
I love a woman who would put a grenade in my mouth and pull out the pin.
is truly the hottest cockroach in anime today. Yes, her first name is just W. There’s a very particular approach to character naming that involves looking around home improvement and lawn care stores for inspiration. Just look at my list of operators in the game, I have this awesome Nom de Guerres :
Mudstone
gravel
beeswax
Texas
Red item
Overgrown with weeds
mulberry
Croissants
Pine cones
Rock
Beanstalk
-
Mousse
- rope and many others Animal girl like me flipping through the dictionary.
You forgot to mention me Favorite asbestos, but otherwise, this is a good list. The point is, it’s a unique game with a strong sense of style and tons of lore and personality. It’s notoriously weak opening action, and that’s exactly what this adaptation covers! pleasure!
Honestly, I’ve given up on chasing the story a long time ago. When I started playing, the text was so slow that it was a pain to watch the cutscenes, so I hit “skip” and never looked back. This works pretty well, since the main draw is tower defense-style strategy with its many maps and collecting your own terminal zoo. And by “your own”, I technically mean the faceless doctors who turn their brains into scrambled eggs immediately before the game starts.
I stuck with it for a while, but I also stopped keeping up with anything outside of the main narrative. The storytelling in the game isn’t the friendliest. It’s very wordy and roundabout, and also sets up events to motivate skipping visual novel scenes. But with these weaknesses comes opportunities. Where words fall short, animated adaptations may succeed.
How the transition to a TV structure is a…complex question. But if nothing else, I appreciate the way this show looks. Not just in how it manages to translate busy character designs into animation, but also in its environment design and attention to interesting or compelling frames.
Yeah, I’ll give Overture at least for Dawn: it looks amazing. I was really impressed by the premiere, which makes good use of Chernobog’s Brutalist architecture to instill the right mood. The environments are vast and intimidating when it comes time to show how vulnerable our heroes are, and tense and claustrophobic when they’re on the run.
Being a film location means that this is an adaptation that takes itself very seriously. In most cases, this works in its favor.
It bills itself as a highly polished, prestigious work and hopes you’ll be impressed by its high-stakes drama and ambitious world-building. It made things even more interesting when all the cinematic direction had to constantly apply depth-of-field effects to Amiya’s silly bunny ears.
Lol, hard to agree. Storyboards are very good at blocking out many of the characters, and even better, blocking them out in a way that emphasizes their pointy headgear.
Honestly, this might be my favorite anime section. To see such a design, so majestic, is something I have never seen in animation before. This is very fitting, since the whole driving force of the story is that all the catwomen get turbo cancer.
As you can see there, The animation can’t avoid some moments of interpretive awkwardness, which stem from its source material. The player character is an amnesiac (let me know if you’ve heard this before). That prompts many of their companions to stop by every few minutes and offer quick tutorials, such as how to install on a smartphone.
Neat Stuff Prelude to Dawn is indeed intentionally keeping the Dr. gender neutral. We’re just a gray-haired guy in a weird hood who says “Amiya” a lot and sometimes gives wise tactical advice. You don’t need gender to do this.
With brain problems and lack of faces, they’re more of a plot device than a character. They’re technically the tactical masterminds of Rhode Island, a dubious militarized medical corporation, but they can’t translate the act of deploying a dozen small anime characters across a map into watchable TV. So instead, the Doctor is mostly there for moral support, occasionally getting damsel’d so Amiya can save them.
Exactly , Amiya is the real protagonist. The girl at the head of Rhode Island, she pushes Event*) Prelude to Dawn , which culminates in her reconciling her youth and innocence with the reality of Rhode Island’s involvement in the battle with Reunion Island. Who are the people wearing these stupid masks?
They are also an army of people infected with magic rock cancer, led by a ruthless leader who is trying to use violence to overthrow a country that oppresses its victims. If this sounds like a minefield full of potential pitfalls, how are you kidding!
Haha, this brings me to my favorite part of the early days: politics! Because in these early stages, you’re actually fighting thugs who have every reason to rebel against the system. Ore disease can be contagious in certain circumstances – namely after death – so this has led to widespread discrimination against the infected at every level from the individual to the federal. Rhode Island, ostensibly a pharmaceutical company (long story), wants to bridge the gap. Still, the people of Réunion are inspired by the violence they have experienced at the hands of their oppressors.
This is definitely an ambitious game of Clash revolving around your furry Gacha! In the most beautiful moment,
Dawn Prelude Trying to thread the needle between disagreeing with Reunion’s actions without demonizing their justifiable outrage. But there are also moments, like the introduction of one of Reunion’s leaders as a veritable evil kid.
Mephisto is such a trip lol. For that matter, so is Talulah, the Stone Queen who leads Reunion with her building-flattening fire magic. Both of these characters, and many more, are in the story for a long time, so they only do a little bit in the opening scene. Overall, the longer arc of this reunion conflict creates a lot of glaring hypocrisy that the narrative will take a while to resolve with the proper nuance. There are shades of it here, but right now, we’re rooting for (or playing) a PMC that’s only going to make this conflict worse.
In fact, Talulah, Annihilation is a separate game mode from the story map, you don’t even appear on any- I mean, uh ,yes. The early pace of the story doesn’t paint Rhodes Island in a particularly likable way. Like the first three episodes, they had some high ground because they were just trying to escape the city that Reunion is currently overthrowing, but after they made a deal with the Dragon Cops, that defense fell away.
Ah, but let me present you with the toughest moral dilemma ever: What if Dragon Cop was sexy?
I’d be more open to you if Ch’en was wearing a sexy dress you can buy from the Outfit Store argument. But yeah, I’m sure some people are swayed by the…let’s say, Dragon Gate cast’s aesthetic.
This is where years of strategy by illustrator Kuroblood paid off, which should Inspire us all. If you try hard enough and play the game right, you too can live to see your furry OCs animated in an internationally distributed TV show.
Besides, Wei isn’t even a recruitable operator. ‘The character design is just a one-sided effort.
Honestly half the fun of this show is picking out all the characters I know because they don’t show up in the cutscenes so they just get A line of dialogue.
I finally know when other gacha players watch a show made entirely to cater to them feelings.
Nice, isn’t it? And
Prelude to Dawn , to its credit it is very unobtrusive for the cameos, which mostly relegate to the few scenes at the Rhode Island base. Elsewhere, the show focuses on a smaller and more manageable cast of playable ops, including an apple-pie-loving Angel and a Pocky-loving Italian wolf.
And by Rhode Island standards, they’re ok normal.
Sadly, they didn’t have time to introduce Texas’ wild girlfriend/nemesis, but the Penguin logistics pair added some much-needed additions to the RI crew Relaxation.
Here’s another easy injection for you: This opponent’s name arc:
Honestly, Skullshatterer is probably the most normal name on the show, if only because it’s a supervillain name a fringe lord teenager came up with for himself. What is Rockrock’s excuse?
Very authentic ” age kid coming up with the AOL Instant Messenger handle,” I can’t deny that.
Shockingly, Skullshatterer’s story is easily the best part of the show. Not only does it hinge the larger conflict of Oripathy on a smaller, more personal struggle between a pair of siblings, but it also allows for some genuinely gripping drama between them.
Like, the audience obviously Skullshatterer is talking about checking Reunion can’t deliver, but at the same time, we understand why this is the path he has to choose, and Why Misha decided to throw her own destiny into the mix. We can see the tragedy unfold from a mile away, but that doesn’t diminish its impact.
It also gave the Reunion a human (well, you know what I mean) face (well, you know what I mean) so that they wouldn’t Become a mysterious gang of villains causing rampant havoc. Even a completely anonymous grunt gets only a modicum of character.
Just look at that guy with his wacky little mask. I love him. I sure hope he doesn’t get kicked in the head by the wolf girl in the future.
165491
Alas, war never changes. Neither are the animated visuals. See, I didn’t notice this parallel until I started organizing my screenshots. They go above and beyond your average gacha ad.
610 420 good, the arc has done a lot to salvage a very dull and slow series Works, even with only eight episodes. Like, objectively, I think the first 26% This show is only for those who enjoy seeing their favorite units animated. But I can totally see the tragedy of someone investing in a Skullshatterer without first doing Arknighting.
400 300
is better than nothing, but for most catgirl techwear laymen, This is still a daunting task. Only fans and viewers are excited to watch the first part~10% the long and monotonous tragedy of war will end
Prelude to Dawn Arise. But if you’re in any of those crowds, it’s a pleasant surprise for a show that’s artistic enough to sustain its ambitious strategy.
275
It is pure 400 fanservice, but I’m a fan who’s being served, and doing well. So I certainly wouldn’t say no to a follow-up that’s been announced. Even if it’s mostly about seeing my tall HP/DEF wife block a grenade launcher melee attack with her Dorito shield, it’s a novelty.
225 241
I totally agree. In fact, I think Hoshiguma himself said it best:
300
Anyway, I think my stamina is replenished now, so I’ll have to go back to trusting planting these event maps. Guys, add me as a friend. I have a fully upgraded Surtr from S3M3 on my backlist!
113
169
@Lossthief 
@NickyEnchilada
Nick 
This is undoubtedly the biggest attraction of this game to me! I’ll admit that a big part of the reason I want to watch this show is to collect beautiful new drawings of my gacha wife. Boy am I eating and drinking right now?
Mudstone 
gravel
and many others Animal girl like me flipping through the dictionary.
Honestly, this might be my favorite anime section. To see such a design, so majestic, is something I have never seen in animation before. This is very fitting, since the whole driving force of the story is that all the catwomen get turbo cancer.
Ah, but let me present you with the toughest moral dilemma ever: What if Dragon Cop was sexy?
Very authentic ” age kid coming up with the AOL Instant Messenger handle,” I can’t deny that.
Alas, war never changes. Neither are the animated visuals. See, I didn’t notice this parallel until I started organizing my screenshots. They go above and beyond your average gacha ad.
