Lycoris Recoil

We are not living in the future that we were ever promised. Modern man was supposed to be relieved, or at least convenienced, from the burden of labor, but the databasing of big data has only ever been used to concentrate more wealth towards an already disproportionately tiny fraction of civilization. We were supposed to be more fulfilled as robots took over menial chores and housework, but instead those machines have been repurposed for making killing more efficient. The advent of mass communication and thus connection in beautiful Frutiger Aero digilandscapes has been hijacked by mass surveillance programs and restrictions of freedom under the guise of our safety.

We are not living in the future that we were ever promised. We may have won the eternal war against darkness, but lost texture in the process. Easier access to art tools and digitizing productions have opened up a previously opaque anime industry to thousands of new foreign workers; an increase in labor force that has been sharply outpaced by the increase in production, thus this luxury becoming a necessity. Studio systems have eroded and so has the in-person passing down of craftsmanship; rookies (or otherwise underqualified employees) are overworked and burdened to get the production over the finish line, at the cost of quality. Risk-averse producers weaponize big data to give the consumer exactly what they want, as cheaply and quickly produced as possible, eliminating the need for anyone to get challenged and thus think critically about art. We live in an era so abundantly resourceful that we have the capacity, capital, and fidelity to make something unlike ever before... yet many dedicated anime fans can't help but feel exasperated at the state of the industry.

Lycoris Recoil could be the most defining anime of the Reiwa era (May 2019--now) to date, as no other TV series encapsulates the imbalanced peculiarities of the time as deeply as it does. Edges have been smoothed out in favor of bright and poppy character designs, whose sweetness is captivating and its yuri is aesthetic and (mostly) nonphysical, thus easy to sell. Intricate compositing on top of 3D asset-heavy backgrounds perpetually cause an empty, non-textural feeling, flattening the action in spaces compared to its Hong Kong martial arts influences. And a production that has the capacity for individual excellence as top-end animators shine with complex, well-choreographed action scenes, while an overabundance of animation directors and outsourced inbetweeners do what they can simply to finish the production without delay.

This may read as an enormous indictment upon the series and... to an extent it is, but surely there's something comfortable about Lycoris Recoil embodying all of its era's traits and still ending up pretty good? The main characters are sweet and cheery, the episode direction and action setpieces are always quite satisfying, and there's even something nice about its rejection of grandiose ideas of heroism to focus on the little pleasure in one's immediate environment instead. We're all on the clock and we all want to go home and spend time with our loved ones, so instead of working ourself into a frenzy to dictate the heroes and villains, let's all just go home safely and do fun things instead?

Shingo Adachi has been doing this anime shit forever: he knows he likes pretty girls in cute outfits, martial arts movies, and good drawings. Whereas other shows' excessively marketed main characters might read as cynical, LycoReco's labgrown puppy main characters (and its penchant for putting them in promotional visual-like outfits even against the tone of the episode) reads merely as naive instead. Is there anything wrong with rejecting ideas of saving the world/industry, and focusing instead of making something as good as possible despite the circumstances?

No, not really. But while there's a comfort in embracing that modern anime can still be this exciting despite its plethora of structural issues, its convenient and homogenously sterile sensibilities give way to the feeling there's little reason to think about Lycoris Recoil beyond the immediate moments that it's on your screen. Compared to artefacts like Black Lagoon or Gunsmith Cats, which are products of the texture of the time, or the plethora of more carefully constructed Hong Kong martial arts films this draws from; Lycoris Recoil even at its many moments of greatness ends up feeling like defanged iterations upon its influences. The well has been poisoned, the future we were promised has been compromised; I am torn between accepting the convenient reality filled by cute girls, or taking the red pill to fight a losing war of attrition.