Chidori RSC

As someone who loves all things firearms, I did not enjoy Chidori RSC enough to continue watching it.

The story is quite unoriginal and feels like a direct copy of many anime from the 2000s onward. Everyone's description of the anime is also pretty misleading, since firearms are nowhere to be found within the anime. Chidori RSC is about Olympic-style competitive beam rifle shooting, something closer to laser tag against paper targets than actual target shooting with real gunpowder and lead. A minor difference to some, but as someone who has a raging hard-on for firearms, I was very disappointed by this.

The characters are bland and unoriginal, from their writing to their design. I couldn't even distinguish everyone's personality and appearance from one another if you paid me to. Everyone's design is based around stereotypical flashy neon color schemes and overused anime character tropes with the depth of a kiddie pool. Altogether, this makes for a great recipe if you're aiming to release an anime that feels like unflavored nutrient paste.

The background visuals and audio design are just as bland as the character design, and I struggle to find many words to describe it with. The animation is typical "we want to make a full-fledged 20-something minute 12-episode anime but don't know how successful it will be so we'll just make do with a tight budget" sort of animation, with corners clearly being cut and nothing flashy added to garnish the final product. Audio is... I don't even remember. It's hard to have downright bad music in anime, but it's oh so common to use bland, lackluster music that would fail to impress even someone who has been deaf since birth trying on some new miracle hearing aids. Compared to the highly realistic orchestral recordings of Hibike! Euphonium or Girls' Last Tour's exotic selection of original and remixed tracks that amazingly suit scenes like fresh gravy on warm biscuits, This anime simply fails to impress me in any way.

An anime about realistic, casual shooting might be niche, but is highly desired by that niche. There's so much untapped potential a few studios have already tried to crack open, but they all ultimately failed miserably. In my opinion, Upotte! of all things is still the only anime that has successfully catered to borderline (or fully) autistic gun nuts like myself, if only because they got most of the dynamics of realistic firearms right. I really hate to give a low rating to a debut of pseudo-firearms into the normie market and discourage the viewing of such a subject, but Chidori RSC really just isn't that good of an anime, be it for someone who simply wants to watch an anime, or for anyone interested in it for its supposed "shooting" aspects.