Battle Competition

Assault Lily: Bouquet episode 8 was a surprisingly good episode. It had some great action with what I’ll call some pretty good animation. There were a lot of blurs used during the fights, so the animation wasn’t the best, but it was way above what I expected.

And, considering that this series is animated by Shaft, I expect that the Blu-ray release will have a lot of the animation cleaned up. Well, at least I hope the animation is cleaned up for it. Because I’d love to rewatch that scene without all of the blur effects between keyframes.

Anyway, this episode features the battle competition, which is essentially the sports festival for Lilies. There are team competitions, solo competitions, exhibition matches, and even a cosplay contest.

I would also like to bring your attention to the grand prize for the battle competition: special upgrades to the CHARM of the winner. This isn’t exactly what I predicted at the start of the series, but I did say that Riri would get an overpowered CHARM. Perhaps this is how.

And, the last thing I want to mention regarding the battle competition is that I don’t really understand its purpose. I guess it’s just a way to let the girls have fun, but if that were the case, why wouldn’t it be a normal sports and culture festival?

The battle festival here seems more like an exhibition of what the Lilies are capable of — kind of like the sports festival in My Hero Academia. But, there were no spectators. The event wasn’t watched by the military or even by the general public. It was a closed-off event, which seems like a waste.

Why are There Lilies?

One of the big questions brought up in this episode is what the purpose of the Lilies truly is. I touched on this somewhat last week, so it’s interesting that it was brought up in the very next episode. But, I will admit that some of my initial speculation seems to have been off the mark.

One thing I got right was that Yuri is a Lily who was manufactured by the military. This also leads into my guess that the military wanted to use Lilies in wars against other countries. That too seems to have been confirmed by Yuyu bringing up the fact that if the HUGE were eliminated, Lilies would likely be used in the next war.

What I didn’t get right was the exact connection between these manufactured Lilies and the HUGE. I figured that the Lilies were just being incubated until they became HUGE, at which point they would be used as weapons. In reality, the opposite was pretty much the case.

Rather than these Lilies being HUGE in the making, they were made by using the DNA of HUGE. I’m still waiting on the reveal of how exactly Lilies and HUGE are related, but this seems to be pretty solid proof that they are in fact one and the same.

It’s possible that the military just used HUGE DNA to implant magie within non-Lilies. However, I took it more as they took HUGE DNA cloned it to produce Lilies. If that’s indeed the case, then HUGE and Lilies would have to be one and the same.

Think of it like Jurassic Park. The first possible situation would be like when they use frog DNA to fill in the gaps of the dinosaur DNA. The second situation would be like if they used frog DNA to grow new frogs.

Manufactured Lilies

Continuing on with this whole manufactured Lilies topic, it appears to be confirmed that not every Lily is manufactured. Last week I said that this may be the case, but at this point, I’m going to go ahead and say that’s incorrect. The reason being that we were told Yuri’s DNA is too perfect, unlike most Lilies.

That implies that most Lilies have DNA imperfections that you would expect to see in normal humans. So again, there’s one of my “possible” predictions proven false. I don’t think I definitively stated that Lilies were all manufactured, but I did mention it as a possibility.

But, what does the manufacturing of Lilies really mean? We don’t necessarily know the motivation behind it. We assume that the government wants to use them as weapons in a war against other nations. But maybe that’s not true. Maybe they just want to help in the fight against the HUGE? (I doubt it.)

What I think is more interesting to consider is that the government is preparing for a post-HUGE world. As Yuyu mentioned, wars stopped when the HUGE appeared because humanity had a common enemy. And from that, we can assume wars probably won’t resume until the HUGE are eliminated.

So does the government think the age of the HUGE is coming to an end? Do they have evidence to back this up? Or are they just planning for what they see as an eventuality? Or perhaps they’re planning to fight their own Lilies with these manufactured ones.

We need to remember that the Lilies currently aren’t controlled by the government. If the government is concerned about what’s effectively a private company controlling the Lilies, they may want some Lilies of their own as a defensive measure.

Conclusion

What do you think of Assault Lily: Bouquet episode 8? Did you like the action in this episode? Do you think the manufactured Lilies are inherently different from the natural ones? Or are all Lilies the same regardless of their origin? Let me know in the comments.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button ❤️ down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank HeavyROMAN and Rob for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika and Kouhai tiers respectively this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of the next episode is available here.

Riri’s New Pet

I’m going to be honest, the introduction of Yuri kind of throws a wrench in my predictions regarding this series. But, I don’t think it messes anything up too bad. Also, while you may think that Yuri’s introduction raises a lot of questions (which it somewhat does), it actually answers a few as well.

Yuri doesn’t exactly mess up my predictions regarding Riri and Yuyu’s roles in the series and how I think the other girls won’t be that important. However, it messes up a lot of things regarding the legion dynamic and what the future of the series is actually going to look like.

We’ve known that legions include nine Lilies, so how is a tenth member going to change things? And, will Yuri serve a special role, such as by being the bridge between Lilies and HUGE? We know they’re connected, but with the introduction of Yuri, that connection could be altered significantly.

To really understand what Yuri’s impact on the story is so far, we need to take a look at where she came from. She was found in what I’ll call an organic pod that washed ashore with the remains of a HUGE. And prior to that, we saw a ghost military ship that was full of these organic pods get attacked by HUGE.

As far as I understand it, the HUGE attacked that ship because they were drawn to the magie of the hibernating Lilies on board. This is similar to why HUGE specifically target Lily schools.

But why were there Lilies in organic pods aboard that ship? That seems to imply that Lilies are manufactured by the military. And since we know that there’s a fine line between Lilies and HUGE, does this mean that Lilies are really just incomplete biological weapons meant to become HUGE?

Origin of the Lilies

I’m not sure what the exact purpose of the Lilies is just yet. However, it’s becoming more clear that the Lilies aren’t exactly what they seem. I don’t just mean in regards to their connection with the HUGE, but rather their origin as well.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned how Lilies dying seemed to be a very regular thing. After all, Misuzu stated that it was a Lily’s destiny to die in battle against the HUGE. If that’s the case, then all former Lily’s have met this fate. And to add to that, we saw how many Lily’s one of the HUGE that attacked had killed.

But, if every Lily is destined to die in battle, why would families send their children off to become Lilies? It just doesn’t make sense. Even if the Lilies don’t know what’s going to happen to them, surely the adults understand that there has never been a Lily to make it to adulthood.

And, this is where Yuri’s introduction comes into play. Perhaps all Lilies are like her. Perhaps every Lily is manufactured specifically to be a Lily and then raised by a family as a human until they’re ready to be trained.

I considered the possibility that the Lilies all had manufactured memories and weren’t actually raised by humans, but that doesn’t actually make sense. For example, we know Riri and Yuyu came into contact when they were younger, and there was even a shop owner in Riri’s hometown who knew her.

But if we consider that even that shop owner didn’t know Riri’s name or ask Yuyu if she knew Riri, things start to make sense. I don’t think Lilies are viewed as people in this society. They’re just weapons that are expendable.

The New World Order

The big question that arises out of this episode is, for what reason would the Lilies be created? I’m going to spoil Madoka Magica in order to explain this, so if you don’t want to be spoiled on that series, just skip down to the conclusion.

So in Madoka Magica, we know that magical girls were created so that they would eventually turn into witches and release a vast amount of energy in the process. This energy was then collected and used by some unknown space civilization. Makes sense, I guess.

But why would Lilies be created? Assuming that Lilies and HUGE are one and the same just like magical girls and witches, it doesn’t make sense to manufacture Lilies to fight HUGE. All that would really do is make more HUGE, right?

I think there are two categories of Lily. We have those which are students at the Lily academies, and we have those which aren’t, like Yuri. The academy Lilies are made to fight the HUGE, but more so, they’re made so that the HUGE are lured to specific points away from main civilization hubs where they can be destroyed.

These Lilies do add to the number of HUGE, but, hopefully, destroy more HUGE than they create in the process.

The Lilies on the ship, like Yuri, aren’t designated for this same purpose. Whoever the school director was talking to on his call knows this and is trying to keep it a secret. Why else would they specifically want to take control of Yuri and not the other Lilies? There’s something unique about her.

I think she’s a Lily that’s used as a weapon against other countries and that the government doesn’t want that information getting out. Or, maybe I was wrong about all Lilies being manufactured. Maybe it’s the fact that Lilies are being manufactured at all that the government wants to hide.

Conclusion

What do you think about Assault Lily: Bouquet episode 7? Do you think that all Lilies are manufactured? Are they all really destined to die? And what about Yuri in particular? How do you think she’ll change the dynamic of the legion? Let me know in the comments.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button ❤️ down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank HeavyROMAN for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of the next episode is available here.

The Hitotsuyanagi Squad

I’m not sure how to say this, but I made some incorrect predictions regarding Assault Lily: Bouquet. I know, it’s shocking that I could ever be wrong about anything. But in my defense, I was trying to give this series the benefit of the doubt and I assumed it wouldn’t go down that path.

What path am I referring to? I guess you’ll just have to keep reading to find out because I’ll discuss it more in-depth later on in this review. For now, let’s just go over the newly formed Hitotsuyanagi Squad, starting with the actual formation itself.

The legion founded by Riri ended up being named the Hitotsuyanagi Squad after her since Hitotsuyanagi is her family name. If you’re wondering what Hitotsuyanagi (一柳) means, it translates to “One Willow.” And, for your Japanese lesson today, hitotsu is the word for “one” used when counting objects while ichi is the word when referring to the number one.

While I don’t think Hitotsuyanagi is a terrible legion name, I was hoping for something a bit more exciting than Riri’s family name. After all, the only other legion that’s been named in the series is Alfheim, obviously named after the worst part of Sword Art Online and totally not the Norse world of the Elves.

But, what I thought was the strangest thing about the Hitotsuyanagi Squad is that it was registered as an official legion before it even had a name. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but usually, when you go to register something like an organization, you need to provide the name of the said organization for it to be registered.

Anyway, the Hitotsuyanagi legion now exists, and it didn’t have to wait long to see its first battle.

The Neunwelt Tactic

The Neunwelt Tactic is a legion formation that was first introduced in episode 3 if I’m remembering correctly. It’s considered the ultimate legion formation, and in this episode, it was revealed that if performed correctly, it has a 100% chance of defeating a HUGE in one shot.

Or, at least that’s what we were told. Directly after that guaranteed kill was mentioned, Alfheim performed the Neunwelt Tactic and it was blocked by the HUGE they were fighting. Talk about some good timing.

Do you know what else is good timing? Because Alfheim failed their attack on the HUGE and the only other legion nearby was Hitotsuyanagi, their first opportunity to fight a HUGE as a legion came just after they formed. And what’s more, they even successfully used the Neunwelt Tactic on their first attempt.

I’ve mentioned the idea of events happening for plot convenience in regards to other series. But since this battle against the HUGE was a prime example of it, I guess I should explain exactly what I mean when I say “plot convenience,” because it might not be clear to some of you.

Obviously, the events of a series from start to end are there in order to further the plot, with some exceptions. However, if an event is “plot-convenient” it means that there’s no other explanation for the event to have happened other than because it was necessary to move the plot along.

So, for example, the fact that Alfheim’s Neunwelt Tactic failed was almost entirely plot-convenient. It does set up something else for the future of the series which I’ll touch on in the next section. But it was primarily included for the sole purpose of having Hitotsuyanagi successfully pull off the formation.

Lunatic Trancer

In an episode with some not-so-good use of CGI animation, at least Yuyu’s activation of her Rare Skill Lunatic Trancer looked nice. But what I really want to talk about in this section is why her Rare Skill activated and what the cause of its activation means for the future of the series.

So to start, Yuyu’s Rare Skill activated because she was reminded of Misuzu’s death and then thought that Riri had been killed as well. Riri isn’t important for the rest of this discussion, though. Why was Yuyu reminded of Misuzu’s death? Because the HUGE they were fighting was revealed to have the CHARM inside of it that Yuyu ran Misuzu through with.

And this is where we get to my incorrect prediction about this series. An episode or two ago (I think), I mentioned that I believed that while the Lilies and HUGE were connected, the HUGE weren’t going to be the Lilies’ equivalent of Witches to Magical Girls in Madoka Magica.

In my naivety, I assumed that Shaft wouldn’t work on another magical girl anime with the same exact plot twist. Well, it looks like I was wrong and that’s exactly what’s going on.

It’s possible that this HUGE is was the remnant of the one that Yuyu and Misuzu fought that day. It’s possible that after Misuzu’s suicide attack, the HUGE survived and incorporated the CHARM into its body. But I don’t believe that’s the case.

There are three pieces of evidence that support a different theory. First, the CHARM was right in the middle of the HUGE just as it was in the middle of Misuzu. Second, the HUGE seemed to have knowledge of Lily formations such as the Neunwelt Tactic. And third, Misuzu herself said that the only difference between Lilies and HUGE is that they aren’t controlled by Magie.

With all that in mind, I think it’s safe to say that the HUGE they just defeated was formerly the Lily known as Misuzu.

Conclusion

What do you think of Assault Lily: Bouquet episode 6? Do you like the name Hitotsuyanagi for Riri’s legion? Are you okay with plot-convenient events in anime? And, are you surprised that Assault Lily seems to be incorporating the same exact plot twist as Madoka Magica? I’m not really surprised, just disappointed.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button ❤️ down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank HeavyROMAN for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of the next episode is available here.

The Yuri Legion

In Assault Lily: Bouquet episode 5, the Yuri Legion obtains its final two members in the form of Thi Mai Yoshimura and Tazusa Andou. Of course, we already knew that Thi Mai was going to join last week when she expressed interest in joining to Yuyu.

Tazusa’s joining was also hinted at in the previous episode, but it wasn’t quite as overt as Thi Mai’s. I also don’t think that Tazusa fits into the whole dynamic of the legion as well as Thi Mai does. Thi Mai is outgoing and already connected with one of the primary members, Yuyu.

Sure, Tazusa is said to be “friendly” with Riri, but they’re basically just classmates who know of each other’s existence. Tazusa doesn’t seem like the kind of girl who’s really interested in hanging out with a group.

We also don’t yet know what either Thi Mai or Tazusa’s rare skill is. The only confirmed rare skills I can think of in the legion right now are Yuyu’s, Fumi’s, and Yujia’s. I don’t believe we’ve had confirmation regarding Kaede’s, Miliam’s, or Shenlin’s. And Riri’s, well, I’ll get to that later.

I’m betting that we’ll learn what all of their rare skills are at some point in this series. But for now, their legion has a berserker (Yuyu), a scout (Fumi), a sniper (Yujia), and a leader (Riri).

As a final note on the new legion members, I want to point out that I don’t think that Tazusa’s voice actress fits her character. Risa Tsumugi is the voice actress, and while I don’t think she’s bad by any means, I think she sounds a bit too mature for Tazusa’s physical appearance and attitude.

Shoujo Ramune

The middle section of episode 5 was dedicated to Yuyu going on an excursion to track down a gift for Riri’s birthday. After learning that Riri is a fan of ramune, she initially settles for some ramune candy that Riri likes from the school’s convenience store.

However, she eventually decides to seek out the real deal — a ramune drink — by heading to Riri’s hometown. At this point, I was thinking that Yuyu would discover that Riri’s hometown had been completely destroyed. That probably would have been an interesting development regardless of when it happened.

If it happened since Riri arrived at school, then it would obviously be a big character development moment for her. If it had happened before this, then it would have built up some sort of mystery surrounding Riri and may have even led to a character development moment for Yuyu.

But of course, nothing of the sort happened. While there are sections of Riri’s hometown that have been evacuated, that seems to be from the battle in which Yuyu took part. There were no surprises, and she didn’t even learn anything about Riri’s past.

This entire middle portion of the episode really felt like a waste. To be fair, we did get some character development for Yuyu from it. This was the first time in which we saw how much she actually cares about Riri. She went far out of her way just to get a present for her. But that’s not that much of a good use of episode time.

As far as I’m aware, there has been no episode count confirmed for Assault Lily: Bouquet. It could be two cours (roughly 24 episodes) long, but right now I don’t see that happening. I think it’s going to be a one cour anime that doesn’t have time to waste.

Riri’s Rare Skill

Going back to my review of the first episode, I predicted that Riri was going to be your classic shoujo/shounen battle series protagonist and become the strongest Lily with some overpowered CHARM. Well, guess what seems to be the case? Nothing’s confirmed yet, but it’s looking like I was right.

So, what evidence is there for my prediction coming true? First, we have Yuyu’s roommate (I don’t know her name) mentioning that Riri’s rare skill might be a fairly unique one.

That sounds pretty interesting until you find out that her unique skill is literally that shoujo/shounen protagonist’s ability to draw other people to them. She’s effectively Naruto, or Luffy, or Usagi, or Madoka, or whatever other shoujo/shounen battle protagonist you can think of.

I expected her rare skill to be something basic like that, but I didn’t expect it to be that in particular. Usually, protagonists have some other basic yet overpowered ability along with their ability to draw people to them.

You might not think that Riri’s charisma rare skill points towards me being correct, but I’m pretty sure it does. It sets her up as being special, which will then most likely transition into her being “the most special” among all the Lilies.

Additionally, at the very end of the episode, we got a mysterious shot of a CHARM. It looked like Riri’s CHARM, but it also could have been some other, similar CHARM. Either way, the implication here was that the CHARM shown has some special power — and Riri is probably going to use it.

I don’t want this series to be predictable. But based on everything about it, I really don’t see it being anything but predictable. And, as I hinted at in a comment on last week’s review, the series may not be trying all that hard not to be predictable.

Conclusion

What do you think of Assault Lily: Bouquet episode 5? Do you think Thi Mai and Tazusa are good fits for the Yuri Legion? Were you expecting more from Yuyu’s expedition to Riri’s hometown? And, has the ending of this episode made you consider that my predictions may come to pass? Let me know in the comments.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button ❤️ down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank HeavyROMAN for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of the next episode is available here.

Yuri, the Ultimate Team Name

Just in case you weren’t sure if Assault Lily: Bouquet was a yuri series by this point, episode 4 lays it out pretty openly. Apparently, just as couples who are dating may receive “couple names” (please never do this), Lilies who have paired up are given pairing names by their peers.

In the case of Yuyu and Riri, their pairing name is pretty obvious: Yuri. It makes me wonder if their individual names were specifically chosen by the creators solely for the purpose of this joke.

It’s clear that they were. But what I mean is that their names are literally just Yu(yu) and Ri(ri). The same joke could have been made by combining so many other names, and yet they settled for the most basic two possible. Well, it could have been more basic; they could have been Yuu and Ri.

As Red pointed out in the comments of the previous episode review, one of my main predictions for this series after episode 1 was that Riri is going to end up as the strongest Lily with an overpowered CHARM. This episode does have a part that I’ll discuss next that appears to contradict this.

However, I think that this pet name for the combination of Yuyu and Riri actually supports my prediction. Yes, larger groups of Lilies exist in this world, and Yuyu and Riri are forming one such group. This would imply that the series is going to be more focused on the team than just Riri.

But, because we’re focusing on the relationship between Yuyu and Riri, I’d argue that they’re still far more important than the rest. And, there’s been a hint at Riri’s extreme potential as she was able to calm Yuyu down in her berserker mode.

Yuyu’s Legion

Was the fact that Yuyu and Riri are forming a legion a surprise? Not really. There are a lot of characters in this series, and when the concept of legions was introduced last week, that seemed like a plausible direction for the series to go in.

However, even if a legion is made up of nine Lilies, I still don’t think that means every Lily in the legion needs to be super important to the series. For example, multiple Lilies who joined the legion were either introduced only in this episode or have been background characters up to this point.

Yujia and Shenlin are prime examples of this. These two were just introduced into the series in this episode specifically to be placed in the legion. Are we going to see more of them as the series progresses? Yes. But do I think they’re going to be all that important? Not really.

Looking at the rest of the legion members, I think we can say the same thing about most of them. Yuyu and Riri are the main two. We then have Kaede, Fumi, and probably Miliam one tier below the main two. Beneath them is where I would place Yujia and Shenlin as they’ve only just been introduced.

These are all the girls Riri knows are currently part of the legion, which means they need two more. However, although Riri doesn’t know this, we know that the green-haired girl who Yuyu was talking to also joined the legion. That just leaves one, final member to be found.

And, although the green-haired girl has been around (her name was probably revealed, but I forget it), I view her as more of a background character than anything else so far.

Yujia and Shenlin

Although I’ve said that I don’t think Yujia and Shenlin are going to be that important (compared to the other Lilies I mentioned before them on the legion member list), they’re still pretty neat characters. I like the dynamic the two of them have going on, with Shenlin forcing Yujia to show everyone her true worth.

This battle between Yujia and Shenlin was also possibly my favorite part of the series so far. Fights against the Huge? I don’t really care about those. Yujia showing off her abilities by sniping Shenlin from over a kilometer away only for Shenlin to deflect the bullets with a sword?

That’s what I’m talking about.

That scene already looked nice in this version of the episode, but I’m expecting it to look even better for the Bluray release of the series. Shaft usually makes significant upgrades to animation between TV and Bluray releases.

I don’t think Shenlin’s special skill was revealed yet, but Yujia’s was (if you can even call it a special skill). Yujia’s skill allows her to see and aim at things that are extremely far away. The main problem with this skill is that it’s literally just called using a scope since she’s a sniper.

However, there is one more issue I see with Yujia’s skill, and that’s that another member of the legion already has the same thing. Riri’s roommate mentioned to her that Fumi is highly desired by other legions because her skill allows her to see things that are far away — something we saw her do in a previous episode.

So with this said, are Yujia and Fumi really all that special? They both have the same ability and they’re both members of the same legion. You’d think that with only nine slots, every member of the legion would have a unique skill.

Conclusion

What do you think of Assault Lily: Bouquet episode 4? Do you think Yujia and Shenlin are going to be more important than I’m predicting? And which member of the legion is your favorite? Let me know in the comments. Miliam might be my favorite right now.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button ❤️ down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank HeavyROMAN for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of the next episode is available here.