Summer 2022 First Impressions – Lycoris Recoil

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: 13

Source: Original

Episode Summary: Japan has been considered the worldwide #1 safest country for several years running, but while the general populace may understand this to be simply due to inherent aspects of Japanese culture, the truth is that the Lycoris, trained assassins, are tasked with addressing crimes before the public becomes aware of them. Takina is one such Lycoris, who goes rogue during a high-risk operation involving a huge weapons sale. Because of this, she’s reassigned to a different area in order to learn from Chisato, one of the Lycoris stationed in her new region.

Chisato is Takina’s total opposite – bubbly, outgoing, and personable in contrast to Takina’s subdued nature. As Takina job-shadows Chisato, she realizes the type of work she engages in is quite different as well. Rather than assassinations and arrests, Chisato’s daily workload involves helping various people around the neighborhood doing odd jobs, making deliveries, and generally making their lives better. This goes against everything Takina knows and because of this she wants more than anything to get back to the familiarity her old job, especially once an escort mission they’re engaging in is resolved in a very non-traditional way. Is there really anything Takina can learn from this unusual Lycoris?

Impressions: At some point in the past, anime creators decided that, out of all classes of society, orphaned teenage girls must be the best-qualified candidates to become assassins. I say this because it’s funny, but also because this particular story dynamic invites a certain type of analysis. There seems to be an implied assumption that whatever traumas these girls have experienced – whether they witnessed the deaths of their parents or experienced some other foundational emotional trauma – makes them into blank slates that can be manipulated to become cold-hearted killers and tools of whatever organization invests in them. Once you start thinking about it at more than just a surface level, it becomes a little unsettling.

In scenarios like this I don’t necessarily expect the trauma aspect to be addressed to my satisfaction, because the appeal of the characters is the juxtaposition of their cuteness and deadliness, not their realism. Having said that, Lycoris Recoil, either advertently or otherwise, poses the question of whether cold-hearted violence is as beneficial to the dystopian society on display as being genuinely kind and developing real emotional connections with other humans.

I’m not religious, but one thing that frustrates me about much of the rhetoric going on in my neck of the woods lately revolves so much around one very limited and mean-spirited interpretation of cherry-picked biblical ideas, when in fact the Jesus that seems to exist within those pages was friend to sinners and an example of mercy. As corny as this may seem, that seems to be the sort of example that the storytellers are going for here. For while the typical Lycoris is taught to solve violence with more violence, Chisato’s M.O. seems more focused on the humanity of all people involved and the value of human life, no matter whose life it may be. She’s friend to both Yakuza and kindergartener in a way that goes against the grain of how we consider these types of people to be fundamentally different from one-another.

I’m not a hundred percent sure how I feel about this episode, because for as much as it hints at having something to say about society, it’s also yet another in a string of shows about cute girls doing violent things – a trope that seems more geared toward garnering attention from a certain fanbase than making any true commentary about anything. On the other hand, it was entertaining and even occasionally charming – something that surprised me and which is difficult to ignore.

Pros: Chisato is easy to love, with her charming personality that exhibits pure joy at so many things. She’s clearly a foil for Takina – the embodiment of “emotionless anime girl.” Of course, there’s a stereotype that sometimes the most charming people are the ones hiding the most pain from the world, and I would love if the narrative provided Chisato with that sort of complexity.

While this is perhaps congratulating the series for providing very basic (and what should maybe be considered baseline) representation, I think it’s worth noting that Chisato’s boss (teacher?) is both Black and disabled, both traits that aren’t exactly common in anime. While there are always excuses to be made about how “homogenous” Japan is (something that I think is also maybe overstated), the medium also gets more international every year, so it’s nice to see some cast diversity.

Cons: This episode bites off a lot that I’m not sure it can address completely. Setting aside the whole “trained orphans” angle, we’re also introduced to story elements involving “hacktivism,” evil capitalists, terrorism, crime and punishment… the list goes on. Much of this may be window-dressing, but in that case it ends up feeling a little irresponsibly-handled. Why introduce social elements that are issues currently in the real world if it’s just for the sake of looking cool? That said, there’s a long way to go and the plot could really go anywhere.

Content Warnings: Violence, including mass gun violence, government cover-ups/censorship, stalking/kidnapping story elements.

Would I Watch More? – I have to say, I’m definitely intrigued by what this episode introduces. I think the action elements are interesting, and I like the interplay between the two central characters. That said, I definitely have some misgivings about whether or not this series can handle the story it’s trying to tell.