LAPIS RE:LIGHTS

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA FantasyLapis Re:LiGHTs
NOVEL FantasyLapis Re:LiGHTs: Majotachi no Album

REVIEWS

• 

  KitKitovsky

  60/100
  Another advertisement for a mobile gacha game with girls idols

  Review contain spoiler scenes

  Lapis Re:LiGHTs is just an advertisement for a mobile gacha game with girls idols. About which I want to talk a little.

  

  The anime is made at the young studio Yokohama Animation Lab (YAL), founded by Oogami Yuuma . Prior to that, he worked as a CG producer at the Silver Link studio, supposedly that's why there's so much 3D in the YAL studio projects.
  Specifically, Lapis was engaged in sub-studio Cloud Hearts, which is made up mostly of former White Fox animators. You might have met them, for example, in Gamers!, where they outsource several episodes.

  Moving away from production details, in terms of content Lapis is a anime about idols at the magic academy.

  _The usual genre action (school education) and the final performance with songs, for example, [Uma Musume](https://anilist.co/anime/98514/Uma-Musume-Pretty-Derby/)_ was made according to the same scheme

  The characters here are a complete standard, the events are standard, the 3D performances are rather weak.
  Interest is boosted when the credits for the fifth episode contain the names of Shaft Studio workers, such as Ito Yoshiaki Itou and Hiroto Nagata.

  5 and 6 eps are very funny: magical board games, hike and haunted house!

  Although some of the backgrounds were not very good, Lapis is remembered for the setting.
  Demonstrated in episode 10, Praça do Comércio Square hints that the local detailing clearly has a Portuguese flavor.

  

  Commerce Square, Lisbon
  Architecture, decorative plates on the walls, ship "Santa Maria" - important details are missed from ignorance. (original article with pictures)
  The full name of the main character - Tiara Victoria Lex Waleland, lives in the Palace of Queluz.
  Princess Mariana Vitória de Bragança also lived there. The names are similar, aren't they?

  

  Who knows how many more such references can be found in the anime
  Definitely Lapis managed not everything, some episodes were not caught and passed by. Sometimes I was seized by nostalgia for the magnificent ShoujoKageki Revue Starlight (also advertising mobile game with girls, but more interesting).
  However, Lapis can also surprise and delight the viewer when he really wants to.

  Continue on AniList
• 

  PushPin

  56/100
  Bad narrative decisions, but at least the girls are cute?

  Disclaimer: While I don’t get into the specifics of the anime I do talk about its general flow so read if you dare

  ---

  Lapis Re: Lights presents itself with something relatively new to the table. School Idol and Magic aren’t genres you really see together. While often in Mahou Shoujo there might be one girl working as a celebrity/idol, in Lapis Re: Lights we are shown the concept of every girl being technically both. So fans of each were definitely, at least intrigued to check it out.

  Unfortunately, I would say this anime fails to reach any expectations. While not a bad show, it pretty much suffers from its narrative choices, particularly failing in any proper Character Focus, that ultimately hindered any impression it aims to give by the end.

  

  The synopsis of Lapis pretty much sets Tiara and 4 other members of Lights, who I will refer to as, the main characters. And we get that for the very first 3 episodes; we are introduced to the girls and their circumstances and start exploring/developing their dynamics. But when we reach episode 4 the show goes very hard into its Cute Girls Do Cute Things (CGDCT) aspect while Lights (and the set plot) pretty much take the backburner. While not completely irrelevant in the episodes proceeding, they are no longer the focus or related to the message and goals. Instead, this focus is given to other girls and the anime continues without any overarching plot.

  

  While it was a bit weird, it's not a completely bad experience. The other girls are interesting and have their own charm, Alpha definitely being a fan favorite. It started to seem like CGDCT was the main goal of the anime, especially considering the number of characters they were utilizing (at least 20 girls!!). But this becomes weird when episode 8 rolls around and Lights becomes the sole focus.

  

  We are pretty much thrown right back into the plot. Episode 8 had basically everything I thought the first half of the anime would tackle all squished in its 24 min run time. From then till the end we focus solely on Lights, and the girls we spent almost half the anime introducing and getting to know are rendered practically irrelevant.

  This hosts a few problems. For one it's very weird, to me, for us to spend so much time on the other girls just for them to not matter to the plot till the last 10 minutes. Feels almost like a waste of time? If we spent less time with these girls and more time with Lights, the ending would have basically been the same but we would have known more about the main characters.

  Secondly, from episode 8 and on, everything Lights does pretty much holds no weight. Comparing this to a similar anime like Love Live! School Idol Festival, despite their CGDCT antics, they still have an overall goal that these antics work towards. We still get to know these characters, see that they’re trying, and empathize with their efforts. But we don’t get that with Lights. For half the anime we’re getting antics from other girls who are very much not relevant to the plot and very much do not have the same goals as our main five. And while everything Lights does maybe to their goal, like I said they are not the focus of the episode, so we don’t get enough time to know them, sympathize with them, and their efforts. So when episode 8 rolls around, there’s no real impact on the audience during these very important moments.

  

  Now going into this I wasn’t aware that the anime was a Precursor to a gacha game being developed by Klab. As some of you idol lovers know, these are the same developers of Love Live! School Idol Festival, who also did the same thing with the anime and game. However, even without considering the success of Love Live!, there’s no excuse for an anime or any show to be bad just because of its connection to a game. I can understand the developers wanting all the girls and their groups to be well-established characters, however, I feel like they went about it the wrong way.

  

  Basically, the anime fails to blend the plot and the girls in one cohesive narrative. The last half of the anime is a bit disconnected from the first half, and because of the lack of build-up, the anime doesn’t leave the viewer with any sense of emotion or achievement from the characters. All in all, this is something you’d watch for the characters and not the plot, but that was probably their goal all along.

  

  ---

  And for those who watched it, here are more personal tier lists I made for fun!~
  
  Groups

  

  Characters

  

  Continue on AniList
• 

  BlueBlur

  77/100
  A fantastic introduction to idol anime and one of the best of 2020

  Trying out different types of anime is always fun for me, and idol anime was a ‘genre’ I never gave too much attention. Since Zombieland Saga, I’ve become more interested in idol anime, and I’m glad I did because picking up this anime was a great decision.

  Lapis Relights in my opinion is one of the best anime of 2020 and is super underrated, if only because it’s an idol anime based off a mobile game. But it’s origin lends a lot to the anime as the production value is through the roof.

  The animation and art style bring so much life to the scenes and the amount of care and detail put into this show is hard to find elsewhere in this medium. For example, during scenes where the characters are in libraries, cafeterias, or common rooms, you will see other named side-characters in the background doing their own thing, sometimes even interacting with their own friends. It might not seem like a lot, but it makes the world of this anime feel lived in, like it operates outside of just the story we’re seeing. Even the random background characters look distinct, adding to this feeling even more.
  The characters were all very strong, even if they leant a little hard on established tropes, which while tired, isn’t a bad thing and actually worked for this series. What’s worked before will usually work again, and this show proves that.
  The only thing that didn’t work was the rivalry between the main girl and another girl which I feel could have been expanded more, especially since their whole relationship gets resolved by the end of this season.
  But the MC’s relationship with her older sister made up for that and became one of the most compelling parts of the series in the final few episodes. While that too maybe could have been fleshed out even more, it was only a twelve episode anime and didn’t really need to anyway.

  The main quintet are all very entertaining to watch and play off each other naturally. They feel like a real group of friends and are always fun to watch. The rest of the supporting cast is strong as well, and you get to see a lot of them throughout the series.

  No one, including the main quintet (minus the main girl) isn’t really developed all that much, but they didn’t need to be. A second season might happen anyway so to complain about it now would be pointless.

  The songs, a highlight for any idol anime, are also very strong. None of them stick out after one listen but the sequences are produced very well with some excellent CGI and choreography.
  Lapis Relights might now blow you away, but it is a very wholesome and fun show to watch that will put a smile on your face no matter your mood. It’s brimming with life, colour, creativity, personality and is actually very funny at times. It’s a perfect gateway idol anime that would actually get you interested in watching more, as it did for me.

  Give this anime a chance. It shined above many others from this year and made me invested in a story I wasn't sure I was going to like. Take a chance, because you might just find a whole new world of possibilities waiting for you.

  Continue on AniList

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