DOLLS' FRONTLINE

DESCRIPTION

CAST

ONA ComedyShaonü Qianxian: Renxing Xiaojuchang
MANGA ActionShaonü Qianxian: Renxing Zhi Ge

REVIEWS

• 

  arvin30p

  40/100
  Girls' Frontline is an anime adaptation of a game that totally fails to capture it's target audience.

  As someone who has heard of this game since 2015, I know that this game has gone a long way and then it got an anime adaptation this 2022.

  To be clear, I have neither played this game nor have read any literature of the game itself so I am practically blind on this series. Also, spoilers ahead if people have decided to read this review without any prior knowledge of this show or the game itself. You've been warned.

  This show focus itself first to the AR-team who was lead by M4A1 who is a competent leader but is an inexperienced in commanding her team.
  The other part of the show focuses on the newbie commander named Gentiane who is good at tactics and knows a lot of minute details when it comes to handling unexpected situations. When AR-team has been cornered by the enemy forces, Griffin, came to their rescue and one by one, they managed to defeat the enemy forces...

  If this show just focused on that aspect, I wouldn't mind it at all as I have no knowledge to put as a basis for this show and likewise, it would be an entertaining factor for me since I knew nothing about what I am watching itself. But even with those restrictions, I somehow managed to guess the flow of the story in the end.

  To put it bluntly, this show... while this show has it's decent parts... most of the times, I feel like that it's either lacking or totally bad.

  Another thing I hate is the characters. M4A1 hesitates a lot and to the extent of sometimes almost harming the operation itself, AR-15 acts suspicious most of the times that it was so obvious. I was not surprised at all when the plot twist happened as I have already seen how much they had dragged. M-16 acts like she knows it all but in the end she didn't do much at all... like she was totally holding herself back to the enemies. Also, what's up with the big gun on her back? When will she be able to use that? When her teammates are dead? In the end, I think M16 holds back too much to the detriment of her team too. SOP II on the other hand, asides from her being childish, I have no complains and SOP II is the best character in the AR team (for this anime), what a letdown.

  The enemy team has their own BS too. There was one episode where I believe the enemy is carrying an elite squad but M4A1 defeated every elite soldier like they were just some rookies. Also, I still don't like the fact that Sangvis didn't even send a whole platoon just to capture M4A1 given in the latter parts of the story, she was sought after by Sangvis themselves. Man, what a waste of potential given they can field absurd number of troops in no time.

  The last arc, which was AR-15's arc, was fine but certainly; It felt that AR15 has set her expectations that she will not get back alive and she did, but at what cost? I do understand that her heroic action is just there to delay Sangvis' plan which was successful but... was it really worth it? I'll leave it up to the readers to decide if that was worth it. In my end, I find it not worth it and it was just for shock value and forcing the plot to progress.

  In the end, Gentiane was pushed in the sidelines as it was all about the AR-team in the end and what can I say, I was honestly bored out of it.

  As someone who hasn't played the game itself or read any related literature, I should have been more lenient but in the end... I was not into it anymore but since I had to finish it, I just finished it like what I always do to shows that made me lost the will to continue engaging.

  Is this show worth your time? Definitely a no. Likewise, Go play the game instead, you won't be disappointed.

  My Score: 4/10 (Just skip this show altogether.)

  Continue on AniList
• 

  Nerimuriya

  60/100
  An adaptation that did not even leave me dissapointed, but just feeling empty.

  • I did have mixed feelings about posting this but decided to say fuck it for once and let it be
  • whole thing is completely spoiler free and you can find a tldr at the bottom

  Girls' Frontline can be summed up with one simple concept, being a huge hit or miss where the "hits" are not sufficient to balance all the blunders.

  Plenty of the osts are either ear-grating, completely unfitting for what is being shown in that moment or cheap rehashes of the game soundtrack, there are a couple osts that make me go "aww that sounds like that one ost of that chapter", but that's about it.
  Of course it would be stupid of me to expect osts at the same level of the game, but the anime soundtrack just feels like a farcry to what you actually get to experience playing

  (some of my favourite game osts for example, I left the last one as a pure link because of characters spoilers)
  

  https://youtu.be/uWABHIwl4Gk

  The art is very heh, all the characters' faces look like paper copies of one another and since basically the majority of the budget went into the op, the animation sometimes was alright, and sometimes it gave us bad boys like this one

  

  (it was that memorable, people even modded games to bring this cursed abomination to life, I just had to share)

  And finally, the story for last.
  I do acknowledge that the initial story is not that good even in the game: it's repetitive, at times bland and mixes the more high-stake moments with flatter ones rather poorly, but in all honesty I always thought that the story managed itself alright.
  The difference is that the anime manages to suck in all the (already not abundant) life of the initial story, rushing the earlier chapters in the shortest time possible and bundling everything in a messy, soulless blur with few saving moments that truely leave an impression.

  Continuing on this with a slightly more personal opinion, another word I could describe the whole issue with is uncanny, because yes, this is indeed the adaption of the game the community has prayed and memed for years, but it is also that constant feel of "wrong".
  When I was watching the anime, there was always that underlying uncannyness, a sense of familiarity for what I had gotten to experience that at the same time never felt truely right and a constant cycle of compromising and trashing my expectations onto the depths of earth because even being aware that eventually there will be a "better" , they decided to make you suffer to reach that.

  But despite everything, I honestly still gave a 6, because I have watched worse, because I'm biased and because my critical sense is screwed, but if the anime itself or this review have remotely interested you then I wholeheartedly reccomend giving a shot at the game, cause after having played it for more than 2 years at this point, if you're up to it, I can tell you that the story is worth it.

  Continue on AniList

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