#blue reflection ray

Niina (Blue Reflection Ray) was lucky she opened The Works of Lord Byron to a random page that happened to be something actually good that resonated with her.

I say this bc the firstpoem in the collection is war nostalgia. So if she’d started from the beginning, idk that it would have appealed to her.

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I love characters like this so much. They’re always my favorite.

anothermonikan:

Blue Reflection Ray is good if you can get past the animation quality and absent explanation of worldbuilding

satoshi-mochida:

Finished watching Blue Reflection Ray, so now I can get back to Blue Reflection: Second Light.

I think it was good. Actually had a few darker moments in it than I was expecting. 

It’s kind of slow paced, so it might take a bit to get going for some people.

Though one of the Sephira from the first Blue Reflection appear at a couple points, it’s antagonists are a group of Reflectors that have a different ideology on what to use their powers for than the protagonists.

There’s a cameo from one side character from the first game, as well as Yuzu and Lime, and a couple appearances from a party member from Second Light near the last couple episodes.

The site I was watching it on had ridiculous amounts of ads in just one ad break, since I didn’t have an account there. Like, more than seven in 1, at least. After 24 episodes of having to deal with that, I don’t want to see another ad for Rune Factory 5orGhostwire: Tokyo ever again. XD

In Blue Reflection: Second Light, the player character gets to choose whom to spend her last day in the miniature world with.

• Hiori
• Mio
• Uta

Before watching any of these, you should read my summary of the game’s first five hours, then watch the linked footage from the same post.

I plan to also find links to watch the other cutscenes involving these characters, but I don’t have them yet.

Divine actually works better as a theme song for Blue Reflection: Second Light than for Blue Reflection Ray imo.

I’m still in the process of translating it bc it’s Hard. Once I get one part down, I always need a break before I can move on to the next, and often I have to stop just so I can look again with fresh eyes later. It’s hard to convey these lyrics in a way that makes sense and sounds good.

Having watched all of Blue Reflection: Second Light’s main story, my opinion is that it’s worth watching–at least from the point where Hiori shows up, after reading my summary–if and only if you care about Uta and seeing her develop. Hiori and Mio don’t receive Enough development for it to be worth it for their sakes, in my opinion; maybe the chapter on the exploration of their Heartscape is worth viewing, but not the rest.

The other characters from the anime aren’t ever mentioned, sadly. I would have loved to see Niina get to face off with Uta’s soul like she wanted.

I had pirated Blue Reflection: Second Light and started playing it, but my attempt at saving it in a flash drive didn’t work out, so I lost my save progress. So I searched around, and I managed to find a YouTube video with just the scenes with dialogue, none of the boring/skeevy fight scenes and items hunting.

Blue Reflection Ray characters appear starting at 5:06:20, a little less than halfway through the game. From that point, Hiori is a main character in the game, to be joined by Mio and Uta later on.

Edit: This video does include a boss fight montage towards the end, but it’s very easy to skip past since the video is timestamped.

Here is a summary of the first 5 hours for those who want to skip! Although the story is pretty decent; I didn’t mind watching it… aside from one scene I could have done without, a little before Hiori showed up.

In the first game, Hinako (the girl with the HM logo on her outfit), Yuzu, and Lime defeated a Sephirah that wanted to merge all human beings into one. However, that Sephirah was the god or “overseer” of their world, and defeating it left a power vacuum, leading the other Sephiroth to fight over who would fill it.

This led to something called “the Ash” falling from the sky, energy that drained people of their life force. People would become afflicted with Ash Syndrome and slowly die. Yuki (the girl with a similar hairstyle to Mio) got Ash Syndrome, and Rena (the girl with bushy brown hair), who was in love with Yuki, joined the AASA to help them find a cure. Kokoro (pigtails) was also a Reflector with the AASA, and was friends with Hiori and Mio.

Kirara (short hair) and Shiho (long straight hair) were part of an eight-girl team trying to revive the defeated Sephirah, believing that would stop the ash. They probably didn’t know that that Sephirah had tried to merge all human beings. Kirara, by the way, is a sort of oracle; she receives data from “the Divine.”

Yuzu and Lime created a pocket dimension to save as many Reflectors from the Ash as they could; however, this came with two main costs. One, Lime is in a coma from the effort of sustaining this pocket dimension. Two, their memories and the memories of the Reflectors they took away were sealed off in different worlds, known as “Heartscapes.” The girls managed to restore most of their memories by wandering through the Heartscapes, with two exceptions.

Yuki’s Heartscape has not been discovered yet, and furthermore, she isn’t a Reflector, so it’s unclear why she’s even there. Ao (bunny ears) isn’t conscious of having lost any memories, but she doesn’t remember the Ash, which suggests she may come from a completely different world from the others. Yuzu doesn’t know anything about it.

Finally, there is someone spying on their group chat and their in-person conversations, claiming to be an AI, “ReSource, your super super guide to living here!” Yuzu is certain she didn’t create any such thing.

Blue Reflection Ray and Blue Drop (the anime) are two rare cases of truly great yuri or yuri-adjacent anime with the misfortune of being from franchises that are mediocre to downright trashy.

Blue Drop (the anime) is a tragedy though, which definitely isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Blue Reflection Ray is more hopeful; it deals with themes of anguish, despair, and all kinds of ugly emotions, but none of the lesbians are made into martyrs, unlike in Blue Drop (which I still recommend–the anime only).

Eventually I want to post translations of the opening and ending songs from Blue Reflection Ray, because they are great songs that reflect the themes of the show so well. But they are really hard, especially the OP. It takes a lot of work to find phrasing that gets the meaning across in English.

Blue Reflection Ray is astoundingly good btw. I can’t speak for the franchise as a whole at all, never having played the games, and the character designs certainly don’t make me warmly disposed towards it. But the anime is great.

If you want an teenage- and adult-oriented magical girl anime that deals with topics kids’ shows aren’t generally able to explore, but maintains the spirit of hopefulness that classic magical girl series have, this is it.

The designs do rub me the wrong way. But the female director did an amazing job so that I’m not made uncomfortable while actually seeing them in action. The writing is wonderful too.

My only major criticism besides the character designs is that some things were left unresolved for the purpose of segueing into the next Blue Reflection video, Blue Reflection: Second Light. This is unfortunate for those like me who are watching it as a standalone piece. But I still highly recommend it.