Heaven
In a season bereft of almost anything service, Blue Archive was the one that caught my attention. So much that hopefully I’ll do the entire run. Despite what happened with Azur Lane years back, I don’t expect anything nearly as crazy out of this, and sadly the Azur Lane episode 06 might just end up similarly to the Asuna side nipple sighting, a one-in-a-million miracle that we were lucky to get. Still, I can’t help but get my hopes up.
Shiroko Terror makes an early appearance, just like she did in the gacha’s prologue. Seeing as much of her legs and blatant cleavage does give me hope for later.
Very, very mild bounce here. While Shiroko doesn’t have the biggest pair around, she’s certainly bigger than the rest of Abydos (excluding Nonomi, obviously). Shiroko fans will certainly be feasting throughout the season.
Sequences like this may not seem like much, but all service is relative. Seeing Shiroko in her nightwear, shading giving just a hint of cleavage, this is something they could easily have deprived us of.
She smiles shortly after this, which I’d have included in place of this frown had her head not tilted to the side, making that difficult.
Here we get a brief preview of the rest of the Abydos girls before they make their full appearance.
Nonomi here with some mild bounce. While this would be nothing to note in a standard ecchi, any instance of bounce, cleavage, etc. is worth mentioning for a production like this, one that seems primed to give us only short skirts and a swimsuit episode.
We get a bit of an infodump here right at the beginning, in the guise of a meeting between the Abydos girls: what they did over the weekend, recent happenings in Kivotos, previews of Trinity and Gehenna, mentions of the Helmet Gang, too much to get into detail here, to be honest. I suppose it’s best they get this over with now.
I’m guessing we’ll see more Sukeban later.
Sensei made his first appearance earlier, but I didn’t include it. I didn’t want to call attention to his Johnny Sasaki pose, but rather Shiroko’s “closed” posture. I didn’t expect a ton of blatant panty shots, but it became clear to me after watching this episode that they’re going out of their way to cover up frames like this. I’ve generally added most shots that could have shown panties but didn’t throughout this review.
Serika’s pose here could easily have been more subdued. She seems primed to get some attention, particularly when it comes to her rear and crotch. This makes sense given her spats, but it does make their shirking away from the other girls all the more obvious.
The Abydos girls introduce themselves to Sensei, and Shiroko gives him a tour of the school. Sensei asks why Shiroko wants to protect the school before being interrupted by the Helmet Gang.
A frame of ass-crease is always welcome (there was actually two, but I chose this one). I can’t help but wonder if they managed to sneak this one in, or if they decided to throw us a bone.
Serika here with her legs spread that much was a welcome sight considering all that had been seen up to this point.
Abydos is running low on ammo, something that the Helmet Gang seemed to know (and the Abydos girls wonder how they know this), and Shiroko charges out, but eventually collides with Nonomi. I guess this is to establish that their coordination and unit cohesion is poor.
Sensei arrives and rallies Abydos. It turns out the girls want to protect their school because it’s “where we stay.”
The above three captures is something I caught and found interesting. I can’t help but find it suspicious that a foreground object is covering Shiroko’s lower body in the exact frame we might reasonably get a panty shot. I doubt it, especially given how tucked in her legs appear to be, but it’s something I couldn’t help but consider.
For the above, the very next frame is what you see below, which is disappointing. Even in a shot like this where we could reasonably be given a token, small flash of panties we are denied. This is more damning than anything else in the episode.
With Sensei’s guidance, Abydos pushes back the Helmet Gang. The girls celebrate and congratulate themselves on a victory well earned.
If this looks familiar to you, then it is. This is the exact same sequence we’d seen earlier in the episode, not 10 minutes before. While recycling animation is common in many productions and is not something I’m usually critical of, I have to point out that they didn’t really bother to try masking this at all. Because I’m greedy, I’d have at least asked for one panty shot in return. The only difference here is that Shiroko smiles.
Arona here is the stinger for this episode. Sensei had communicated with her by voice as the fight with the Helmet Gang was breaking out, but her first visual appearance in the episode (sans the OP and ED) was here. It’s only too easy to predict at this point that the only memorable service will come from the token service episode. At least we’ll get that this season.
