Anime Review: Blue Reflection Ray Episode 1

Blue Reflection Ray

Studio: J.C.Staff

Genre: Fantasy, Drama

Streaming: Amazon

You may have heard of Blue Reflection before – it was originally a Japanese RPG video game released by Koei Tecmo. It was also made by Gust, who worked on the famed Atelier game series and this really shows in the design styles of the characters. The game followed girls who developed magical powers and fight as beings called Reflectors – in addition, there was a lot of focus on the personal emotions and feelings of other people in their school. This focus on character drama makes it a great candidate for an anime adaptation but how does it hold up in practice?

The first episode begins in quite a dark, metaphorical way as we see a Reflector giving up during a fight. It’s a very sombre start and really sets out how emotion is going to be a big focus of this show, giving echoes of other series like Madoka and Black Rock Shooter right from the get-go. The episode then follows a new transfer student, Ruka Hanari mainly as she attempts to adapt to her new school whilst clearly struggling to deal with social interactions. She comes across as someone who’s used to moving around a lot and hasn’t been able to develop any real friendships and overall is pretty relatable. We’re introduced to a few other characters as the episode progresses, culminating in a confrontation between a rival Reflector. One thing that really stands out so far in this series is how good it is at really making you feel for Ruka throughout – she’s very relatable and I’m actually glad they chose to focus on her.

Unfortunately, the general pacing of the show feels a bit off – the characters were introduced a little too slowly at times, with Hiori the anime’s presumed other central protagonist, not even really appearing until halfway through the episode. The end result is that I never really got much of an impression from her or knew what was going on in her head. The slow pacing however did help to really let us get inside Ruka’s head and relate to her but this did come at the expense of the rest of the cast, unfortunately. It’s a weird choice though as Hiori seemed to be in the intro of the episode but then we don’t see her again until quite far in, and when we do see her… we don’t really find out much. This unfortunately makes her big transformation towards the end of the episode less impactful, as we don’t really know enough about her to feel much towards her at this point.

The animation is nice, with soft lines and colours but looks weirdly… incomplete. There’s very little depth or shadows on the character models, and everyone just looks a little off in terms of their anatomy. It actually has the unfortunate effect of having the show look a rather low budget, as well as making the characters hard to tell apart. The music is one of the stars of the show, however, particularly brilliant in building tension during the ‘otherworld’ parts of the episode. The opening is an absolute banger. It’s a shame really that the animation itself is a little off-putting because there’s a lot of potential here if the series picks up the pacing and character development of the rest of the cast more. The anime is scheduled to have 26 episodes rather than the standard single season of 12 however, which does suggest that the slower pacing was a narrative choice and there will be much more to the story.

All in all, Blue Reflection Ray, is off to a wobbly start but there’s enough intrigue with the characters and ideas so far to suggest it could become a truly good show in the future.