Blue Archive The Animation – How a Good Gacha Game Anime Should be

Gacha game animes, while not exactly a rare sight, have been receiving more attention as of late. Blue Archive The Animation is one of the recent standouts in the genre.

Over the years, the gacha game genre has seen vast improvements in storytelling, many titles such as Arknights, Blue Archive, and generally the HoYoverse games have huge storylines that rival television and movie series.

But gacha games are a tricky genre to turn into an anime, as they usually do not provide much material when it comes to how certain scenes should be animated. This is because most gacha games are optimized towards a mobile gaming experience and the way they tell stories is through a visual novel RPG format.

These kinds of storytelling usually feature little to no animation, as they use static character images with various expressions while using text dialogues to convey the story.

That’s not to say that there weren’t any good gacha game animes in recent years. In fact, a few notable ones such as the Arknights anime, Bang Dream MyGO!, and more recently, Blue Archive The Animation are all adaptations that were widely accepted and adored by their respective fan bases and beyond.

So here, we’ll be taking a look at Blue Archive The Animation and see how they managed to become such a successful anime adaptation.

Do note, as this article will go into the story of Blue Archive as well as some parts of Arknights, there will be spoilers.

Anime as a Means of Enhanced Worldbuilding

As mentioned previously, a lot of gacha games utilize visual novel-style storytelling that lacks any sort of animation, this means aside from the occasional splash art, characters are usually static with no animations.

In other words, while the world setting is explained pretty clearly with words, how the scenario looks is really up to the player’s ability to imagine it through text alone. Furthermore, some gacha games lack voice acting during stories, so players usually have trouble imagining the emotions of the characters during certain scenarios, which may affect how immersed a player can get into the narrative of the game.

In an anime format, the team will have more room to showcase the world setting of the game, and this is what good gacha game animes take advantage of – they use the anime format to add more context and enhance the world established in the game.

Taking Blue Archive as an example, the game does tell us that the Abydos High School area is basically a desert, with the area taken over by sand and mostly devoid of people. But the story in the game does not show much scenery of the area itself, aside from a slight glimpse here and there.

But now in Blue Archive The Animation, we get to see the Abydos Students traveling in the area, and we can have a full scenic view of how the city has been affected by sand, as showcased by Shiroko cycling in the area.

Furthermore, they also add context on how the students actually get to school to begin with. Even though we know that Abydos is supposed to be desolated in-game, who knew that the place still has buses commuting to the area?

This was never mentioned in-game, but having it helps in showing the current state of Abydos. (Image Credit: NEXON Games)

Image Credit: NEXON Games

And of course, who can forget animating the iconic scenes from the game? From the tour of Abydos High School showing how run-down the school is, the popular Shiba Seki Ramen, all the way to the Sensei almost dying of dehydration cause he got lost… (eh?).

Image Credit: NEXON Games

Image Credit: NEXON Games

Image Credit: NEXON Games

While these scenes seem trivial, having these normally static scenes accurately recreated in the anime helps to add more color to the already rich world of a modern gacha game, especially when players don’t normally get to see how the world looks in-game.

Who is the Player?

Now comes another tricky part of gacha game animes, the protagonist of the story itself. Most gacha games make the protagonist the self-insert type, which means no voice acting, limited illustrations, and limited personality, which is a deliberate design for players to imagine themselves as the protagonist of the game. While gacha games do have a set theme for the protagonist, such as their general role, everything else usually comes down to the player’s own imagination.

I’ll admit that the studio behind Blue Archive The Animation made a pretty bold decision, in the sense that they gave the player character a defined gender, voice, look, and everything. While in some cases this might spark controversy as players might find it to break immersion, somehow the anime adaptation of the Sensei works.

Now aside from appearance, Blue Archive The Animation has done a great job representing the Sensei as he is in the game.

For those who haven’t played Blue Archive, ‘Sensei’ is portrayed as a kind-hearted adult who will stop at nothing to help his students. His personality in-game is often shown as a very encouraging person who always helps those in need, while sometimes playing the funny dude by teasing his students.

Furthermore, as the gameplay of Blue Archive revolves around commanding students to battle, Blue Archive The Animation also presents how Sensei is commanding the students within its first battle scene, which once again, gives more context to how in-game mechanics work outside of the limited gameplay.

It’s worth noting that another successful gacha game anime has also done something similar, namely Arknights: Prelude to Dawn.

As a tower defense gacha game, Arknights has players deploy operators across the map, with the ‘Doctor’ being the commander and protagonist of the game.

In the anime, the Doctor keeps the same outfit that covers their entire body with an androgynous voice, allowing the character to keep the self-insert element while still having proper voice acting. Furthermore, they also have a scene where the Doctor is shown to lead the squad in combat, even being as intricate as having phases to the attack, linking to the command aspect of the Doctor.

These scenes are cool not only because they give a contextual element to the game’s mechanics, but also help enhance the immersion in both the anime and the game. Now, it also helps players to better imagine how scenes and battles are played out in the game through watching the anime.

Characters With Personality

One special aspect of Blue Archive The Animation is how they also make the effort to give additional stories to the students as well.

In the original game, the main premise for Sensei coming to Abydos High School was because he received a message asking for help from the Foreclosure Task Force, who are the students who reside there. This prompted Sensei to come to Abydos thus beginning his story in Kivotos.

For Blue Archive The Animation, the anime starts on the opposite end, now focusing on the members of the Foreclosure Task Force themselves, showcasing their daily lives and conversations, while also letting viewers know about their predicament early on in the show.

Image Credit: Yostar Pictures

Image Credit: Yostar Pictures

Image Credit: Yostar Pictures

Gacha game characters usually have quite distinct personalities already in the original game, take Shiroko from Blue Archive as an example, the soft-spoken “poster girl” of the game, she’s already pretty well-known for her kuudere, inhuman athleticism, and kind personality.

However, by having more of her daily life shown in Blue Archive The Animation, it allows players to explore more of her as a character. This is definitely a great touch by the studio as we don’t get too many chances to explore their dynamics and daily lives.

Aside from that, Blue Archive The Animation has also used subtle details to show the student’s attitude for Sensei. As the most important figure in Kivotos, the students usually do their best to keep Sensei away from harm, and while this is known in the story Blue Archive, players never actually get to see them doing something like that in action.

Once again in Blue Archive The Animation, the spirit of keeping Sensei from harm’s way is shown, with one scene even showcasing Ayane shielding Sensei with her body as they are forced to jump out of a moving vehicle.

By showing more of the personal lives of students, fleshing out the story and their personalities, and also emphasizing known traits from the original game. Blue Archive The Animation allows viewers to better relate to the character’s journey, while also avoiding the personality break or overcentralized protagonist trap that many anime adaptations are known for.

Making Changes, But Staying True

Last but not least, one of the most important aspects that is done right in Blue Archive The Animation comes from its story, and how it stays true to what was shown in the game despite being changed in some areas.

Now this point may be subjective, but personally, I feel that slight changes to the stories are justified and a lot of times necessary for adapting a story from one medium to another. As long as the original story beats and theme stay intact, changes to how a scene plays out can sometimes enhance the experience and better tell the story.

Using the past example of Sensei almost dying of dehydration, the original story took place in some kind of residential area, with the encounter ending with Sensei sharing an ‘indirect kiss’ with her by drinking the energy drink straight from the bottle.

But in Blue Archive The Animation, the scene instead plays out with Shiroko finding Sensei half dead in the desert.

Personally, I find this scene to be fitting for an anime adaptation, as the show probably would not want to hint so much at a potential teacher-student relationship, especially when some of the viewers would not be familiar with the original Blue Archive, and of course, the scene plays out with Shiroko testing if Sensei is still alive is just funnier for me.

In addition, certain scenes that lack some context are also supported with slight changes to the story, but the changes still make sense in the narrative itself, such as the scene with the Foreclosure Task Force looking for Serika after she went missing. In the game, the story just goes on with the team finding her location with a vague explanation of how Sensei did it.

In Blue Archive The Animation, Sensei is shown to activate the Shittim Chest (his tablet) and ask the “OS” Arona to search for her, adding a much-needed explanation to an underexplained scene, while also emphasizing the role of Arona being Sensei’s helper in Blue Archive.

Making changes to an original scene is not uncommon in anime adaptations, but what Blue Archive The Animation did was make changes that add to the story and worldbuilding itself, while making sure that the changes do not stray far away from the story from its source, which is impressive on its own.

Ending Thoughts

While it is true that only two episodes of Blue Archive The Animation are available as of now, which means there is a lot of room for the anime to spiral downwards. What the show has presented even with its opening episodes has shown great potential, and sets itself as an example of how good gacha anime should be.

Popular gacha games often have a strong audience who do not like the original story being changed, as the game story is often what draws them into the game to begin.

Throughout a playthrough, players will accompany their characters through thick and thin, relate with their journey and values, while also cherishing all the little victories they gain along the way. While seeming trivial to most, seeing any of those being changed would be devastating to loyal fans of any gacha game.

Taking myself as an example, being a massive fan of Blue Archive, while the initial parts of the story do not intrigue me as much, the story of how Sensei helped out the students of Kivotos, and the value of how ‘adult responsibility’ should be handled really spoke to me on a personal level. If Blue Archive The Animation did not faithfully represent those values in the show, I guarantee you that I will be one of the most vocal ragers in existence.

But to truly bring a gacha game into the anime format, companies must find ways to expand on the world of the game, and that would usually entail changes, as most times it would realistically be the best way to explain the story. However, companies must find ways to ensure that the original story stays intact, as not only that will keep the fans happy, but most time it will greatly enhance the impact and immersion of any narrative.

Taking the Arknights anime as another example, one impactful scene in the game was the confrontation with FrostNova, where it shows her singing before casting a deadly Arts. In the animation, an entire song was made for that battle scene, truly showcasing the might of her Arts while keeping the story completely intact, and of course, quickly becoming one of the most iconic scenes in the entire anime series.

If more gacha adaptations can follow the example of what Blue Archive The Animation did, we are looking at a treasure trove of stories from so many games, ready to be shared with the entire world.

Now don’t just take my word for it, if you want to check out Blue Archive The Animation after making it to the end of this, the anime is being aired weekly on the official Ani-One Asia channel, so you’ll be able to see and judge the show for yourselves.

Join Us!