English Dub Review: Girls’ Frontline “THE MESSAGE 01”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Gentiane sends her Dolls out on a new mission to fight Sangvis, but gets concerned when the enemy just keeps coming. They’re being led by a new Sangvis ringleader named Intruder. M4 discovers G48’s body and then is contacted by M16 via the radio. M16 says she’s alive, but busy working on something. Members of squad 404 are chasing her, too, for some reason, and she has to evade 416 before escaping to live another day.

Our Take:

Ugh. When these dolls aren’t shooting at each other, they’re talking about shooting at each other. So begins another awful episode of Girls’ Frontline, which is fast becoming one of my least favorite shows of all time. THE MESSAGE 01 has the Griffin squad led by Gentiane attacking yet another group of Sangvis soldiers. Except this time we only spend half the episode with M4 and Griffin, and switch to M16’s POV for the other half. It’s just enough of a switch-up to keep viewers from falling asleep, but that doesn’t mean it’s any more exciting than usual.

The episode starts out by throwing us into yet another meaningless battle that has no stakes and no sense of what we’re fighting for. All we know is that Gentiane has ordered the Griffin dolls to attack another group of Sangvis, except this time they don’t seem to be winning the battle despite fighting for literally hours. Gentiane has no idea what’s going on, so she orders a drone to recon the area and then receives a call from another commander informing her that this unit is led by a new Sangvis ringleader named Intruder. They know its name, but nothing else about them except for the fact they’re good at leading soldiers. Wow!

Luckily, the episode gets slightly more interesting when M4 discovers a severed doll body in a building. (We still have no real idea where all this fighting is taking place. There are no civilians to be seen, no real scenery, nothing except for stupid gray structures.) Apparently the AR squad was ambushed here in a battle a while ago, but it was classified so M4 couldn’t tell anyone else about it to warn them? In typical Girls’ Frontline fashion, it’s very confusing and dumb, but it does raise a question about who exactly is at the top of all these chains of command.

That curiosity only gets more prevalent as the episode continues, since we switch to the missing M16’s point of view for the back half of the runtime. M16 is doing some kind of mission on her own, I guess, and she’s run into other Griffin dolls from squad 404 who maybe are trying to kill her? She asks 416 why, and 416 responds that they’re a squad with special permission to kill whoever gets in their way whether enemy or friend. Like, what?! Also the two of them have some kind of weird history that’s briefly mentioned. As a viewer, I’m left underwhelmed and confused—maybe people who played the mobile game know what’s going on here.

In the end, M16 makes a deal with another 404 member to let them each go their separate ways, and my biggest question is now who is controlling these AIs and pitting them against each other despite being on the same side of whatever conflict is going on. Also why do they need to sleep? And how can M4 forget that each doll is backed up and can be easily brought back to life? Ugh, if only the show could be killed without a backup.