Overview (Spoilers Below):
In a post-human world, warfare is conducted using AI robot soldiers who happen to look like teenage girls. A commander named Gentiane oversees the Griffin AR team as they try to reunite with their lost members in time to prevent the enemy Sangvis from unleashing an evil plan called Parapluie that could spell the end for Griffin and potentially all of humanity.
Our Take:
Based on a mobile role-playing game from several years ago, Girls’ Frontline hit the scene early this year to a tepid reception. It didn’t make a big impact on general audiences, and I don’t think anyone expected it to—because this is not a show for most people.
The events of the series take place after World War III has wreaked havoc on the Earth, killing most of the population and rendering most cities uninhabitable. In this era, robots developed for combat, called Tactical Dolls (or T-Dolls for short), are used to maintain peace and conduct warfare when needed. Things took a turn for the worse when one of the industry-leading doll manufactures was taken over by one of their dolls with the sole intent to wipe out the last remnants of humanity.
If that sounds interesting, prepare to be disappointed, because the show itself covers basically none of that. Instead, we pick up after all this has taken place and follow a new human commander called Gentiane as she guides a group of T-Dolls known as AR team on a series of pointless missions and monotonous firefights that ends on a weird cliffhanger that only raises more questions.
The plot of the show basically goes no where, and is like a middle finger to anime viewers who might expect the series to at least attempt to tell an entertaining story with a beginning, middle, and end. Instead, it reads like an overlong commercial for people to buy the game. There’s hardly any attempt at world-building—the scenery of every episode looks the same: crumbling buildings, gray skies, and no sign of life outside the walls of Griffin base.
We’ve established that the storyline is objectively pretty awful, but is it pretty to look at? Nope! At least that would be something, but unfortunately, Girls’ Frontline looks just as bland and basic as the plot it tries to develop. Fight scenes are presumably the show’s bread and butter, but even those look awful, with enemies standing motionless and fake-looking laser blasts flying in a steady stream back and forth but never hitting anything. The dub, at least, isn’t objectively bad. But when the best part of the show is a mediocre dub, you know it’s a stinker.
In conclusion, Girls’ Frontline is possibly one of the worst shows I’ve ever watched. The characters are boring and barely developed, the storyline goes nowhere, and the ending is entirely unsatisfying. If the idea of robot girls named after assault rifles sounds like a blast, then go for it, but for the rest of us, it would be wiser to stay clear of this assault on cinema.