English Dub Review: Assault Lily BOUQUET “Water Lily: Purely of Heart”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

When Riri was a kid, she survived being evacuated from her city thanks to the heroic actions of two Lilies, powerful warriors who use charms to attack creatures called the Huge. When she gets older, she decides to enroll in Yurigaoka Girls’ Academy to become a Lily and protect people from the Huge.

Once she arrives, things are a little more competitive than she expected, and all of a sudden she’s on a dangerous mission with Miss Yuyu and Miss Kaede instead of participating in the entrance ceremony. But thanks to the three of them working together, they manage to defeat the Huge and become the talk of the school in the process.

Our Take:

Assault Lily Bouquet is a project that came about because of a series of action figure dolls introduced by a toy company back in 2013. With that in mind, the premiere episode isn’t bad, all things considered. It’s a show that is mainly focused on schoolgirls battling giant mechanical monsters with fancy magical weapons, and while that’s a fairly generic premise, the first episode has laid the groundwork for a series with some solid potential in the future.

Riri, the main character, is your typical pink-haired peppy protagonist, but I like pink hair, so she’s fine. Her voice, done by Sarah Wiedenheft, borders on being too whiny at times, but other than that, she makes a good first impression for the most part. This episode introduces a ton of other character with varying success, but the main other two seem to be Yuyu and Kaede currently, and both of them have unique dynamics both with each other and with Riri. I liked that Kaede started off being a little snooty towards Riri, but in the end, it looks like she’ll become an ally rather than a jealous enemy.

The plot of the first episode is a fairly basic excuse to get the action started right away. A giant Huge monster escapes and the Lilies have to track it down and put a stop to it. Normally, Riri, as a brand new recruit, wouldn’t go out, but because of her gumption (or overeagerness?) she asks to tag along and Yuyu relents. This is all due to Riri’s motivation for joining the school, which boils down to the fact that she thought Yuyu looked really cool back when she rescued her during the evacuation and decided she wanted to fight monsters to.

So far, the storyline involves pretty standard battle anime stuff, but it was kinda cool that instead of getting the usual tour around the school and entrance ceremony, Riri gets thrown right into a major battle and gets paired with her magical weapon thingie by Yuyu in the field of combat. If this is a sign for the future of the show, then it’s definitely going to be more focused on big action scenes then getting to know you type scenes, which is probably why there’s a massive overload of exposition this week.

Assault Lily Bouquet has some interesting potential, but it could easily just turn into a run of the mill action show unless it does something cool with the characters. That said, the designs are nice and the animation is servicably so far, so being just an action show isn’t a bad thing for fans who are into that.