YMMV / Lycoris Recoil

• Angst? What Angst?: Chisato is remarkably upbeat and idealistic for someone who has an artificial heart that's only expected to last until she reaches adulthood (and before the operation, she was expected to die in half a year from a congenital heart condition). Then Himegama's tampering leaves her heart unable to recharge and truncates her life expectancy to just two months. Chisato had already accepted that she wouldn't live long and takes the new deadline in stride, with Takina being far more distraught about her impending demise.
  Kusunoki (Episode 9): You seem rather energetic for someone who will die soon.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Some might argue that Chisato is a hypocrite despite being an All-Loving Heroine of Incorruptible Pure Pureness: while her use of non-lethal bullets is usually depicted for the spectator to see how noble she is, in a world as deadly as Lycoris Recoil's, one could argue that Chisato's behavior put her allies' lives at ever more risk, in contrast to DA's admittedly extreme stance of killing threats on sight to quickly and permanently put an end to them. Not to mention that in spite of her inexhaustible refusal to kill, her heroism means that her loved ones are outright driven to kill to save her instead, as they can't bear her leaving their lives. Some people outright think she's reckless and even selfish, given that the fact that her sparing of certain enemies, particularly letting Shinji live and dying in his place, implies that she'd be willing to let them continue hurting others in the long run just to avoid having to personally end them.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • Takina's "Hot Choco Parfait" from Episode 8 is based on a real product, Chocola Noir, released in 2020 by Nagoya-based cafe chain Komeda Coffee. Much like its anime counterpart, the real thing went viral too. Sadly, it appears that the Chocola Noir was a limited-edition item and is no longer available.
  • The pulse-less artificial heart is a real thing. The most famous Real Life person with this style of artificial heart is Dick Cheney. It works by keeping up a steady, constant stream instead of pumping like a real heart. The level of strenuous activity Chisato can undergo, however, is not supported by the real thing. After the heart is sabotaged by Himegama in Episode 9, Takina even tells Chisato that she shouldn't overexert herself.
• Awesome Music: Good lord, the soundtrack is downright incredible. From "ALIVE" as a wondrous opening, "Tower of Flower" as a catchy ending to "Counterattack Begins" for whenever Chisato does something awesome, the soundtrack is just amazing.
• Catharsis Factor: Mika delivering a Curb-Stomp Battle to Himegama in Episode 13 is relieving to watch after the latter damaged Chisato's artifical heart back in Episode 8.
• Cliché Storm: The series plays lots of genre tropes more or less straight, especially from the 80-90s Girls with Guns and the post-The Dark Knight western action cinema, all spiced with atemporal anime Slice of Life, although in this case it is done with massive gusto.
• Evil Is Cool: Sure, Majima is an unhinged psychopath, but he is one hell of a fun villain to watch. Not only is he fun, but he has a brilliant grasp of human psychology, as shown in Episode 10. His scheme to hide his thousands of guns across Tokyo and encourage people to go nuts with them is genius because he knows the Tokyo police have been lax for 10 years, and the Lycoris agents are trigger-happy, so a lot of innocent people are going to end up dead out of curiosity, while more violent citizens will take advantage of being given weapons. It's a brilliant parallel to the Joker from The Dark Knight and his own psychological views. Majima has been so effective as an antagonist, that many fans found themselves agreeing with him (the reasons, not the methods), and have considered him a top contender for best anime villain of 2022. And just to hammer home the Joker comparisons, Majima survives what should've been a fatal fall from Enkuboku Tower, much like how the Joker survives so many lethal scenarios.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Fans of the show often overlap with almost any other series that has had a ton of Les Yay (from Symphogear to Yuki Yuna is a Hero to RWBY). There are numerous redraws of scenes with Chisato and Takina with various other yuri pairings. And after the series ended, many fans turned to Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury to get their yuri-flavored action fix.
  • The whole gun theme with some absurd action has caused several fans to liken it to John Wick, causing some overlap.
  • Weirdly enough, with Kamen Rider. Thanks to the fact that Chisato and Takina's dynamic reminds a lot of fans of various main and secondary Riders. They even have a tag for crossover art on Pixiv (リコリス・ライダー).
  • Fans of older Girls with Guns anime such as Dirty Pair, Gunsmith Cats and the Bee Train trilogy (Noir, Madlax and El Cazador de la Bruja) tend to like it for being a Spiritual Successor to those shows.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Episode 8 reveals that Chisato is Afraid of Needles, only attending an appointment after being pressured by Takina. It's rather amusing, especially from someone who casually dodges bullets... and then she ends up getting sedated by Himegama posing as a nurse, who short-circuits her artificial heart and leaves her with two months to live.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The jokes about this being essentially a John Wick anime is hilarious considering that in late 2023, an actual anime adaptation of John Wick got announced.
• Magnificent Bastard: Majima is a terrorist who desires to destroy D.A's false peace. Majima partners with Robota to investigate the location of D.A's headquarters, eliminating Lycoris in the process. Frustrated by their slow progress, he's directed by Robota towards Chisato, whom he ambushes, impairing her Super-Reflexes by spitting blood in her eyes. Learning that Chisato hindered an attack he made on the Tokyo Radio Tower years prior, he grows obsessed with fighting her again. Evading a D.A Strike Team and luring them to the new Enkuboku Tower, he announces that he's distributed guns to the populace before broadcasting the Strike Force fighting his men, encouraging citizens to defend themselves. Luring Chisato to the Tokyo Radio Tower, he shuts the blinds to gain the advantage with his Super-Hearing. Seemingly defeated, he escapes and confronts Chisato for a one-on-one. Mid-fight, Majima calls for a break when Chisato's heart malfunctions, during which he divulges his dislike of false peace and his view of himself as someone who fights for the weak, even claiming he'd side with the D.A if terrorists had the upper hand. Surviving his defeat, he's last seen calming an armed citizen before going back into hiding, satisfied with having sown seeds of doubt into the populace.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The ending of the opening credits, with Chisato and Takina kicking each other, has now become a redraw meme, with people inserting other characters from different series into the moment.
  • Refering to the show's genre as CGDCT, that is to say, Cute Girls Doing Counter Terrorism is gaining some traction within its fanbase, as is the slightly more overt "CGDCQC" and similar.
  • The scene with Chisato picking up and hugging Takina in Episode 3 has become rather famous, with artists replicating the hug with different characters from other properties.
  • SAKANAAAAAA!^ExplanationThe shot where Takina poses like a fish in Episode 4 quickly became a fanart meme due to her expression and her loud "SAKANAAAA!" Akinator has even started connecting her to aquarium fish.
  • Kurumi's long scream in Episode 6 before she shows her tablet to the others in the café is funny enough that it's been meme'd, despite the serious nature of what Kurumi is trying to show the others.
  • Chisato got Isekai'd.^ExplanationIn Episode 6, Majima runs Chisato down with a car; the clip taken out of context is quite short, getting a close up of Chisato's frightened face and then a smash cut to black. Replace the car with an 18-wheeler, and this would be a 1:1 recreation of how typical "isekai" stories start.
  • Sakadachi! / Handstand!^ExplanationThe shot in Episode 8 where Chisato is doing an improbable one-armed handstand while holding her skirt up to prevent a Panty Shot quickly became a fanartist meme.
  • Oddly enough, the ending song. A lot of fans add it as an ending theme to various other media, with a majority of them being a case of Soundtrack Dissonance, a lot like several of the later episodes of the show itself.
  • "Moshi Moshi, police man?" ^ExplanationKurumi says this just before Detective Abe and his partner barge into Robota's hideout. The phrase and subsequent clip could easily be used for various police takedown memes.
• Memetic Psychopath: Takina is occasionally portrayed as this by the fans. In-universe, Sakura mocks her over rumors of not only intentionally, but gleefully, firing at a hostage. Her initial nature in the first episode, with how often she resorts to violence (or attempts to) don't help, and neither does Episode 12 where she becomes outright feral trying to kill Yoshimatsu. Even screaming she'll rip the heart out of his chest.
• Narm: The ending of Episode 8. As Himegama begins to tamper with the artificial heart of a drugged Chisato and Takina prepares to rescue her friend from the unknown danger, the dramatic music is suddenly replaced by the upbeat ending theme, which continues for the rest of this otherwise tense cliffhanger. This continues into the remaining episodes, since they often end with ominous cliffhangers. At this point, many agree that the anime should have switched to a more serious ending from its half point like many other 13-episode animes do.
• Spiritual Successor: Orphan girls trained as assassins with guns. Sounds like Gunslinger Girl, though Lycoris Recoil is not as openly tragic thanks to Chisato's cheerfulness.
• Superlative Dubbing: One would think it'd be hard to find someone who could match the voice work of Chika Anzai (Chisato) and Shion Wakayama (Takina), but Lizzie Freeman and Xanthe Huynh do a great job with the roles in the English dub, capturing the infectious enthusiasm and aloofness that their respective characters embody. The same goes for Bob Carter voicing the smooth and professional Mika, Jennifer Losi voicing the crass Mizuki, and Lisa Reimold as the sassy little Kurumi. Majima, voiced by Sean Chiplock, sounds as if Yoshitsugu Matsuoka spoke English himself, crazy as it sounds. Further, Yoshimatsu's voice (by D.C. Douglas) sounds brilliantly charismatic.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Not extremely so, but some viewers do feel that the unequal weight of their respective arcs ends up making Chisato overshadow Takina more than the premise of their duo would lead to think. Not only because Takina receives virtually no background compared to Chisato's troubled previous life, but also because by the point Chisato's faulty heart and ambivalent relationship with the Alan Institute are established as plot points, Takina's role becomes essentially a sounding board in her goal to save Chisato compared to her development earlier in the series.
  • The LilyBell get only one mention and a couple minutes worthy of screentime, despite them and their unnamed leader having apparently some rowdy past with the Lycoris Café.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Possibly the most common complaint is that the anime presents a landscape full of relevant concepts like censorship, mass surveillance, freedom, child soldiers and police brutality, and for several episodes it looks genuinely ready to address them in deep - only for it to leave them mostly uncontested and use them instead as a scenery for a particular drama that ultimately respects the status quo.
  • The series shows Takina's initial attitude that Murder Is the Best Solution submitting to Chisato's much more idealistic stance on saving people rather than killing them, but they then meet an unexpected challenge when it turns out the artificial heart Chisato needs to save herself is in the villain's chest. However, rather than allowing Chisato or Takina to actually deal with the decision, the series sidesteps it by having Mika do the dirty work himself for them. While not necessarily unsatisfactory, it's easy to feel the series applied an interesting premise only to avoid its most powerful possible development.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Some Western reviewers have criticized the series for not doing enough to speak out against the show's perceived glorification of state violence and surveillance, as DA are portrayed as Well Intentioned Extremists who uphold Utopia Justifies the Means and they're still operating as normal in the end with little concern from the protagonists. To be fair, DA is seldom not portrayed as incredibly shady and morally absent, and the last section of the season not only shows how unsustainable it is, but implies it's only a matter of time before more cracks start to show.

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