Awesome / Lycoris Recoil

Given its guns-and-girls setting and due to being animated by A-1 Pictures, this show has plenty of awesome moments.

Beware of unmarked spoilers!

• Episode 1:
  • Takina taking down the arms dealers using a PKM machine gun. Notable in that she doesn't hit their hostage while hip-firing.^note The PKM has very high recoil when one isn't using its bipod, meaning that firing it from the hip will spray rounds all over the place. There's also how it weighs a minimum of 4.5kg unloaded in the lightest models, and given Takina's height and build she shouldn't have even been able to hold it steady, let alone fire it without being knocked over.
  • Takina later shows her marksmanship by sniping a drone with her pistol at a considerable range, after only taking a second to whirl around and see it.
  • The above is then followed up by Chisato taking down all of the criminals who took Saori hostage solo, showing Takina why she's the best Lycoris around.
    • Related to the above, one of the kidnappers takes six rubber bullets from Chisato and still keeps going until Chisato lands a seventh one to his head!
• Episode 2:
  • Takina outdoes her prior drone snipe by shooting down another one while in a fast-moving car.
  • One of the men sent to kill Walnut pulls the pin on a grenade. What does Chisato do? Rush up to him, slap the grenade out of his hand and into another room, shut the door and then push said gunman into the door just as the grenade explodes, propelling the door into him and knocking him out non-lethally.
  • Then, just as she finishes the above feat, another gunman sprays his AKM-S at her and she dodges every shot... at less than 10 meters!
  • A bit of a lesser example, but the fact that the suitcase Kurumi was hiding in took several rounds from AKM-S fire at less than 20 meters and didn't get penetrated is impressive.
• Episode 3:
  • Chisato basically schools Fuki and Sakura in the mock battle, toying with them until Takina joins the fray and returns the favor on Fuki by punching her in the face before shooting her.
• Episode 4:
  • Majima and his goons have just hosed down a subway train with automatic weapons, only to find the train cars are seemingly empty. Cue an ambush by at least ten Lycoris agents.
  • During the ensuing ambush, Majima takes several rounds to the arm and barely slows down. He then pulls out a detonator and blows up several explosive charges his men had in their bags, seemingly killing several of the Lycoris agents and making good his escape.
• Episode 5:
  • Despite being caught by Silent Jin and him being clearly out of her league, Mizuki is able to slap a tracer on him, letting Kurumi track his position until he ditches his bulletproof overcoat.
  • Chisato jumping to Takina's rescue when Silent Jin is about to kill her. On a related note, Jin takes a full clip of rubber bullets to his gut at melee range before he finally goes down.
• Episode 6:
  • As a villainous example, Majima gets the upper hand on Chisato when he spits his own blood in her face, temporarily blinding her. This is immediately after she hits him in the head with a rubber bullet and he subsequently takes a nasty tumble from a moving vehicle.
  • Takina rescues Chisato by shooting Majima's gun out of his hand, and then incapacitates his flunkies without killing them. This is followed up by Mizuki showing off her driving chops in evacuating the two from the area, even dodging a car that's being hacked by Robota.
  • In the climax of the battle, one of Majima's men aims a Panzerfaust-3 rocket launcher at them. Takina is out of ammo, and Chisato is way too far from the terrorist to land a hit on him with her rubber bullets. Kurumi saves the day by flying her drone into the terrorist, knocking his shot off target and causing the rocket to hit a van that Majima was just about to get into. Majima survives the explosion, despite being right next to it.
• Episode 7:
  • In a villainous example, Robota manages to trick DA into thinking that there are over 20 bomb threats going on in Tokyo simultaneously. Of course, these are all decoys that allow Majima and his men to massacre a police station and put a USB stick into the police chief's computer, which will supposedly let Robota hack into DA.
• Episode 8:
  • We finally get to see what happened during the Skytree incident. Majima was indeed part of it, using his supernatural hearing to direct his men into taking out multiple Lycoris agents. But then Chisato shows up and, despite using rubber rounds, she absolutely annihilates his men. It's both awesome and terrifying seeing a child Chisato ripping through the terrorists like a scythe through wheat.
  • When Majima leaves Chisato's safe room, he immediately thwarts Takina's attempts to shoot him at melee range and escapes as though it were an everyday occurrence.
• Episode 9:
  • Despite being a secretary, Himegama is able to match Takina in a fight, though neither one is injured.
  • During one of Mika's flashbacks, Chisato is shown in a mock battle and defeats at least twelve Lycoris agents solo with absolute ease.
  • In a villainous example, Majima is able to track down and capture Yoshimatsu, who is normally almost impossible to find.
• Episode 10:
  • Takina interrogates a prisoner to try and learn anything about Shinji. This involves grabbing the arm of a guy twice her size and not just pinning him to the ground with it, but dislocating his arm in the process.
  • Majima turns out to be an absolute genius schemer in this episode. His ultimate plan involves spreading his thousands of firearms around Tokyo and getting civilians to pick them up, knowing the police and trigger-happy Lycoris agents will kill them for possessing them. Seeing as one police officer immediately shoots a civilian for holding a handgun and accidentally pointing it in his direction, it's already working. This doubles as Nightmare Fuel because Majima is appealing to human nature and its propensity for violence, and it's working like a charm.
    • As a bit of Fridge Brilliance, Majima also knows that due to the Tokyo police department not having to deal with dangerous scenarios for such a long time, they're going to panic at the sight of people with guns and several will end up trigger-happy.
  • At the same time as the above, Majima is outsmarting every move that DA is making, making a call only long enough that DA can't track him, and knowing exactly how the Lycoris agents will position themselves. To say he's Crazy-Prepared is a severe understatement.
  • And another note, Majima has basically won. DA is at a Morton's Fork. Either they send the Lycoris in, and reveal their presence to the world, or they ignore the situation, causing all sorts of chaos to arise from violent civilians and incompetent police. This city deserves a better class of criminal, and Majima gave it to em'.
• Episode 11:
  • While she's waiting for her flight to take off, Kurumi continues her search into the artificial heart. Using hacking techniques that border on science fiction, she discovers that Shinji picked up a new model, and confirms that he was planning to give it to Chisato. And she does this without her big PC setup!
  • Majima's schemes grow even more brilliant in this episode when he lures a huge Lycoris strike team into entering Enkuboku tower and arriving at a scene of utter carnage. He then broadcasts the scene to all of Tokyo, making it look like the Lycoris agents murdered everyone, and outright tells the public of their existence while DA is powerless to stop him due to Robota's hacking. This almost immediately leads to an armed civilian shooting a Lycoris agent, who shoots him in turn. Utter panic ensues. There is now nothing DA can do to cover this up. Majima has won.
  • Chisato arrives at the Skytree tower and fights her way through Majima's henchmen using a Keltec KSG shotgun^note which she loses partway up the tower, avoiding fatalities despite the perilously damaged structure and nearly falling to her death. Watching her go through them as a One-Woman Army is amazing.
  • Majima continues to be a mastermind as he lures Chisato to finding Shinji and then shuts the blinds to the Skytree, turning the whole area pitch black. Chisato can't see, nullifying her predictive dodging, but Majima's Super-Hearing gives him a huge advantage. He then goes to explain that he has figured out Chisato's trick, which is why he set things up this way. Even when she briefly gets the upper hand, he turns it around on her by playing against her Thou Shalt Not Kill mantra when she grabs his gun, telling her it has live ammo. The fight between them is an animation spectacle with writing that would remind one of a clash between the Joker and Batman. The one thing that Majima does not anticipate is Takina's arrival, but even then he gets the upper hand on them, even after taking two rubber bullets to the chest from Chisato and three kicks to the head from Takina.
• Episode 12:
  • Chisato and Takina continue their fight with Majima, with both sides performing extremely well against one another. But Chisato gets the upper hand when she disarms Majima, gets right up to him, and then fires her gun right next to both of his ears, deafening him temporarily. She then pumps the rest of her rubber bullet magazine into him before Takina binds his arms.
  • Chisato and Takina get into a nail-biting fight with Himegama, who proves herself to be a very capable fighter. This culminates in Chisato shooting Shinji with a live round in order to save Takina's life, leaving her partner to deal with Himegama.
    • After Chisato retakes her rubber bullets from Shinji, she shoots behind her and hits Himegama in the gut without even looking, briefly incapacitating her.
  • Fuki, Sakura and Erika are all beaten up by three of Majima's thugs, one who takes a knife to his arm from Fuki and doesn't even flinch. He's about to stab her with her own knife when Chisato shoots him in the back of the head with a rubber bullet, followed by Chisato and Takina kicking the asses of the other two thugs. Chisato even talks Fuki out of executing one of them.
  • Within seconds of getting access to Enkuboku Tower's systems, Kurumi fries Robota's setup, takes over his broadcast, sends the police to arrest him^note Detective Abe and his partner are the ones who capture Robota, reactivates Radiata, and puts on a ridiculous promotional ad that makes everyone in Tokyo think that the whole incident was some kind of publicity stunt. It works. Best of all, the LilyBell agents are called off since there's now no reason to kill the Lycoris agents.
    • We also get this epic line from her when she shuts Robota down.
      Robota: "I'm the best hacker in the world!"
      Kurumi: "A century too early for that!"
  • Escaping from his bonds, Majima makes it to Enkuboku Tower and attacks Takina, Fuki and the others just as they're about to go down an elevator. They block his shots, but it traps them in the elevator as it goes down. Chisato is now stranded with him alone in the tower as the episode ends in a cliffhanger.
• Episode 13:
  • The final battle between Chisato and Majima is a choreography marvel, with Chisato desperate to stop Majima from (seemingly) setting off a bomb that will destroy Enkuboku Tower, while Majima wants one last good fight with Chisato. When Chisato's artificial heart starts to give out on her, Majima even stops the fight to give her a chance to recover.
    • The fact the fight is honestly completely one-sided shows just how skilled Chisato is when Majima doesn't have a massive terrain advantage working in his favor. Despite having one foot in the grave, Chisato routinely manages to avoid any attempt by Majima to hit her and repeatedly tags him with rubber bullets; if not for Chisato's moral restraints, Majima would have been dead as early as the opening salvo. The only reason Majima manages to bring the fight into a brief stalemate is because he gets a cheap shot into Chisato's shoulder when the latter turns her back on him to try and get at the phone she thinks is counting down to the detonation of a bomb.
  • Mika reveals just why he's Chisato's teacher by easily thrashing Himegama, while also revealing that his leg isn't actually crippled. His thrashing of her is shown to be extra incensed due to the fact that he knows Himegama sabotaged Chisato's heart in the first place.
  • When Takina shows up to help Chisato, the latter pulls Majima and herself to fall onto an inverted glass dome that is breaking apart as a result of her struggle with Majima. This is after Majima has shot Chisato in the shoulder. Takina then runs down and, using a wire gun, catches Chisato as she's falling and saves her partner, even though the wire slices painfully into her shoulder.
  • In another villainous example, Majima bluffs his way into one last good fight with Chisato by lying that he plans to blow up Enkuboku Tower, and Chisato buys it completely. When the timer on his smartphone ends, it sets off a barrage of fireworks rather than a bomb. Then, in the epilogue, Majima is revealed to have survived his fall from the tower, with everyone presuming him dead. It seems that he and Chisato are destined to do this forever.