"Lycoris Recoil" and Queer Subtext
There is No Heterosexual Explanation For Their Actions
Imagine: if John Wick was a Japanese school girl. Hold that image in your head for a bit. Yes it’s as glorious as you're imagining it to be.
Violent, swift, fantastically choreographed.
Lycoris Recoil has the added bonus of having a decent enough plot that talks about balance, the throes of good & bad, what is love, and most importantly what is living.
We begin with Takina Inoue (Shion Wakayama) getting kicked out of the elite and prestigious Lycoris Recoil program. Don’t be fooled because it’s not some sort of academic scholarship or training regime; it’s the classic case of a government program adopting a bunch of orphans and training them to be assassins for the greater good of society.
The usual.
Lycoris Recoil is what has kept Japan’s peace and stamps out any terrorist threat— and no one even knows it exists.
Takina gets sent away for insubordination and meets Chisato (Chika Anzai), the golden girl prodigy of the program who is the best kind of maverick in her own right. They both end up working at a cafe with a host of suspicious yet competent characters as they take on gigs to protect Japan.
While Takina is competent, Chisato is a genius. Like, she’s kind of stupid because she has no filter and we get a delightful episode where she talks about panties, but she is a genius at shooting things. Shot for shot, everything has a mark, and she never gets hit.
Doesn’t matter how close or far, Chisato’s body will move on its own to avoid the damage. Also she refuses to kill. So she has special bullets. Basically paint balling when faced with automatic rifles and machine guns. It’s pretty dope.
The fight sequences are actually to die for. Literally. A1 Pictures, Inc. did a bangup job of creating fluid animation in the fight choreography that, I would argue, rivals that of the big 3 and anything that Studio Mappa makes right now.
There’s a splatter of blood, lots of emotional distress, and such a wonderful sprinkling of story in the midst of all the somewhat nonsensical things going on.
They actually develop story, where they mention something from episode one that is brought up again six episodes later and tie together and shape the narrative into more than just a girls-with-guns anime.
Also did I mention they’re accidentally queer?
Accidentally Queer
Was it an accident? Maybe. Is it damn cute? Oh absolutely.
And I’m at that point in my life and at that point in society where I don’t really believe that anything is an accident. This was meant to be subversive and this was meant to be a queer romance, the fact that it can’t be outright said is a testament to the failure of the times.
Or, on the bright side, perhaps it is a statement that doesn’t need to be said.
But anyways I digress.
Chisato is an overall chipper, optimisitc, lovable character. You meet her, you see her, you cannot help but absolutely fall in love with her. She is brightness and the very stars themselves and she shares that positive energy with everyone she meets, friend or foe.
It’s hard to stay angry at a smile. It’s hard to hold hatred when someone is offering you their heart.
Which is such an ironic thing considering her line of work is assassinations.
Takina is the yin to her yang. She is stoic and cold and detached. Her life is her work, but Chisato convinces her to live a little and to explore what else exists in this world beyond killing and working.
They have fun. As teenage girls. Going to aquariums. Eating a parfait. Walking around Tokyo at night.
Things that we take for granted in society, but things that as professional assassins, and also as a subliminal queer relationship, are hard pressed to find in their own lives.
So no, they don’t actually state they are in a relationship or that there is anything beyond friendship in this anime.
It’s heavily implied.
To the casual viewer, you might be thinking “Ohh they’re just really good friends” and to that I raise you
Read between the lines. I definitely don’t do what Takina and Chisato do with each other with my female friends (it’s not anything lewd you heathens. Their relationship is cautious and intimate and loving without being “too much”).
There are moments. And if you watch it, you’ll see it. But there are many moments where their relationship feels like more than friends.
And the beauty of it is that we, as an audience, can interpret it how we want and to me? They just look like they are in love.
(Also Chisato was lowkey adopted by two dads so there’s also that :D)
The Good and The Bad
Majima had some damn good points. Like if Chisato wasn’t our main character and so damn lovable, I’d be siding with Majima on a lot of things.
Which is concerning to say the least. And mildly problematic.
He believes in balance. In order for the world to be at peace, in order for the people to understand how good they have it, they need to have pain and suffering.
To have one without the other is a lie, an empty peace that is built on distrust.
While I agree with him in theory, morally and realistically I think he’s massively fucked in the head.
Kill the masses to show them their happiness is a facade?
Incite violence to prove that people are actually the scummiest specimens on the face of the earth?
Use political terrorism to get a point across?
Nah bro. That’s fucked fucked.
More than anything, Majima hates the lies and the people who hold that status quo with a gun.
According to Majima, this life isn’t worth living if the Man up top is pulling all the strings and manipulating society at large into imagining a perfect world.
It’s about control, and how people have lost that. Willingly or not, Majima wants to mix in his own brand of chaos to bring control back to the people and balance back to a world that has lost it.
I understand his grievances. Chisato does as well, but she is a pawn of the Man, another tool that holds that status quo and while she is empathetic to his reasoning, she refuses to allow his ideals taint her world.
She may be doing bad things as well, but it’s for the greater good.
Or the greater good as she sees it.
If she can do work, even if it is violent, bloody work, and it serves a community or uplifts society? Then she will do it.
Even if it hurts herself.
Even if it means that at some point down the line, she will be revealed to be the villain.
The Chosen One Trope
Like many anime protagonists, Chisato is a special little noodle. She can dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge most any bullet shot her way. Doesn’t matter how close or far, the shots will casually pass through her hair with the hiss of a snake and the bite of a feather.
In the anime, the Alan Institute (imagine Make-a-Wish for the underprivileged and suffering, but specifically targeting gifted individuals who have to provide their services to the world or DIE) gives little owl pendants to their chosen prodigies.
Chisato is one of them.
Gifted with a mechanical heart that doesn’t beat, her skill at avoiding bullets and having 20/20 marksmanship singled her out for this ironic charity.
Her gift more a curse on the world, but one that Chisato renders into something positive by helping out in her community and using nonlethal bullets.
Chisato is vibrant and optimistic, like many a shonen protagonist before her. That sunny disposition isn’t unusual. Her tragic backstory contrasts with her current persona and the airhead personality she gives off hides her sharp reflexes and wit, but it is still run of the mill.
She is the chosen one trope through and through.
So what makes Chisato unique?
I liked her because of her duality. The complete unseriousness of her and the shot-for-shot mercenary.
The fact that she is a chosen one, but was so severely ill as a child that they had to revive her so she may continue being the gifted chosen one (but one could argue her being chosen for the Alan Institute at all is part of her hero’s journey).
The fact that if she could give all this up, she would.
And, bless her soul, the fact that if she wasn’t indoctrinated into the Lycoris Recoil program or forced to do the bidding of the Alan Institute, she’d just want to live life, working at a café, making drinks for her friends.
Which is beautiful to think that of all the dreams in the world and all the possibilities she could live, she’d want to do it with the people she loves and in a place that feels like home.
Her zeal for life is contagious and heart-warming.
The ticking time bomb on her (literally and figuratively) gives this appreciation an expiration date and a bitter, poignant feeling.
But Chisato has lived, more than most people do in entire lifetimes.
Because she chose to face each day with a smile. And give it all her heart, even when it stops beating.