Toys / Assault Lily

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Earth, 20 Minutes into the Future. The sudden appearance of mysterious entities dubbed "Huge" has driven humanity to the verge of extinction. In order to conquer this undefeatable enemy, the world came together to develop weapons that combined the strengths of science and magic: Counter Huge ARMS, CHARMs. With teenage girls demonstrating high compatibility in the use of CHARMs, these wielders, called "Lilies," came to be seen as heroes. "Gardens," military facilities to train Lilies, quickly sprouted all over the world, defending and guiding civilians.

"These are the stories of girls in the Gardens on their quests to become valiant Lilies."

Originally conceived by (then) amateur model kit dealer Obanazawa Kenei, Assault Lily was picked up by AZONE International which, in conjunction with Obanazawa's acus creation, started releasing merchandise under the Assault Lily title as of 2013. Although there were no plans for a multimedia project at first, a novel starring Hitotsuyanagi-tai of Yurigaoka was published in 2015, and a stage play starring Ludvico Girls School ran in 2016.

In 2019, the mixed-media "Assault Lily Project," produced by AZONE and Bushiroad, was announced. The series, encompassing various works, now includes:

• The Assault Lily action doll and model kit lines.
• Two novels, one focused on Hitotsuyanagi-tai and one focused on Mashima Moyu.
• Several interconnected stage plays:
  • The Assault Lily × Ludvico Girls School series;
  • League of Gardens, which tells the story of the formation of Hitotsuyanagi-tai and their maiden battle as a Legion at Shimo-Kitazawa, and its sequels, The Fateful Gift and Lost Memories;
  • The Singular Ability, centered on Odaiba Girl's Senior High School, and its sequel scheduled for February 2022.
• Assault Lily: Bouquet, a TV anime that began airing in October 2020.
• A mobile game, Assault Lily Last Bullet, released on January 20, 2021.
• Assault Lily League of Gardens -full bloom-, a manga Adaptation Expansion of League of Gardens serialized in Monthly Bushiroad magazine.
• A web radio program, Assault Lily Radio Garden, hosted by Izawa Mikako (Kaede) and Takahashi Karin (Miliam).
• Several web media works, including Mashima Moyu's CHARM Workshop and Niigata Recovery Blitzkrieg serialized on Dengeki Hobby Web, and a live stream Natsuyoshi & Iwata's Ramune de Kanpai on Wednesday nights.
• Assault Lily Fruits, a thirteen-episode gag spinoff of Assault Lily Bouquet with each episode clocking in at two minutes.

In addition, the official @assault_lily Twitter account regularly tweets information about the characters and setting, while the @assaultlily_pj Twitter account tweets news to do with the multimedia project overall, such as program schedule updates.

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Assault Lily provides examples of:

• Action Girl: Lilies as a whole. Their Garden instructors, being former Lilies who retired from active combat, also count.
• Badass Bookworm: The Arsenals, whose course of study readies them for the maintenance, development, and modification of CHARMs. Although Arsenals are generally kept away from active combat, Yurigaoka specifically trains Arsenals to fight on the front lines as well.
• Bio-Augmentation: "Boosted Lilies," the subjects of GEHENA human experimentation. Some, like Tazusa and Yuria, were born human and underwent augmentation by GEHENA, while others like Raimu and Ran were "treated" in the womb.
• Child Soldiers: What Lilies essentially are, with some like Shenlin having commenced their training as early as kindergarten. The anime reminds the viewer of this with an SDF soldier at a train station saluting those in Yurigaoka's school uniform.
• Combined Energy Attack: The Neun Welt strategy, which charges up an anti-Huge bullet using the combined magi of nine Lilies. In the climactic battle of The Fateful Gift, this is done with the power of seventeen Lilies.
• Combo Platter Powers: Zenon Paradoxa, utilizing lower-rank versions of Kono Yo no Kotowari and Shukuchi to hit fast while negating the enemy's attacks. Boosted Lilies also possess a range of skills outside that covered by typical Rare Skills, the most commonly depicted of which is a superhuman Healing Factor.
• Continuity Snarl: The various official works differ to a certain extent in their depiction of characters and events, although the Broad Strokes remain the same. The anime alone changes or removes various elements present in the Hitotsuyanagi-tai novel and League of Gardens, such as the circumstances surrounding Riri and Kaede's first meeting, or how Hitotsuyanagi-tai's first attempt at the Neun Welt strategy went, while adding new content or information of its own.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Frequently. Dead siblings (or sibling figures, such as Matsuri's Schild-to-be) are often part of characters' backstories. Being a Boosted Lily generally is tied to having experienced some kind of tragedy, either resulting in or being caused by their warped physiology.
• Dual Wielding: Circlet Bless users can wield a CHARM in each hand, increasing their strength in combat.
• Earth Is a Battlefield: Although the story is set in Japan, other countries are threatened by the Huge too. Yujia's two sisters are stationed in Sweden, with all three sisters being from Iceland. The Funada twins' backstory also had them traveling to Gardens outside Tokyo, and later outside Japan, on their training journey.
• Everyone Has a Special Move: Rare Skills. Every Lily has at least one, but might not necessarily awaken to it at the same rate as others. Members of a Legion generally have a range of complementary Rare Skills to support each other in battle.
• Field Power Effect: Testament users can greatly boost the effective range of their allies but are difficult to come by and train, and therefore greatly valued as well. Register users can raise the clarity of magi within a certain range, and sharply increase the success rate of passes when using the Neun Welt strategy through improving the specs of their allies' CHARMs. On the flip side of Register is Heliosphere, boosting defenses instead of offenses.
• First-Name Basis: Lilies tend to address each other by their given names instead of family name, plus whatever honorific as may be appropriate. A theory put forth in the Hitotsuyanagi-tai novel suggests that it is meant to strengthen personal bonds without family names getting in the way. Narumi Clara Yuko from Ludvico, a mission school, refers to herself as "Clara" and the other Lilies at Ludvico by their Christian names.
• Flash Step: Shukuchi, which lets the user move at speeds so fast that they appear to be teleporting.
• Flawed Prototype: The fourth-generation CHARMs. Running off a direct link with the user's mind, they were intended to be operable from a distance, and to reduce the number of active human combatants by sending a machine onto the field. However, the negative effects on Lilies' bodies that manifested during testing, particularly on their brains, were severe enough to cause madness and even death.
• Generation Xerox: A variant where the parties involved are not related by blood. Parallels can be found between oath-sisters of a "lineage," sometimes extending to their relationships with those around them.
  • In The Fateful Gift, Yuyu tells Riri that Misuzu promised to live to protect her, and makes the same promise to Riri.
  • Wakana and Kisara are roommates and members of the second-generation LG Alfheim. Their respective Schilds, Soraha and Ena, are also roommates and members of the second-generation LG Alfheim...and Soraha's Schild, Kusumi, is the roommate of Ichi, who is speculated to be Ena's prospective Schild.
  • Kazane died in battle protecting Ichika, her Schwester. Ichika is severely wounded in battle protecting Karen, who eventually becomes Ichika's Schwester.
• Glass Cannon: Phase Trancendence, which makes the user powerful enough to One-Hit Kill Mook level Huge, but at the cost of draining her magi.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Freelancer Lilies unaffiliated with any Legion are this.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Whilst the Huge are indeed dangerous, the Evil Corp GEHENA's development of Boosted Lilies and letting out its lab-grown Huge to inflict destruction for "research" makes GEHENA the main villain of the stage plays and of the Boosted Lilies' backstories.
• Magical Accessory: The "cat ears" worn by some Lilies is in fact high-tech equipment that combines several functions, serving as Comm Links and Enemy-Detecting Radar.
• Magical Eye: The Taka no Me (Hawk Eyes) and Ten no Hakari-me/Deadeye Motion skills. The subskill of Ten no Hakari-me is Magan, literally "Magical Eye".
• One-Gender School: All Gardens mentioned by name thus far are girls-only.
• Palette Swap: Multiple characters using the same model of CHARM might have their respective weapons in dissimilar paint jobs to differentiate them from each other, such as the Gungnirs used by Riri and Fumi. Fumi, through the official @assault_lily Twitter, explains that "just about everyone does personal customization."
• Pseudo-Romantic Friendship:
  • The Schutzengel-Schild partnerships of Yurigaoka, the Schwester system at Ludvico, and Oath of the Gullinkambi at Ryuuto have shades of this, with an elder girl providing mentorship and guidance to a younger girl. Such pacts are treated with utmost seriousness in-universe, to the point of potential candidates for position of "sister" clashing over the hand of the girl they intend to form a pact with. The anime goes as far as to make Riri and Yuyu's paper contract reminiscent of a marriage certificate.
  • That oath-sister relationships are only possible between an upperclassman and underclassman is brought up at times. Izue Shinobu, the Brunnhilde of Yurigaoka's student council, was the Schild of Yamazaki Meika, the Ortlinde, and still addresses Meika as "onee-sama" in private despite their pact being dissolved after Meika was held back a year due to injury. Kaede has bemoaned how she cannot be oathbound to Riri, and likewise for Clara regarding Seren; Kaede's and Clara's affections for Riri and Seren are expressly romantic in nature rather than sisterly.
• Quantity vs. Quality: The "Duel generation" of Lilies were meant to each be a One-Man Army on her own capable of taking down the Huge in one-on-one battles, and trained for it accordingly. However, the deaths and often severe injuries that the Duel generation suffered led to a paradigm shift towards the Gardens' syllabi focusing on the Neun Welt strategy and an emphasis on teamwork.
• Red Mage: Brave users can temporarily raise the potential of their allies via physical contact. At first glance, it seems like a support-oriented ability — but Nagasawa Yuki pioneered the Dangerous Forbidden Technique of casting it on herself, an application of Brave that would come to be termed as "Enrage".
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Frequently, with references to anything from Norse Mythology (for Yurigaoka) to Beowulf (for Odaiba). CHARM models are also generally named after mythological weapons; for example, Yuyu wielded a Dáinsleif two years ago and currently uses a Brionac.
• Seers: Phantasm, which allows the user to see the possible futures ahead of them and instantly grasp the conditions that would result in their desired outcome. Kono Yo no Kotowari (Principles of the World) users can perceive the vectors of attack from friend and foe alike, helping their allies evade incoming attacks and enabling them to carry out multiple concurrent attacks.
• The Sneaky Guy: Uber Sein users are able to conceal their presence, slipping behind enemy lines to wreak havoc.
• Spell My Name With An S: Even the official sites are unable to agree on the spelling of Miliam/Miriam's name. The rendering of "Neun Welt" in katakana also has inconsistent spellings.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: CHARMs are this, typically with at least a bladed weapon mode and a gun mode. First-generation CHARMs lacked the mode-shifting function present in later models, so Lilies often went into battle carrying multiple CHARMs with singular functions, such as the sword-type and firearm-type models.
• Time Rewind Mechanic: Control Z/Last Letter users can reverse the flow of time, making them highly valued as medics and for their ability to repair overheated CHARMs.
• Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: Averted by the anime, as Yurigaoka is located in Kamakura, and has depicted or mentioned expeditions to another prefecture. The stage plays, however, have their plot-important battles taking place in Tokyo, with Lilies from two of Tokyo's "Big Three" Gardens appearing in League of Gardens and The Fateful Gift. Herensuge Jogakuen Senior High School and Kanba Joshi High School of Art and Design in Last Bullet are also located in Tokyo.
• True Companions: Legions that manage to stay together end up as this. Also extends to the cast — several members in League of Gardens and The Fateful Gift already had a previous history of working alongside each other for the Ludvico Girls School series, and LG Hervarar's actresses were said to constantly be "very noisy" and "merrily singing together all the time" in their dressing room during the September 2020 run of The Fateful Gift.
• Unstoppable Rage: Lunatic Trancer causes its users to turn into The Berserker until their magi reserves run out. Depictions of activating Lunatic Trancer often are accompanied by a Battle Aura surrounding the users and their going Limp and Livid.
• White Mage: Charisma users can cleanse the effects of negative magi, healing their allies and raising their morale. This makes them especially ideal as partners for Lunatic Trancer users, whose fragile mental and emotional state when activating their Rare Skill is improved when in the presence of a tether they placed their trust in. AZ-position Charisma users also double as Combat Medic when on the offensive.

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