We all watch anime for many reasons. Sometimes it’s to be uplifted to new heights, like from Your Name or Gurren Lagann. To have certain parts of our bodies lifted to new heights, through fanservice shows like High School DxD or Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou or Ladies vs Butlers. And sometimes it’s to be totally and completely relaxed, through stress-free slice-of-life shows like Yuru Camp, Bofuri: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, so I’ll Max Out My Defense, or Non Non Biyori. Another anime that falls into this latter camp is a calming and relaxing idol/cute girls doing cute things anime called Lapis Re: LiGHTs that I’m enjoying. Let’s learn more about the show in this post!
When I watch a new show, I like to go into it knowing nothing about its background, so I can form my own opinions without any biases. I also try to guess whether the show was based on a manga, light novel series, is an original work, or as is increasingly the case, is part of a multi-media franchise centered around a mobage or mobile social game.
My first impression of Lapis Re:LiGHTs was…the famous Universal logo (“Universal: A Comcast Company”), because anime has evolved from its cool underground subculture roots to the point where it’s often funded by Western companies. It’s hard to get used to, but it is what it is, I guess.
Re:LiGHTs was frankly hard to categorize at first. It’s a “cute girls doing cute things” with magic involved, as we follow the transfer student Tiara and her new group of friends, who must find a way to increase their grades or they’ll be expelled from the school soon. The chemistry between Tiara and her new schoolmates is very positive, it’s enjoyable to watch them become friends while doing random yet somehow oddly relaxing things like playing a game of “magical dodgeball.” I found myself enjoying the show a lot.
Today’s post is about Lapis Re:LiGHTs, a cute-girls-doing-cute-things show with some idol anime elements that’s quite relaxing.
Are you watching it? pic.twitter.com/H8J1RxppZq
— Peter Payne (@JListPeter) September 2, 2020
I could tell from the extremely high quality of the animation that yes, this was indeed an anime based on a mobile game, which serves both as a way to thank supporters of the game with a fun anime containing the characters they’ve come to love in the game, as well as to both bring in new fans to the franchise as well as reduce the taxes they’d otherwise have to pay for these massively popular games. For reference, in 2019 the Fate/Grand Order game brought in 711億円 or 71,100,000,000 million yen worldwide, which breaks down to $76,500 per hour.
(A side note, because numbers in Japanese are based on the Sino-Japanese number system, which uses 10,000 as its base rather than 1,000 in the West, converting big numbers between the two systems can be very complex. For this reason, you often year Japanese-bilingual English speakers always switch to Japanese when expressing numbers.)
What About ‘Rule 34’?
Since I have the crazy idea that you can quantify the popularity of creative work by measuring things like how much fanart of it exists on Pixiv, I decided to check out what naughty art might exist for Lapis Re:LiGHTs. While there’s quite a lot of general art for the series, there was not much true “Rule 34” art available, certainly not the veritable smorgasbord of hentai fanart available for Princess Connect Re:Dive by Cygames. Maybe the fandom that is drawn to Lapis Re:LiGHTs are just not as into getting interested in characters by exploring the shimoneta (literally meaning “low materials” but referring to dirty jokes ecchi visual materials). Or maybe the Western involvement by companies like Universal means more nervousness about whether it’s okay to publish sexy doujinshi about this franchise.
This isn’t to say the show doesn’t have its sexy shimoneta moments, because this is 2020, and you can’t make an anime without some sexy scenes.
Should You Watch the Lapis Re:LiGHTs “Magical Idol” Anime?
In the end, Lapis Re:LiGHTs starts out as a relaxing cute-girls-doing-cute-things show that’s extremely relaxing to watch, then pivots to something of a more traditional idol show, as the girls realize the only way to get enough points in time to avoid being expelled is to form an idol group and try to get a perfect score at a school competition. So basically, all kinds of fans will be happy with this show!
Thanks for reading my overview of Lapis Re:LiGHTs. Got any other anime topics you’d like us to cover here? Tell us below, or on Twitter!
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