postscript - "A Detailed Introduction to Assault Lily (& How to Get Into It)"

Aug. 29, 2023 12:45 AM

This post was originally written for my Dreamwidth blog on the timestamp written above - the original formatting has been preserved whenever possible.

(This postscript assumes you've watched the original video. If not, go and do it now HERE.)

I once again write a postscript at a very interesting period for the original work in question. As if Apollo herself has grafted her precognition onto my retinas through sheer force, I unintentionally time the publication of these postscripts to coincide with a laundry list of new developments for the target franchise. Sorry that my timing is impeccable as always, but I get sidetracked. (far too often, I may add)

Assault Lily is a franchise that has quickly moved into the center of my heart. Like what seems to be the case with virtually all English-speaking fans, my first encounter with the wider series stems from watching Assault Lily: Bouquet at the very end of a very hectic 2020. I thought it had potential, but that's all I thought of it for a long time. Though I later learned of the stageplays and growing continuity established in Last Bullet, I had unfortunately never found time to delve further beyond the confines of the animated space.

First, the Revue Starlight video took my attention.
Then I had reinvigorated my lost passion for rhythm games.
And in the present, I endeavoured to make Youtube videos.

That did not deter me from returning to this fledgling series. I dare say that nothing would have stopped me from picking up Assault Lily again.

I write this postscript as the final play in the original "Ludvico Girls Academy" series, "The Blade of Truth", finishes production. Please take this as an opportunity to start engaging with the stageplays - I can't guarantee your enjoyment, especially without some basic understanding of Japanese, but I can vouch for the devotion and passion within.

Author's note: I watched The Blade of Truth. It was probably my favourite play of the quadrilogy. It was a good watch.

doing the groundwork

I don't think I've outlined this directly, but the Assault Lily overview was the first video that I essentially worked on from scratch. With the Revue Starlight video, the script had basically been "finished" for the better part of a year by that point, but this time around, I was working from square one. It helps that I had just finished making a forty-two minute video, so working on longer discussions of topics wasn't too bad this time around.

Prior to editing the previous longform video, I enlisted the knowledge of a reputable AL fan translator for some entry points to the franchise. (I credited her in the video itself, and you can narrow down said figure's identity fairly easily, but I will choose to keep her anonymous out of respect.)

This is what led me down a bottomless pit of content - between watching the Ludvico plays & The Gleam of Dawn, reading the various translated works out there (whether it was League of Gardens -full bloom- or the translation of Wunder, undertaken by said translator) or watching the anime for what felt like the fourth time, I spent about two full weeks just engaging with every last material I could find. By the end of it, I was completely hooked. Many of my previous questions about the series that started from misconceptions around the anime had very quickly disappeared, completely overwritten with a growing fascination for how the world and various casts could develop. It's rare that I encounter a series where the worldbuilding doesn't actively attempt to interfere with how characters grow and interact with each other, but I suppose that's to be expected when the focus is "the strong bonds people have for one another overcoming the end of civilisation."

Writing the script might have been one of the hardest parts of this entire process, and I owe it entirely to myself constantly bouncing off various ideas until I sat down and realised that 95% of my audience, present and future, barely even know what girls' love is. How was I going to frame the cool ideas that Assault Lily has to offer when most of my audience have no clue where to begin with the series? I forced myself to pivot towards an overview, because that's what ticks as many boxes as possible here.

Fun fact - I didn't actually write a true script for this video. It's basically bullet points for the most part. This will be in the exam paper.

working on the video

okay so here's where I think most of my sense went out the window here

The biggest issue with any video, by far, is gathering footage. I have mentioned this several times, but the AL video took a lot of fine work trying to get everything in order. It's very rare that you run into an IP that is as split as YGO with copyright ownership, but Bushiroad has varying levels of involvement with the Assault Lily series that makes using specific footage complicated, and I was in no right mind to play with fire by using too much footage for too long. Anything from the anime or Last Bullet seemed like fair game, so I wasn't too concerned there, but it did occasionally feel like I padded certain sections out just so I could keep reusing more clips.

Stageplays were my primary concern. These comprised the bulk of Assault Lily's storytelling as a franchise, and also where much of the appeal would inevitably stem from. Getting footage for this would be considerably harder. From experience watching Kamen Rider stageplay footage on Youtube, it would be hard to use more than a few seconds of each play at the most without risking copyright strikes from AZONE (the company behind Assault Lily) or any of the various theatre companies involved in production. I understand this.

With the help of my friend/translator, I managed to find just enough footage for each stageplay portion, divide it up nicely, and fit it all into the video at the appropriate junctions. Perfect! The video didn't seem to get flagged by any legitimate copyright holders in testing either, so I'm satisfied with that conclusion.

Regarding the video format, I went with the easy guide approach. Start with a quick briefing of the series' core elements, talk about some shared aspects that people should probably remember, and then break it down by medium. I figured most people would skim through each section rather liberally for the core information and ignore the rest, so I tried to make sure I explained as much as was necessary without spoiling the actual stories themselves.

Talking about Bouquet and Last Bullet is fairly anomalous when looking at the wider canonicity of AL's events, a point I tried my hardest to touch upon throughout the video. These form their own separate canon with some crucial differences from the stageplays... until they don't. Discussing the story of these henceforth becomes much more confusing, because sometimes you remember an aspect from one timeline that sounds about right, only to realise that never happened at all in the other one. For what it's worth, I directly reference this issue once, and then move on. I figured people didn't want that kind of headache, and neither did I. (Last Bullet does have some good stories that are translated over at GEHENA Subtitle Labs, so don't let me dissuade you from checking it out. Even if the gameplay is middling at best.)

Author's note: Someone remind me to catch up with the Last Bullet subs at some point soon if I don't get to it already.

Let the record show that I have yet to watch the Odaiba stageplays to this day. I've been saving them for a good time, but I just haven't found a good moment to go through them yet LOL

Personally speaking, I was really excited to talk about the print works. I think the manga adaptation of League of Gardens (-full bloom-) and the two light novels are where Assault Lily gets to expand its chops in a dynamic way, and it is not much of a stretch to see why. You get a visual sense for how truly ransacked the post-Huge world is, while characters still maintain a near-infinite amount of expression that owes a fair deal from the franchise's roots in theatre. It's hard to downplay how someone of nominal importance reacts to basically any given situation in these portions of AL, because the illustrators do a very good job of highlighting that these are effectively kids fighting for their lives against all odds in an international war zone.

Editing the video was relatively uneventful. I wish that I had more polish to make transitions stand out more, but I am happy with the finished product. There are some weird audio ducking issues I missed, but that is moreso my own negligence, rather than a technical accident.

my thoughts on assault lily now

Assault Lily is a franchise that has potential. I use the terms "franchise" and "series" nigh-interchangably, because it's hard to define exactly what it is. However, I think that the way it uses different mediums to portray various aspects of its storytelling makes it remarkably interesting, because the ways in which the writing staff circumvent various limitations to their stage of choice leads to a greater focus on the people that make the world at large what it is in the present day. I sound sappy as hell here, but I often hear nonsensical criticisms of fiction regarding how much budget a work needs to fully express its core ideas. Assault Lily makes do with what it has, and the end result is magical beyond belief. Sure, the stageplays could look a little cooler. Perhaps the franchise needs more than a gacha game to expand the wider narrative.

But Assault Lily makes it work, with what they have. And it works well.

I went into the Ludvico plays not expecting very much. Most of my series knowledge is from the Assault Lily Wiki.

Schwester's Secret made me go "Assault Lily is GOOD."

It's unfortunate that there's a clear split between people who only play the gacha game, and those who enjoy multiple aspects of AL in various ways. Making the video made me appreciate the franchise so much more, because there is so much CONTENT out there. Wunder in particular stands out as a good example, because it is hard to find a protagonist who is as charismatic and also incredibly lacking in any sort of seriousness as you get in Misaka Kondo. She is truly the hero of another story (this one being the Odaiba Counteroffensive) and oh man does she just get in there and do all sorts of things that you cannot wrap your head around. It's like the final boss of Armored Core 5!

You can probably tell I had a hard time restraining myself from making this yet another piece about why I love Assault Lily so much. It's hard to be concise about it! That being said, that's kind of why I enjoy it so much. It's hard to find works that get to work on the kinds of stories they want to write, with a passion that you would best describe as childlike wonder.

I'll keep an eye on Assault Lily. I hope my video inspires you to do so as well. The next video may not be so idealistic in tone.