The Assault Lily Bouquet anime was hit or miss, to put it nicely, but I think the game is a lot better both in yuri content and when it comes to just telling good stories. I admit that I’m a bit biased because I’ve spent a few years fan translating parts of it, though.
You can find all of those fan TLs, as well as those made by other people in the community, on the GEHENA Labs YouTube channel.
The absolute gayest part of the franchise is not this but the short spinoff anime Assault Lily: Fruits. So don’t miss that either.
Agreed. I like Assault Lily overall, but it’s such a chaotic franchise, the anime rushed all the time, trying to explain everything all at once. And sometimes it feels like a hundred different people are working on the story without talking to each other.
The game is better, but sometimes it feels off too. Like in the “Blue Strike of the Soulmates” event, they just dance around the relationship between Yuxia and Shenlin and insist on calling them “best friends”, while in the manga they’re already dating.
It is weird, yeah. It’s like they really want to write explicit yuri but someone powerful has inscribed a list of words they can’t use, like “girlfriend” and “love” (the Japanese equivalents of those of course), in stone.
I don’t fault anyone who isn’t satisfied with AL for that reason, especially with things like the openly lesbian characters in the new D4DJ unit having happened since. It would be ironic if it were Bushiroad who made the list. I doubt it though because Bushi pulled out of the franchise a year ago, and stuff has only loosened up a little since.
Charitably it’s leaning into the wink-wink nudge-nudge thing for fun at this point, since we are getting stuff like Kanaho and Takane exchanging actual wedding vows, and kissing each other in the stage plays. But it would be better if they didn’t do that.