WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Dolls' Frontline Episode 1, "The Seed," now streaming on Funimation.
Fan service has become a loaded term in the anime community, with some fans loving it and others loathing it. However, it is easy to see why some anime fans dislike the concept, as too much fan service can ruin an otherwise good anime. Unfortunately, the first episode of the much-hyped Dolls' Frontline falls on the wrong side of the fan service divide, leading to a less than stellar first episode.
Dolls' Frontline (known as Girls' Frontline outside of Japan) is based on a mobile game made by Chinese studio MICA Team. The game has already spawned several spin-offs, including a manga titled Girls' Frontline: The Song of Dolls and two previous anime series called Girls' Frontline: Healing Chapter and Girls' Frontline: Madness Chapter.
This new anime is animated by Asahi Production, with Shigeru Ueda handling the direction. The first episode opened on an exciting note, with quick shots of girls in military uniforms moving around war-torn environments. At the same time, a voiceover quickly explained the setting. In 2045, World War Three broke out. But, rather than soldiers, this war was fought with Tactical Dolls, mechanical lifeforms that look like human girls. However, when the war ended, one group of Tactical Dolls, run by the AI Sangvis Ferri, went rogue and rebel against humanity.
After this intro, viewers are introduced to an elite Tactical Doll team called the AR team. This team contains M4A1, M16A1, ST-AR-15, and M4 SOPMOD. They were investigating a command post held by the Sangvis Ferri, hoping to steal some intel that can be used to stop this robotic rampage. However, they found themselves fighting against a Sangvis Ferri unit led by the mysterious Agent.
However, while the show has plenty of action, the first episode is very light on any plot. The audience is thrown into the middle of a situation with little grounding or build-up. In fact, if you're not familiar with the game's story, you'll likely struggle to keep up with what is going on in this episode as things move overly quickly with little to no explanation for what is going on or why you should care.
But what will stand out to most viewers is the fan service. All of the Tactical Dolls look like cute moe girls. These girls wear various outfits. This includes retro-military uniforms, revealing streetwear, garter belts, knee-high boots, and even the omnipresent maid uniform. However, the in-universe reason for this choice is never explained, and being cute humanoids seems to give the robots no tactical advantage in battle. This, mixed with the overly cute dialogue peppered with random German, makes the whole episode feel more like a showcase of new, merchandisable characters than it does an actual story. The fan service certainly isn't the worst ever put to screen it does make Dolls’ Frontline feel overwhelmingly generic. Reducing a neat premise to nothing more than another mobile game anime adaptation that only exists to sell character merchandise.
However, it might be too early to rule Dolls’ Frontline out just yet. The end of the first episode suggests that episode two will dive into the franchise's lore. And many fans of the series say that the game's story is one of the best in the genre, and the spin-off manga has received a lot of praise. So hopefully, this is just a bad first episode, and later installments deliver a more gripping story that fleshes out the world and the characters while building on the show's intriguing premise.