English Dub Season Review: LBX Girls Season One

Overview (Spoilers Below:)

When Riko agreed to go on a fun outing with her friend Mana, she never expected to find herself transported to another world. But that’s just what happens when she buys a grab bag of collectable LBX (Little Battlers eXperience) figurines and opens the one called Assassin.

She falls from the sky and is saved from sure death by four other girls equipped with LBX. Known as the 13th Interceptor group, the girls fill Riko in on her new predicament and agree to train her and let her tag along with them. And that’s just what she does, making new friends and learning new combat skills along the way. Their battles with the metal-based monsters known as Mimesis are challenging, but the pull through until there’s just one battle left—and Riko is the only one who can save the day.

Our Take:

I’d never heard of LBX Girls before starting this review, so I at first I figured it must be a relatively new show this season. But no, it’s actually over a year old at this point and Funimation is just getting around to dubbing it. And I have to agree that there was really no need to rush this one through the dub pipeline—it’s one of the least entertaining anime I’ve ever seen.

It’s not uncommon for series to come from existing properties like manga and video games, but when it comes to LBX Girls, it’s painfully obvious from the get-go exactly what it’s based on: a series of older video games that began over a decade ago way back in 2011. Since then, there have been numerous game releases, a movie, and even a few animated series, too. LBX Girls is the latest retooling of the franchise, and the others are anything like this one, it’s safe to say you aren’t missing much.

The show starts out with two girls going on a day trip. Riko (the main character) and Mana (her LBX-obsessed friend). For the first five minutes, I thought this might just be a show for Tokyo tourists because the entire opening is one long discussion of cool places to go in the big city. Then Mana ditches her friend to go to a LBX panel while Riko is told to just sit around and wait. Why doesn’t she at least join her friend? Because then there would be two girls getting thrown into a parallel world, and we don’t have the budget for that kind of animation!

The storyline is about as basic as it gets, with Riko thrown into an alternate world filled with weird-looking metal monsters that she and her newfound friends have to fight. The show hits all of the traditional stereotypes to a tee: ultra cool team member? Check! Dorky team member who speaks in percentages and statistics? Check! Mouthy team member who’s secretly super sensitive? Check! The most surprising thing in the entire show for me was how long the initial transformation sequence in the first episode went on. It’s gotta be some kind of record. Showing every girl putting on every piece of robo armor felt like a good five minutes at least.

Maybe if they’d cut the transformation sequences down a bit, they would’ve had more time to improve the look of the rest of the show, because this is definitely the most generic-looking series I’ve watched so far this year, and it’s not even close. There’s bland backgrounds and extras in the back of scenes that don’t move at all—and that’s just the first episode, which traditionally looks as good as a show’s animation is going to get. Let’s just say nobody is going to be watching this for the story or the visuals.

So why would you watch LBX Girls? It’s honestly hard to tell if there’s a target audience for this beyond those who are already familiar with the franchise and will just watch it because it features mech toys they’ve seen before. I will say that the English dub is good, probably the best part of the show from a technical standpoint. Megan Taylor Harvey does well leading the show as Riko, and her supporting cast mates are no slouches either. But when the best part of a show is the dub, you know something’s wrong. LBX Girls was a Lazy, Boring, eXperience.