たかなほ向上委員会💜💛

Pre Story: Akehi and Haruna

As it turns out, Haruna's arrival in Kamba went pretty much as you would expect.

Read it here.

Pre Story: Fujino and Suzume

Fujino may have loose screws galore, but damn is she a good cook (she should open a restaurant or something)

Read it here.

Pre Story: Yuni and Fuuka

The breadth of Yuni's romantic expertise is pretty much proportional to the amount of patience Fuuka has for her.

Read it here.

Pre Story: Mitake and Makina

Makino Mitake has just joined Cuélebre, and Makina's interested on seeing how good she is... on the joystick, of course!

Read it here.

Pre Story: Yahiro and Shin

Where we have a little look at the most valuable thing a Star Lily can achieve.

Read it here.

Pre Story: The Mightiest of Meddlers

And they say you can only do manzai with two acts.

Read it here.

Pre Story: Maki Wakana

In which Soraha is spoiled rotten by her two wive- i mean, sisters.

The Makuhari Recapture

Kureha: "Fujino-sama is one of Kamba’s long-staying veterans, with many field achievements on her belt! In fact, she was a star player in a battle that Kanaho-sama and Takane-sama also participated in, the Makuhari Recapture, and is known for being a genius all-rounder fighter!"

Warning! much of what is discussed in this section comes from a secondary source ("Makuhari Recapture" in the Japanese AL wiki), and therefore not only the accuracy of it cannot be verified, but it may be subject to change in the future!

The Makuhari Recapture is I would say the second most famous battle of the Assault Lily universe, just behind the Odaiba Counteroffensive. Unlike the Counteroffensive, however, it has not been portrayed in any media (bar a couple of isolated bits and pieces regarding certain characters) and all that we know about it is to this day still confined to text lore.

You might already know the name Makuhari from the ever famous Makuhari Messe convention center, but for the uninitiated, Makuhari is a region in the city of Chiba, kind of like a townlet that spans the Hanamigawa and Mihama Wards of the city.

So some two years ago (that's 2050 in the AL calendar), a Great Cave suddenly formed in Makuhari. The local Garden, the aptly named Makuhari Girls' School of Science and Engineering, is this sort of vo-tech school that specializes in Arsenal education, so they actually only had a single class per grade. This was 100% not a Garden equipped to handle a Great Cave of all things, so they instead decided to evacuate the civilians and temporarily retreat from Makuhari. Now that did work out (not least because the Heorot Saints just happened to be nearby to help), but leaving their territory in the hands of the Huge did mean they were eventually able to make a Nest there and lay claim to the area, not unlike how things went down in Koshu.

After this, Makuhari Girls' High was able to garner support from several Gardens for an eventual recapture operation, with some of the most noteworthy participants including several members of Yurigaoka's Fólkvangr, Odaiba's Heorot Saints, Ludvico's Temple Legion, and, as Kureha mentioned, Kamba's Gran Eple, which records state participated as the "Gran Eple Special Missions Unit", a 9 member arrangement assembled specifically for this battle.

But while they had a pretty killer lineup to work with, this multi-Garden alliance still took a full year to conduct preparations for the eventual recapture battle, and those were anything but a walk in the park. Most notably, Kishimoto Maria Mirai, who was one of the most pivotal players in this period of preparations, died before she could participate in the final operation. This is just me speaking here, but I would argue that her death pretty much changed the trajectory of everything that came after, as although it would become the trigger of all the bad things that happened to Ludvico later on (see: the Ludvico stage plays), it also inspired the people closest to her to see this battle through in her memory.

Y'see, over the course of this multi-Garden endeavor, Mirai had formed very close bonds with a couple of her peers, particularly, Odaiba's Nagasawa Yuki and a certain Yoshii Kasumiko of Irma. In Yuki's case, there is an argument to be made that Mirai singlehandedly gave her a reason to live, as she was a tad too suicidal after she had a falling out with the Funada Sisters (whom she saw as family) a couple years prior. Mirai was the one who encouraged her to keep on living for the sake of finding a chance to make things right with the two.

As for Kasumiko, Mirai had already met her before a year or so back, during this incident where one Irma's campus was raided by the Huge. Kasumiko, who back then was but a meek and cowardly first year, began seeing Mirai as her hero and pretty much dedicated herself to following in her footsteps ever since. So although Mirai's death hit them both very hard, both Yuki and Kasumiko were now more determined than ever to ensure the success of the recapture battle in her memory. Kasumiko in particular stepped up beautifully, and her burning desire to honor Mirai's memory proved quite inspiring for a certain junior volunteer from Kamba called Ishizuka Fujino.

Anyways, the recapture operation would finally happen some time after the Odaiba Counteroffensive (as a matter of fact, Lilies like Akehi got to participate in both battles). As stated in the final part of "Multicolored Tears", Fujino earned particular recognition when she led a mixed team of Lilies against a Greater Large-type Huge called "Dark Claw". The story goes that the Dark Claw was essentially the last obstacle blocking the way to the Gigant-class controlling the Makuhari Nest, so in order to ensure Kasumiko's team could reach the Gigant in peak fighting condition, Fujino volunteered to lead a team of essentially nine random Lilies against the Dark Claw in their stead. And, well, she did just that, as her team did successfully bring down the Dark Claw with a Neunwelt.

Hotaru and Subaru

Hotaru: “You really into this, eh, Asagao?” Subaru: “Not unexpected, given she has first years in her care.”

You might be already familiar with these two if you've watched Yurigaoka Fan Club's latest release, the subtitles for the stage play "The Singular Ability". But if you haven't, here's the cliff notes.

First, Kawabata Hotaru, this girl right here:

Hotaru's original illustration, by Arai Teruko, and Hotaru as portrayed by Tasaki Reina. Image source: Assault Lily Stage: Official Website

(The sources for much of this part are Hotaru's section in Volume 5 of the Assault Lily Magazine, as well as her feature in the "Mashima Moyu's CHARM Workshop series (which has actually been translated!)"

As her beaming smile in cast picture suggests, Hotaru is Hronesnæsse's ray of sunshine, and in a Legion where the average member is almost comically serious (Kiito, Subaru, Asagao, Yuki, Tomoshibi at most times), Hotaru's cheeriness comes as a refreshing dose of normalcy.

And you could call Hotaru the "life of the party" as more than just a compliment, as when i briefly went over her in my last notes post, I pointed out how she served as the connective tissue holding everyone together back when Hronesnæsse still had a pretty big rift between its members. And that is something that only ever happened because Hotaru was one of the few people that still held Kiito close to her heart even after her constant abuses of power.

Like I mentioned in that post, Hotaru is one of Kiito's closest friends, and she has always been there for her through thick and thin. Hotaru joined Kiito's Funada Reserve Corps and the Student Council back when Kiito was president, and even though she opposed Kiito during her authoritarian phase, she still did so out of genuine care for her. After Kiito and Ui left on their year long trip, Hotaru continuously refused to join the Heorot Saints because she was steadfast on waiting for Kiito to come back. And even throughout the Odaiba Counteroffensive, Hotaru's biggest motivation for fighting was so Kiito could still have a home to return, like I cannot stress enough how much Hotaru cares about Kiito.

Now, just energy does not make a Lily, so I should mention that Hotaru is indeed an excellent fighter (though she does have a habit of goofing around in the field). She has a Skiller Value of 90, which already puts her at the level of elite Lilies, then add the fact that her Rare Skill is the highly combat oriented Circlet Bless, plus her experience in the Funada Reserve Corps, widely considered to have been one of the greatest Reserves of all time, and it becomes pretty clear that as much of a goofball she is, Hotaru is absolutely not one to play around when it actually counts.

Now for Igusa Subaru

Subaru's original illustration, by Arai Teruko, and Subaru as portrayed by Yoshimiya Ruri. Image source: Assault Lily Stage: Official Website

Once again, the sources for this part also come from Subaru's section in Volume 5 of the Assault Lily Magazine, as well as her feature in Mashima Moyu's CHARM Workshop (translated here!)

I don't think it'd be all that mistaken to describe Subaru as Assault Lily's very own gym rat, like, you think Kazuha is muscle-brained? Oh, you sweet summer child, you haven't met Igusa Subaru yet.

Put simply, Subaru is the most disciplined soldier you'll ever meet, no, scratch that, she is discipline incarnate. This girl takes studying and training very seriously, with "very" in that sentence actually meaning "unreasonably". And if that wasn't enough, Subaru is, incidentally, incredibly irritable, so you better not even think of making light of or skimp on these duties that she holds in such high regard, and God have mercy on your soul if she ever catches you skipping, oh boy, she'll make you feel the fury of a thousand battalions coming down on you at once.

But why is she so comically uptight in the first place.

If we go back a couple years, we will find Igusa Subaru not in the hallways of Odaiba's elementary division, but instead in their annexed Madec Academy. She pretty much started out at rock bottom, having lost her entire family to the Huge, and with a meager Skiller Value of 10, which is below the threshold to even become a Madec. What she did have, though, was guts. She was determined to one day become a Lily, fully willing to offer her own life to erradicate the Huge in honor of her family's memory.

So she grinded, like, she pulled herself by the bootstraps not just in training, but in all aspects of her life, pouring her every effort into one day becoming strong enough to be a Lily. Her unbreakable spirit caught the attention of a certain Odaiba Instructor (more on her later), and she eventually had Subaru transferred to Odaiba's main campus after the latter entered junior high.

Though now a Lily, Subaru was still nothing really special in terms of actual combat performance, but her ludicrous traning discipline and peerless tactical knowledge put her on the Funada Twins' radar, and by the time she was in second year of junior high, she was boasting a Skiller Value of 85, a far cry from the 10 she started with.

Come third year of junior high, Subaru joined the Funada Reserve Corps as a tactical commander, a position she shared with our own Kanaho. Not at all unsurprisingly, Subaru was one of the few Lilies who actually supported Kiito's Skill Ranked training regimen, and as a matter of fact, the whole thing was actually based on her own personal training routine, which as we've established by now would probably kill your average Lily.

Now, to add a bit of color to Subaru's dumbell-filled life, she is perhaps Asagao's closest friend, so much so in fact that the two of them actually took Odaiba's vow of sisterhood, the Blood Oath, with each other. Asagao is one of the few people Subaru will turn off her "strict-battle-general-mode" around and actually let herself be at ease, and as a matter of fact, although Subaru still saw Kiito in a positive light by the time she came back to Odaiba, one of her main reasons for joining Hronesnæsse was because Asagao would be joining too, and she was part of the "Team Asagao" side of the Legion when they were still in their internal split phase.

Another noteworthy relationship of hers is with the first year Imamura Yukari. I once saw her described as "blonde Yuujia" and that is in fact a very apt description of her. Now while Subaru's usual treatment of Yukari is anything but gentle, actions speak louder than words, and hers makes it quite evident how much she is actually fond of Yukari, a feeling that is absolutely mutual, as Yukari very deeply admires Subaru.

Minato and Legion Coast Guard

Minato: “Kamba shall not fall into the Huge’s hands as long as we’re here to defend it. Nay, I dare say that they won’t have the chance to take a single step into this Garden!” Kamba Lily F: “Odaiba’s Legion Coast Guard!?”

As I mentioned in my first ever explanation post about Assault Lily, Odaiba Girls School has a trifecta of flagship Legions. The Heorot Saints, the once Top Legion which also presides over the Student Council, Legion Hronesnæsse, their high performance team which also upholds the Garden's morals, and lastly, Legion Coast Guard, their Garden defense team which also oversees all the other Legions in Odaiba.

Minato here refers to Hirose Minato, their incredibly polite and dutiful captain:

Minato's original illustration, by Yaegashi Nan (NSFW warning for their profile), and Minato as she appears in the stage play Assault Lily: The Empathy Phenomenon, portrayed by Tanoue Marina. Image source: pius

So in that post, i mentioned that the Heorot Saints was the only active Legion in Odaiba before Hronesnæsse was formed. Well, I lied... kinda, you see, while the Saints were indeed the only fully fledged Legion, there existed this one special team called the Odaiba Light Wall Defense Team, which as their name so graciously explains, existed pretty much exclusively to defend Odaiba's Light Walls.

You already recognize these girls if you've read Assault Lily Wunder, as they were the team assisting Banshoya Ena's Third Division in handling the several Gigant-class Huge prowling around Toyosu in Chapter 3, and you'll notice that, at that time, their captain was none other than Igusa Subaru, who we just discussed.

What Wunder doesn't tell is that, as it turns out, their fixation on defending the Light Walls no matter what meant they ended up not contributing much during the Counteroffensive. As such, they didn't earn the same recognition as, well, everyone else who participated in it. So you can imagine that being the sole underperforming team in a battle where everyone else became a living legend must've been soul crushing for these girls.

At the same time, Minato here and a certain Soga Suzuna, who at the time were members of the Heorot Saints, were having some disagreements with the Saints' way of doing things, which ultimately led the two of them to leave the Legion to pursue their own ideals. And so, come their second year of high school, Minato and Suzuna went on to found Legion Coast Guard, and while Subaru left to join Hronesnæsse, most of the Light Wall Defense Team members chose to join this new defense Legion. To this day, the Coast Guard is still responsible for defending the Light Walls, though that is in addition to the several other defense and overseeing duties they now undertake.

Boosted CHARMs and Extreme Boosted CHARMs

Yuni: “I never thought I’d see such a functional Extreme Boosted CHARM... I suppose trying to avoid killing her is no longer an option.”

A Boosted CHARM is, as the name implies, a CHARM that has undergone performance enhancing modifications. Now, that in and of itself is not a bad thing, in fact, the B-Type Equipments, which we've discussed a long time ago, are an example of Boosted CHARMs. Now Extreme Boosted CHARMs are that concept pushed beyond its limits, wherein the CHARM's Magie Crystal Core is juiced up to such a point where there is really no assurance the Lily itself can withstand the sheer amount of Magie it outputs.

Coincidentally (or not), Herensuge' GEHENA lab in particular is known to have conducted extensive research into CHARM boosting procedures.

I'm pretty sure this is an error

Subject ID: HL-054B Subject Name: Hatsukano Yoh Current Assessment: Boosted Lily (procedure completed during second year of junior high)

It says here that the CHARM experiment done on Yoh was conducted during junior high (中等部), even though that should be referring to the events we saw in Lamentation of Chrysáor and this story chapter. I'm pretty sure this is an error and they meant to say "high school" (高等部), but the fact they never went back and fixed this when they have done as such before made me uncertain, so i left it as is.

The Irman Lilian Labs

Yakumo: No, that much is true. I originally came to Herensuge as an Instructor, sent by the Irmin Lilian Labs, a much more moderate branch

As identified by its name, the Irmin Lilian Labs is the GEHENA lab integrated into Irma Girls' High School for the Fine Arts, which if you'll recall from my Odaiba and Ludvico posts, is one of the Great Three Gardens who spearhead Tokyo's defenses. Now, while we might come to associate having GEHENA installations on premises with bad news, the GEHENA faction that operates within Irma is, as Yakumo said, a much more moderate branch, and the Irmin Lilian lab in particular is renowned for providing care to Boosted Lilies who escaped the extremists' abuse.

I think one example that encapsulates this well is Maruyama Amane, one of the members of the Heorot Saints. She was a failed test subject, as her body rejected the Boosting procedure to such an extreme degree that she was very close to dying from them. She was rescued and brought to the Irmin Lilian Labs for treatment, and they were not only able to bring her back to health, but they were even able to remove her Boosted Skills. So although she is still a Boosted Lily, she doesn't really have the abilities of one anymore, and appears as just a regular Lily to an unsuspecting observer (well, she does have one of those Magical Inscriptions on her arm, but I think you get the idea)

So does this mean Yakumo here was a student of Irma in her time as a Lily? Well, not actually, but that's a story I'll save for another time...

Professor Amamiya and Inaba Mayumi

Yakumo: .... It would seem that all the work done to prevent the dissemination of Professor Amamiya’s research data only amounted to a temporary impediment.” (This is likely the same Huge assimilation procedure that Odaiba’s Inaba Mayumi performed once...)

I'd like to preface this bit with a spoiler warning, as the identities of these people are pretty much major plot points (one of them being literally the final twist) for both the Ludvico and Odaiba series of stage plays, so skip to the next section if you don't want to be spoiled.

Alright, think about it for a second, Amamiya, where have you heard that name before...?

If you answered Amamiya Sora, famous voice actress and member of supergroup TrySail, that's not a bad answer, but not really what I was going for. Y'see, Professor Amamiya here (we never really learn his first name) is the father of Amamiya Sophia Seren

Wow do I miss this era of the game

But more important than that, Professor Amamiya is the mastermind behind essentially all the stuff that happens throughout the Ludvico saga, and serves as its final antagonist. I wanna avoid going into details as best as I can, but pertinent to the game's story is that 1º: he was the one who experimented on Raimu's mother, causing her and Mirai to be born as Boosted Lilies, and 2º and what Yakumo is referencing here, he was the first case of a mind transfer we've seen in the Assault Lily franchise.

Y'see, although Professor Amamiya had been pulling the strings in Ludvico for the longest time, he was never really there in person. But then, the formation of Legion Ironside, as well as some of the few well-meaning Instructors in the Garden showing resistance to GEHENA's influence required a personal touch with moving his plans along. So, while tensions were escalating, Professor Amamiya hijacked the body of one of the Instructors so he could more directly orchestrate things without being found out.

Well, and again, spoiler alert, he does eventually get found out, and after a pretty intense battle, Sachie manages to lethally wound the Instructor he was possessing, causing him to abandon her body and leave her to die. I can't really say for sure whether he himself dies, and my reason for it connects directly to our second person of interest here

Inaba Mayumi's original illustration, by Hotaru, and Mayumi as portrayed by Ishihara Misaki. Image source: Assault Lily Stage: Official Website

This.... thing right here is Inaba Mayumi, currently the primary antagonist of the Odaiba series of stage plays. Now what warranted that introduction, you may ask? Well, it's because while her looks might initially make her seem like a charming femme-fatale sort of character, her actual personality is... uhh...

Imagine William Afton merged together with Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise.

I wish I was kidding.

(Some of the information in this part is sourced from the "Flowers of the End" Setting Materials)

So Mayumi here is an alumni of Odaiba Girls' School, and as a matter of fact, she was actually the former captain of the Light Wall Defense Team (it all comes back full circle, see?). But after graduating, she went on to work for GEHENA, particularly in their lab annexed to this Garden called Kuramayama Girls' School of Environmental Science. The thing about Kuramayama is that, well, it used to absolutely suck. Much in the same vein as Ludvico and Herensuge, Kuramayama was human experimentation hell, and Mayumi here was a high ranking overseer, with one particularly nefarious Boosting project called the "13 Sisters Project" being her personal darling.

And Mayumi was a monster, like, the proceedings of the 13 Sisters Project could very well be compared to a slaughterhouse, where the Lilies who showed results from their experimentation were only subjected to further abuse, while the rejects were pretty much treated like disposable livestock. She was just so blatanly uncaring about the Kuramayama Lilies, in fact, that even a few of her subordinates started having second thoughts.

This all culminated when, one night, one rogue researcher named Komai Sasara arranged the escape of a particular reject named Shiba Tomoshibi. Mayumi was, as you can expect, not at all thrilled about this, so she killed Sasara for her betrayal. But because Tomoshibi had actually developed a bond with Sasara over her time in captivity, witnessing her be killed caused her to snap. Tomoshibi then turned right back around, killed Mayumi and all the other researchers present in the facility and brought the whole thing to the ground.

Thing is, though, this was like two years ago, so how the hell is Mayumi still alive?

We don't know the exact mechanism for it yet, but Mayumi has a bit of a Rei Ayanami thing going on here. In short, just about every body of hers we see is a clone, and whenever one of them is killed, she can just hop into another and pick up right where the previous one left off. For all we know, the Mayumi that died in Kuramayama might not even have been the original one.

So what of this "Huge assimilation procedure" that Yakumo mentioned?

Well, since Mayumi has no shortage of bodies to go around, it isn't really a problem for her to sacrifice one or two of them if need be, so in the stage play The Battle to Overcome, (which, chronologically, just happened) Mayumi has one of her bodies be eaten by a Gigant-class Huge, intending both for it to get stronger and for her to control it directly. Now it didn't really work out for her, as the Gigant-class rejected her consciousness pretty quickly, but that did set the precedent for what Noemi did with the Hutthurm (that's that Huge's name btw)

I do find it relevant to note that Noemi, Professor Amamiya and Mayumi all seem suspiciously aligned in their ideals and their ways of going about them. Both Amamiya and Mayumi were incredibly obsessed with Princesses of the Huge, and Amamiya had this almost religious awe of Raimu and how not only the Huge see her as one of their own, but how (and again, spoilers...) it seems Raimu can subconsciously control Huge to some extent. Meanwhile, Mayumi was hell bent on seeing the 13 Sisters Project through, like, she wanted to make a Princess so badly that she started burning through her supply of Lilies, to the point that her superior actually got pissed at her for doing that. It may be just me but those really remind me of Noemi, what with her treating Kazuha like her magnum opus and how obstinate she was about continuing the Hervör Experiment.

Also, when Mayumi got eaten by the Gigant-class, she had this line about how humanity's path to prevailing is by assimilating with the Huge and gaining their powers, and the language she used was suspiciously similar to this one quote by Noemi:

Noemi: “Right now, Aizawa-san is a Lily wielding the Huge’s power on her hands! Do you see how wonderful that is!?”

It's not really confirmation that they were in cohoots or anything, but an interesting connection nonetheless.

The Galatea Program

Noemi: (... The Galatea program I loaded into her Blutgang isn’t working anymore...)

Now this is a name you're all too familiar with if you've checked out the Singular Ability subs by the Yurigaoka Fan Club. Galatea, if you'll recall, is the name of the replacement CHARM that Hishida Haru used when she wrecked her Caladbolg (or better put, the CHARM she was given also used the Galatea system, and so that's what it became known as).

The Galatea was originally an experimental program for CHARMs that make use of "dummy cores", those being CHARMs with faux Crystal Cores that don't require a contract to be activated. That way, if a Lily damages her Crystal Core, she can just very quickly grab a CHARM with a dummy core and get right back to fighting without having to bother redoing her contract. The Galatea program essentially expands on that framework by acting as a "contract agent", presumably meaning that instead of requiring no contract at all, the Galatea program itself acts as a sort of pseudo-contract, linking the Lily to the dummy core.

If you work on IT, I imagine that's already setting off about 100 different red flags for you, I mean, a CHARM that allows for instantaneous use without the contract's authentication is already prime for tampering and exploiting, but a system that completely handles that connection in the user's stead is arguably even worse. So you do some Boosting on the CHARM to overload its performance, hand it to a Lily with high vulnerabilty to Negative Magie and its notoriously mind-altering effects, and voilá, you really couldn't ask for a better mind-control system.

Singular Lily

Noemi: Truly, Iijima Renka could now be considered a ‘Singular Lily’, even! That goes far beyond what I expected to get out of her as a test subject!

I mentioned this one before in my post about Tomoyo, but it bears a recap. Singular Lilies are kind of a broad category, but i think it's best described as Lilies who have naturally reached a level above what the average Lily can do. Sometimes this is achieved by developing Aberrations, like in Renka's case here, sometimes this is achieved by having an ungodly number of Subskills, like in Hasebe Touka's case, and sometimes this is achieved by reaching the S-Rank of their Rare Skill (since doing so will very often unlock a Lily a unique abilty related to their skill, Yakumo's "Targeting", for example).

What is very interesting about Renka's Aberration is that there is a Boosted Skill that is almost a direct mirror to it. Named "Drain", it's a Boosted Skill that very likely originates from an Irregular Huge called "The Drains" (which you'll recognize if you've read the Liberation of Niigata webnovel), and just like Drain Touch, it allows a Lily to absorb Negative Magie from a target. So there's some food for thought...

Armored Cavaliers

Mai: “I mean, do you remember how I told you about when a whole bunch of cats started to hang around the Armored Cavaliers in the Arsenal docks whenever they came back from testing?”

Mechs.

I'm serious.

Image credits: M-Ganzy

(The sources for this whole section come from the "CHARM Equipment" feature of the Assault Lily World Guide)

If you're like me and you ever felt that the AL universe was kinda similar to Pacific Rim, well, I don't think it gets more Pacific Rim than this.

A Lily's Armored Cavalier (LAC, for short) is a mechanized exoskeleton that Lilies can pilot. They're not really Jaeger sized, being just big enough to fit a single Lily in its cockpit (so like 3 to 4 meters tall, give or take). Despite the fact that, y'know, they're friggin mechs, they were originally meant to be used in construction, and even after they began being deployed to the battlefield, their primary uses were support roles, like setting up camps or civilian evacuations, because as any game that features mechs will tell you, being a big and clunky thing is not really ideal when you're in the middle of a warzone.

LACs operate with a Magie Crystal Core, so while they're essentially a humongous CHARM, that does mean that they're still only really good for killing Huge of up to Large-class by themselves, and, well, you can imagine that a Lily can't really participate in a Neunwelt while encased in a big metal cocoon. The one thing they're really good for, though, is taking a beating. These things are durable as all hell, so they're usually as diversions that tank hits for the rest of their team. It's said that they can even front a good couple blows from a Gigant-class!

So they're big, chonky hunks of metal, that on top of not doing too much that a Lily already can't do by herself or with her Legion, doesn't allow its pilot to participate in a Neunwelt, and oh! Did I mention these things are expensive as hell to operate?

So you can guess why we don't see too much of these guys, but hey, if they did catch your interest, they actually got a whole novel dedicated to them! It comes as a bonus if you buy a LAC action figure, which is... uh, not cheap, to say the least.

Now you can really guess why we don't see too much of these guys

The Fólkvangr

Yuyu: “So for that, I presume we’d be required to enter the Fólkvangr council of Expeditionary Legions—“

(Some of what is discussed in this section is sourced from the actually pretty recently released Assault Lily Record article on the Fólkvangr)

While they do offer a very quick explanation for it in the story, I still think it bears going over what the Fólkvangr is in a little more detail.

When Yurigaoka Legions start out, they're not allowed to sortie on Expeditions at all (think of how, in Bouquet, Team Hitotsuyanagi spent 90% of their time on standby in the Garden). For a Legion to gain Expeditionary rights, they first need to receive the Medal of the Holy White Lily, a decoration given to a Legion's captain after they successfully bring down a Gigant-class Huge.

Well, Team Hitotsuyanagi has done that, so they do have rights for carrying out Expeditions. However, think back to the Expeditions they've been on. They're never really alone in those, and they are never the ones formally spearheading the campaign. In fact, they were the only rookie Legion in pretty much all the Expeditions they've been in, as although their sillyness makes it easy to forget, Hervör and Gran Eple are the Top Legions of their respective Gardens.

That is by design, as only Yurigaoka's flagship Legions are afforded those privileges. These elite Legions are known as the Fólkvangr, who as Fumi notes, are Legions that have achieved a rank of S and above in the World Legion Ranking system. To integrate the Fólkvangr, a Legion must:

Reach a rank of S

Receive the Medal of the Holy White Lily

Have a surplus of members

Have enough influence to either lead or be a major player in an Expedition

Furthermore, upon entering the Fólkvangr, a Legion gains the right to nominate a representative for the Student Council, essentially also giving them political power in the Garden.

Yurigaoka currently has only thirteen Legions in the Fólkvangr, those being:

Legion Álfheimr (obviously), one of only four SSS Legions in Yurigaoka

Legion Lohengrin, the second SSS Legion

Legion Sanngriðr, the third SSS Legion

Legion Reginleif, the fourth SSS Legion

Legion Schwarz Grail, ranked SS

Legion Eir, ranked SS

Legion Rossweisse, ranked SS (more on them in a second)

Legion Herfjötur, ranked SS

Legion Sigrdrífa, ranked SS

Legion Vingólf, ranked SS

Legion Brynhildr Line, ranked SS

Legion Geiravör, ranked S

Legion Schwartleite, ranked S

Of these, Izue Shinobu of Brynhildr Line, Uchida Mayuri of Legion Schwarz Grail and Hata Matsuri of Legion Eir are also the Garden's Three Valkyries, which I will not explain what they are because there is already a pretty good post about them written.

Amatsu Marei

Moyu: “Get this, the one and only Amatsu Marei from Ryuto Girls’ Academy said she wanted to make you a CHARM!”

This is someone you already know if you've checked the New Chapter subtitles, or if you've read the Liberation of Niigata novel, but again, just in case, this right here is Amatsu Marei:

Marei's original illustration, by Yaegashi Nan, and Marei as portrayed by Muto Shiori. Image credits: Assault Lily Stage: Official Website

(The source for much of this section are the character bios in the Liberation of Niigata novel)

Marei is, as you could glean, an Arsenal. But not just any Arsenal, no sir, she has to be the single greatest CHARM afficionado alive right now, like I cannot stress enough just how much this girl is into tinkering with CHARMs. To quote a few lines from her character bio:

"Unlike Mashima Moyu, whose theoretical and applied knowledge encompasses CHARMs, Huge and Magie alike, Marei exclusively specializes in CHARM development. With her talents and expertise fully devoted to this area, she does not show interest in anything else"

"Marei has a reputation for being awfully intricate with the tailor-made models she creates, [...] even when it comes to the most basic components, Marei will still take the time to design them from scratch, and will become incredibly restless if she cannot vet them personally in the factory. [...] in her words, 'not even a single screw is to be forged without my involvement in it.'"

My girl is 100% on the spectrum

Marei is a member of Ryuto's Legion Himinglæva, which is one of nine Ryuto Legions that are tasked with defending the entire Niigata prefecture, since Ryuto is the only active Garden there. Marei, though, is a free spirit. As Moyu mentioned, she travels around all of Japan to find any Lilies that pique her interest so she can build custom one-off CHARMs for them, something that earned her the title of "The Wandering Arsenal". Her reason for doing that is because she lost someone very dear to her, so she wants to keep making CHARMs and give them to the right people to ensure to the best of her ability that the tragedy she experienced can't happen again.

Because she is so damn intricate about her work, the CHARMs she makes are nothing short of works of art, and the fact that she makes them only to people that personally interest her means they are incredibly coveted. And although she isn't too fond of mass-produced CHARM (as she doesn't really care for the mass appeal of them), she has had a hand in designing a few of them, including some that you might know, like the Durandal (used by Himeka), the Gáe Bolg (used by Chikaru, Akehi), and I think more pertinent to the story here, the Gram

The Gram

Taniguchi Hijiri and her Gram

(Some of this section is sourced from the Gram feature on the CHARM Encyclopedia)

The CHARM that Yuyu gets in this story chapter is a newly built version of a model she had once before. The Gram, full name AC-28 Gram, is a second generation CHARM built by the Yggdrasil Corporation (who has an affiliation contract with Yurigaoka) and it is a model exclusive to the members of Álfheimr (although former members of the first gen Álfheimr still have and use theirs, see Hijiri above). It requires a Skiller Value of at least 85 to be activated, and its parts and maintenance costs are incredibly expensive, so it is very much a CHARM of the elites.

Yoshizaka and Jacobsen

???: “Yoshizaka, Jacobsen, carry on with the searches, the other two Aberration holders must still be in confinement.”

This refers to Yoshizaka Nagisa and Chelice Jacobsen, two Yurigaoka Instructors who, for once, we actually know what they look like:

Chelice Jacobsen (left) and Yoshizaka Nagisa (right), as they appear in Assault Lily ARMS.

(Much of the information in this section comes from the Team Hitotsuyanagi and ARMS novels)

Both of them are actually quite a big deal considering how little we hear about them. Like Jacobsen on the left there, she is not just an Instructor, but a priestess (peep the nun clothes), a doctor, the head of Yurigoaka's special dorms unit and the overseeing Instructor for Legion Rossweisse (again, more on them in a sec). Call that girl a hydra for how many hats she wears.

Nagisa, on the other hand, is a bit closer to our main cast, as she is the head teacher of the first year Tsubaki class (that's Riri, Fumi, Kaede and Tazusa's class), and maybe most notably, she's the one who took in the little cookie Rokkaku Shiori after she lost her family in the Koshu Withdrawal.

They have a bit of a good cop bad cop thing going on, as according to Fumi, Chelice is kind while Nagisa is "scary". Most relevant to the story here is that both of them are close friends with Chairwoman Shiera, with the two of them actually being part of Shiera's squad back when they were Lilies.

"Child of mauve"

???: “.... You, child of mauve...” ???: “In spite of it all… you live still!”

"Mauve" here is translated directly, the original word being 若紫 (Wakamurasaki, "light purple"). It's never really stated outright anywhere but this is widely accepted to be referring to Tazusa's mother. We don't really know if this is a title or her actual name (although 若紫 isn't really a first name, unless it is meant to be read a very specific way), so I just chose to translate it literally. If more information about her ever comes out, i'm leaving myself open to coming back and changing this one.

I would be remiss not to point out, though, that the characters that make the word Wakamurasaki mean "young" and "purple" respectively, and who did we meet that was color-coded *light purple* and was noted for their youthfulness....?

Legion Rossweisse

Yuyu: “You needn’t be so tense, Riri. For one, these special outfits we’ve been provided for this mission possess the same technology used by Legion Rossweisse’s Legion outfits.”

Referenced extensively throughout this whole story chapter and being the Legion to actually lead the later Aogashima mission, Legion Rossweisse is basically Yurigaoka's own Legion Cuélebre (or I guess Cuélebre is Herensuge's Rossweisse, since they were created later).

From left to right, Rosalinde Friedegunde von Otto, Kitagawara Inori and Ishigami Mio, the three Rossweisse members with illustrations. Image credits: necömi

If Álfheimr is the Legion that Yurigaoka sends out to deal with the worst of Huge threats, then Rossweisse is what they send out to deal with the worst of human threats. While their public identity is that of a support Legion of medics and first-responders, they secretly act as Yurigaoka's own secret service, deploying for the most top-secret of missions at the direct orders of Yurigaoka's high administration. These missions, as indicated by all the stealth functionalities loaded into Riri and Yuyu's new clothes, frequently involve infiltration and espionage into GEHENA installations, and a particular concern of theirs is rescuing and freeing any Boosted Lilies kept captive by them.

All of Rossweisse's members are Boosted Lilies themselves. They were pretty much all personally rescued from GEHENA by Chairwoman Shiera, and because of that, they are incredibly, and I mean incredibly loyal to her and Yurigaoka as a whole.

The Legion is led by Kitagawara Inori, the pink haired one. According to Fumi, she is very well mannered, "kinda like Shenlin", but has a bit of a short fuse. And while it does track that being the leader of a spec ops team would understandably require you to be quite the fierce individual, Fumi straight up said that she has some "Yandere vibes" about her, particularly when it comes to her Schutzengel, Ishigami Mio.

She is, by the way, going to show up in the next Assault Lily stage play, Assault Lily Sturm: Part 2!

Portrayed by Takahashi Ayane. Image credits: Assault Lily Stage: Official Website

Remnants

Tazusa: “I can’t go back on this... not when I’ve already killed this many.... this many remnants...!”

A remnant is a Boosted Lily who has completely lost her higher cognitive functions due to repeated and/or forceful experimentation. You see, while a Lily can be Boosted multiple times and survive (for example), this is not really standard procedure even for the GEHENA extremists, as the more a Lily is boosted, the more she becomes vulnerable to the influence of the the Huge dna implanted on her. If a Lily is overboosted, or say, brought back to life, it becomes very likely for the Huge dna will completely take over, turning her into a completely mindless and violent zombie, a.k.a a remnant.

Now the thing about remnants is that the mind of the once-Lily doesn't completely go away. Like for example, they still remember proper combat technique and can even carry out strategies, like, we've once seen a group of remnants perform a Neunwelt before. While on one hand this means they can and have been weaponized, the good news, or I guess the silver lining is that it is possible to bring their consciousness back.

Sadly, as it was repeated extensively throughout this story chapter, it doesn't really matter how well they can control it, Negative Magie is still poison to a Lily. And so in general, there isn't much hope for a Lily that becomes a remnant, as the more they fight, the more they essentially burn through their life force and become more and more contaminated with the Huge's. Even in the event that their Magie is purified, all that can do is finally unshacke them from the chains forcibly keeping them in the world of the living, granting them one final moment of consciousness before they pass on.

But y'know what they say, every rule has its exception...

The Battle of Antarctica

First, we need to talk about the Battle of Antarctica.

Actually, we know so little about it that "Battle" may not even be the right translation. It could have been a series of battles, or an entire war (the Japanese word is ambiguous.)

What we do know is that it happened before any of the Lilies currently in their first year of high school were born, so no later than 2036 (Bouquet volunteered the information with extreme reluctance, but the current year in it is 2052.) An Ultra-class Huge was spotted in Antarctica, so several thousand people went there to fight it.

In the end, less than 10% of those people survived. Nevertheless, the Battle of Antarctica was considered the first decisive conflict against the Huge, whatever that means. It might be because they won, or it might be because some equipment still being used in the present day (like the "Anti-Huge Weapons" used by Madecs) was first jury-rigged up in the field in Antarctica.

The survivors of Antarctica are world-famous heroes and still have strong bonds with one another. They included Tazusa's parents, Miriam's parents, a number of teachers and other staff at Yurigaoka, Takamatsu Kogetsu, and Takamatsu Shiera.

Antarctica is shown in a brief flashback in episode 11 of Bouquet. This is where the screenshot above is from.

Male CHARM Users

While it's not that relevant to the topic of Shiera, the list of survivors above might make you wonder what Tazusa's dad, Miriam's dad, and Kogetsu were doing in Antarctica. The answer is "fighting alongside the Lilies there." Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that they were Lilies (though we don't know if the term was in use yet at the time.)

If you have a really good memory, you might remember a passing mention of "Skiller Values" in episode 7 of Bouquet. Skiller Values are a measurement, on a scale of 0 to 100, of how effectively a person's body can channel magie. You need a Skiller Value of at least 50 to activate a CHARM and be a Lily. Lilies' Skiller Values go up to 98, and are commonly above 85 when they're in their prime.

Men sometimes have Skiller Values of 50 (but no higher, ever), and can activate CHARMs. A handful of sources call these "male Lilies," though it's more common for them to be called "male CHARM users." Some were present at Antarctica, including Kogetsu, and Tazusa's dad. Miriam's dad has a Skiller Value of 40 and couldn't use a CHARM, so he fought with the Anti-Huge Weapons built by an Arsenal named Debora, later Debora von Gropius (after the two of them came back from Antarctica and got married.)

Male CHARM users can't fight the tougher varieties of Huge effectively, nor use the Neunwelt Tactic at all, so eventually people stopped giving men CHARMs (they're really expensive to build after all.) But there was a time, early on, when men fought the Huge too.

Takamatsu Shiera

There are no pictures of Shiera, so have another picture of Fumi instead

Sorry for the tangent. Let's get back on topic. Though the amount I can tell you about Shiera herself is somewhat limited.

Shiera is Kogetsu's older sister. She fought in Antarctica as a Lily. She has a Rare Skill called "Amatsukami" that to our knowledge no one else does; we don't even know what it does or if she's ever used it.

After Shiera returned from Antarctica, she and quite a few of the other survivors of Antarctica became staff members at Yurigaoka Girls' Academy. Yurigaoka already existed prior to this (it's existed since the Taisho era,) but it's unknown when it transitioned from being an ordinary girls' school into a Garden. It couldn't have been that much earlier than Antarctica itself, because the Huge only appeared around the year 2000.

Currently, Shiera is in poor health, and spends most of her time convalescing. Her brother Kogetsu, as the acting chairman of Yurigaoka, has been doing her job for the most part.

Shiera is a Boosted Lily, and she hates being one. In my previous blog post, I mentioned a Boosted Lily who said "I don't want anyone else to become like me"; that's Shiera. It's because of Shiera herself that Yurigaoka is anti-GEHENA to the point of breaking Lilies out of GEHENA labs. Some sources mention that, because she fought in Antarctica together with Tazusa's father, Shiera personally arranged for Tazusa to be rescued from GEHENA.

Like most Boosted Lilies, Shiera has a Boosted Skill. I mentioned that in my previous post, too:

Nosferatu, which causes a Lily to stop visibly aging and halts the decline of her magie capacity as well. Only one Lily has ever been given this Boosted Skill successfully.

Futagawa Fumi (she has a Twitter account where she tells us a lot of stuff) claims that she's seen Shiera before. According to Fumi, she looks like she's around twenty years old and is "beautiful, but has this super intimidating aura around her."

And that's pretty much all we know. She's still very mysterious, huh?