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Funimation to Stream Blue Reflection Ray Anime

Funimation announced on Friday that it will exclusively stream Blue Reflection Ray, the television anime of Gust's Blue Reflection (Blue Reflection - Maboroshi ni Mau Shōjo no Ken) role-playing game, as part of the spring 2021 anime season. The anime will begin streaming on April 9 on Funimation in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Mexico and Brazil; on AnimeLab in Australia and New Zealand; and on Wakanim in France, Germany, Russia, and Scandinavian countries.

The anime stars Manaka Iwami as Hiori Hirahara and Haruka Chisuga as Ruka Hanari.

The other cast members include:

Yuka Takakura as Momo Tanabe, an 18-year-old girl who has repeated a grade twice before dropping out of high school and working a part time job

Hitomi Ohwada as Miyako Shirakaba, a first-year high school student from a wealthy family who is actually suffering and is envious of others

Reina Ueda as Mio Hirahara

Nina Tamaki as Nina Yamada

Rui Tanabe as Uta Komagawa

Shiori Izawa as Shino Mizusaki

The anime will premiere on April 9 on MBS, TBS, and BS-TBS' "Animeism" programming block. The anime got a special program on Niconico Live and YouTube Live on Tuesday prior to its premiere. Voice actresses Iwami, Chisuga, and Takakura appeared, and the event premiered the first part of the first episode.

Risako Yoshida (The Irregular at Magic High School: Visitor Arc, Diabolik Lovers More, Blood) is directing the anime at J.C. Staff. Akiko Waba (Eureka Seven AO, A Lull in the Sea, Lostorage incited WIXOSS) is writing and overseeing the series scripts. Koichi Kikuta is adapting Mel Kishida's original character designs for animation, Yoshikazu Iwanami is the sound director at Magic Capsule, and Daisuke Shinoda is composing the music. EXiNA is performing the opening theme song "DiViNE." ACCAMER is performing the ending theme song "Seishin" (Deepest).

The game launched for PlayStation 4 and PC via Steam in North America and Europe in September 2017. The game shipped in Japan in March 2017 for PS4 and PlayStation Vita.

Koei Tecmo describes the game's story:

Taking her first steps back into an everyday school life, Hinako is lost in a sea of unknown faces until she encounters a middle school friend, Sanae Nishida. Hinako notices a strange aura emerge from Sanae and suddenly awakens in a mysterious world where an intimidating demon awaits her! Before she has time to react, a pair of friendly voices reach out to her: “It will be alright. You can fight. Put your heart into the ring on your finger, and fight as a Reflector!” The magical twins Yuzu and Lime bestow Reflector powers on Hinako, promising her they will grant any wish she desires if she protects the world from devastating forces that seek to threaten humanity.

This is how Hinako learns of the mysterious parallel dimension, The Common: a place created by the unconsciousness of the human collective; where the causes of humans' latent troubles lurk. Alongside Yuzu and Lime, she leaps fearlessly into this unknown world in search of crystallized emotion fragments – the physical manifestation of her classmates' struggles – but encounters a myriad of challenges in her path. Players will explore unique and perilous locations in their attempt to locate these fragments and resolve their classmates' problems in the real world, and will be called upon to battle dangerous demons who stand in their way!

While Hinako and her friends solve the problems plaguing Hoshinomiya Girls' High School and live their day-to-day lives, devastating forces loom closer at each moment. These are the Sephira, gigantic creatures harboring overwhelming powers which threaten to end the world as the girls know it! In order to protect their classmates as well as humanity itself, Hinako, Yuzu and Lime transform into their magical Reflector forms and use their most powerful abilities by gathering the energy of emotions. By harnessing the close bonds they have formed, the Reflectors fight in hopes of repelling the Sephira forces once and for all.

Mel Kishida (Sound of the Sky, Hanasaku Iroha, Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland) designed the characters for the game and was also credited as supervisor, while Keiichi Sigsawa (Kino's Journey, Allison), Yūsaku Igarashi (Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu), and Kōji Natsumi (Hazakura ga Kita Natsu, Girly Airforce) were in charge of series scripts.

Source: Funimation