I've spent way too long procrastinating this
This one's been a long time coming (5 months)
Also, if you don't wanna look at blue archive stuff, this is probably not the post for you. You have been warned!
Where do I even start with Blue Archive? I had originally planned for this spiel to be a part of my 2025 anime expo experiences, but as I started writing it, I realized that there were just too many thoughts about this game that I wanted to put down (which, honestly, would have really detracted from the flow of that post, and I wanted to keep that one more focused on the event itself). I also wanted to try and seperate the blue archive content away from the other stuff, cuz I know that some people might not want to look at that. So here we are, a whole dedicated page to my thoughts and experiences with Blue Archive, and its community as a whole.
I first got introduced to the game like any other game that idkac gets into, from a random youtube video containing the game's soundtrack. This time, it was an edit of the track OST 82. Hifumi Daisuki, specifically Hifumi, Daisuki?. At the time, I never really thought anything about the song (other than that it was a banger), and I never realized that the song was from a game until much later. Fast forward a bit, and I start getting OST 7. Unwelcome School memes in my recommended, and it was at this point that I started to get curious about the game (the meme was this one, which is also the one that first got blue archive into the global eyes as far as I know).
It actually wasn't until much later that I noticed that I had Hifumi, Daisuki? in my playlist, and the fact that it was a blue archive song
So with the game installed on my phone, I started playing the game. Now of course, with any gacha game, the gameplay had a lot to be desired. It's safe to say that the reason that I stuck with the game was not because of the gameplay. Rather, the character and the story really sucked me in. I remember the first character that I really liked was Yoshimi (mostly because she's a tsundere, but that's a idkac classic at this point). I had a great time playing through the main story, and experiencing the various character stories as well. The more that I played, the more I found myself being attached to the characters and the world that the game had created. The writing was top-notch, and the voice acting was superb. I found myself really caring about the characters and their stories, and I wanted to see more of them. Characters like Neru, Hina, Aru, Kayoko, Kazusa, Yuuka, and so many others quickly became some of my favorites (I even have my very own Neru plushie, which is probably one of the best purchases that I have made).
Never kill yourself!
Now of course, we can't talk about blue archive without mentioning its music. If you know me, you know that I have a soft spot for game soundtracks, and that one of my favorite genres of music is Kawaii Future Bass. Now, you mix those two together, sprinkle in a little electro swing, house, and orchestral, and you've got something that will instantly win me over.
I think at this point its a tossup between blue archive and library of ruina when it comes to my favorite video game ost
In fact, I think there are too many bangers from the Blue archive OST (they have 333 songs in the ost as of writing this, and most of them are bangers) for me to really list out a few that I like, but I will say that there's probably a song for everyone in the game, because they literally have every single style of music in there (or at least the popular ones). You'll probably find one that you like if you look hard enough (in fact, I'm sure you've probably heard some of them before, since a lot of youtubers are picking up blue archive songs for their videos, deservably so).
They literally have a tango song , which is crazy (its a banger too)
Of course, a big credit to Mitsukiyo, KARUT, and Nor for making such amazing music for the game. I don't think I would have been half as interested in the game if not for the soundtrack.
Now, for the actual reason why I wanted to write this post in the first place, my experiences at Anime Expo 2025. Of course, as you know, the first thing that I went to at AX was the blue archive panel. I was personally really excited for this panel, since its for one of my favorite games, and I really wanted to meet the developers of the game (who also interact a good bit with the community as well). The panel itself was pretty fun, and the devs mostly just covered the new content that's going to be coming out in the game. They also revealed the new PV for the upcoming chapter, which I have unfortunately spoiled for myself because I keep up to date with the JP server (which gets their content first). Still, it was really cool to see the PV on the big screen with high quality audio and visuals. They also showed off some of the concept art as well as character designs, which was also really cool.
So for a little context, the blue archive pc port of the game was supposed to release for like a whole week before this, but because of a bunch of tech issues they kept delaying it and pushing it back. So at the time of the panel, the pc port still hadn't released yet, which was a bummer. However, the devs actually announced at the panel that they were going to be releasing the port that day, and they had a whole little graphic to come with it, which I found pretty funny:
After the dev talk, the panel had a whole half an hour dedicated to a Mitsukiyo DJ set, which was honestly the highlight of the panel for me, and also the reason why I really wanted to write this post in the first place. Something about the feeling of being in a room full of people with the same interest as you all enjoying the same music that you enjoy is just an indescribable feeling. And of course, because it's a dev panel for blue archive, you know that the people here are the biggest of blue archive fans, and it was really in this moment that made me think "damn, this is one hell of a community", and how I was glad to have found this game. Of course, this game doesn't, and probably never will, fill out a whole concert stadium like some other games (cough cough hoyoverse), but that's okay, because honestly, a more tight knit community like blue archive is much more preferred. Sometimes, a small community of degens all jamming out to some bangers is all you need, no gigguk required.
Now to some more standard programming, we got the rest of the AX content dump to deal with.
As always, heres the image dump.
Not much from this day actually, the only two pictures I took were after the panel.
Kokona and Kisaki, Neru and Nozomi
Nothing on day 2, unfortunately, but day 3 was the cosplay meetup for blue archive, so theres a bunch of pictures from that.
Niyaniya, Shiroko, Koharu
Saori, Group Photo, Abydos
Gehenna, Millennium, Trinity
Hyakkiyako, Arius, Shanhaijing
SRT, Senseis, and another group photo
A picture of all the cosplayers with halos (which i thought was pretty cool), a close up picture with kisaki, and a SPY
Black Suit (he actually had a smoke machine in his mask as well, but it stopped working
), Aru, and Miyako
Hoshino, and another Hoshino (who also happened to be the guy who picked up the PD Kim Yong Ha (twice))
Now for some notable pictures, the first one is probably one of my favorites from this whole meetup, which is a picture of all the Blue Archive plushies that everyone has brought to the gathering. Not anything too spectacular, but its one of the big parts of the blue archive community, and its nice too see.
The next one is a picture of a sign that someone had made for the meetup, which is basically a collage of some of the memes and art that the community has made over the years. Of course, theres nothing too special about it, but thats how the blue archive community is. Now, if you made it to the end of this spiel, I do suggest you take a look at the game if you haven't already. And like the sign says, welcome to blue archive.
