Lycoris Recoil: Friends are thieves of time.
『リコリス・リコイル』Friends are thieves of time. (Lycoris Recoil: Friends Are Thieves of Time.)
- Comedy
- CGDCT
- Workplace
- Episodes
- 6
- Duration
- 3 min per ep
- Aired
- Apr 16, 2025 to May 21, 2025
- Status
- Finished Airing
Synopsis
*Lycoris Recoil: Friends are thieves of time.* presents six short films centered on the everyday moments shared by Chisato, Takina, and the people around them, capturing their downtime with a light comedic touch.
Each vignette is shaped by a different director and storyboard, offering varied perspectives and rhythms while staying focused on the group’s day-to-day life.
Otaku Consensus
Friends are thieves of time lands as a warmly received franchise extra rather than a full-scale sequel, with its rotating short-film direction giving Chisato and Takina’s café chemistry a brisk, playful rhythm. Critics and fans continue to single out A-1 Pictures’ character acting, the cast’s comedic timing, and the series’ “girls with guns” identity as its strongest assets, while the recurring complaint is that the six-episode short format leaves little room for the darker conspiracy material and emotional depth that made the 2022 series feel larger.
Why You Should Watch
Watch Friends are thieves of time if you want Lycoris Recoil’s character chemistry without the pressure of a major arc, a villain escalation, or a re-explanation of the setting. It is built for viewers who liked the café downtime as much as the gunplay: compact workplace comedy, primarily female-cast banter, and little urban slice-of-life beats filtered through different directors and storyboard rhythms. It scratches a similar comfort-watch itch to K-On! in its hangout energy, but keeps the “girls with guns” texture that made Lycoris Recoil distinct. With a 7.71 MAL score from over 23,000 votes and a 77/100 AniList score, reception suggests this is not essential lore homework, but a polished character-first companion piece for people already attached to the cast.
Key Characters
- CChisato(VA: Chika Anzai)
Chisato remains the franchise’s social engine, the kind of heroine fans talk about less for exposition than for how quickly she changes the temperature of a room.
- TTakina(VA: Shion Wakayama)
Takina’s appeal comes from the contrast between her controlled, kuudere-coded bearing and the comedy that emerges when everyday café life pushes against that discipline.
What Makes It Stand Out
- 1
The project is structured as six short films rather than a conventional sequel season, and each vignette is shaped by a different director and storyboard approach, giving the ONA a deliberately varied comic tempo.
- 2
A-1 Pictures returns to the property with Shingo Adachi credited as both director and supervisor, keeping the shorts visually aligned with the original series while allowing the individual segments to loosen the pacing.
- 3
The AniList tag profile is unusually concentrated for a franchise with action roots: Cute Girls Doing Cute Things at 100%, Episodic at 98%, Restaurant at 96%, and Work at 80%, signaling how decisively this entry leans into café-life texture.
- 4
The tonal balance is narrower than the 2022 series: web impressions highlight mostly comedy situations and character returns, while earlier Lycoris Recoil criticism praised the blend of cozy café lightness with darker secrets.
- 5
Its reception sits in a strong-but-not-phenomenon zone: MAL lists it at 7.71 with 23,918 votes and AniList at 77/100 with 465 favourites, matching the sense of a well-liked bonus entry rather than a consensus franchise peak.
Fun Facts & Trivia
- Fun fact 1
- Friends are thieves of time aired as an original net animation from April 16 to May 21, 2025, releasing six episodes across just over a month.
- Fun fact 2
- The character look is credited to Muru Imigi, with Yumiko Yamamoto on sub character design and Dayna Akahara on prop design, a notable staffing split for shorts built around everyday objects and café interactions.
- Fun fact 3
- The background and visual environment team includes Ayano Okamoto as art director, Munashichi and Mikiya Hiragi on art design, Azusa Sasaki on color design, and Toshiyuki Aoshima as director of photography.
- Fun fact 4
- The wider Lycoris Recoil franchise expanded quickly after the 2022 TV anime, with a Monthly Comic Flapper manga by Yasunori Bizen, the light novel Lycoris Recoil: Ordinary Days by Asaura with Imigimuru illustrations, and a January 2023 stage play.
- Fun fact 5
- Online commentary around this ONA repeatedly frames it as a reunion piece: it brings back the familiar cast in compact comedy situations rather than trying to reproduce the original series’ heavier action-conspiracy spine.
Studios
- A-1 Pictures
