Girls' Frontline

Girls' Frontline, known as 少女前线 or 少前 in Simplified Chinese, 少女前線 in Traditional Chinese, 소녀전선 in Korean and ドールズフロントライン (Dolls' Frontline) or ドルフロ in Japanese, is a turn-based strategy game with gacha and resources management components for Apple and Android smartphones developed by Sunborn, with technology from Criware and Live2D, soundtrack by Vanguard Sound and animated sequences by Liverless. The game was made available in Mainland China on May 20, 2016, in Taiwan and Hong Kong on January 18, 2017, in South Korea on June 30, 2017, in a worldwide English version on May 8, 2018, and in Japan on August 1st, 2018. It is rated 16+ under China's Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association (CADPA).

The main concept of Girls' Frontline is to have the players collect Tactical Dolls, feminine androids named after the real-world firearm they are using, depicted and voiced by an expansive cast of artists and actors. T-Dolls are upgraded and used to fight against computer-controlled enemies. The game supports regular limited time events, sometimes in collaboration with other franchises, and paid-for in-game bonuses, and has added numerous features over its lifetime, creating a complex set of unit statistics and management features.

Despite numerous problems when it first reached the market and some subsequent controversies, Girls' Frontline has since become a commercial success for Sunborn and has enabled the developer to produce a remake of its previous game, Codename: Bakery Girl, and three games derivative from Girls' Frontline, falling under the name “Girls' Frontline series” (少前系列, also sometimes “Girls' Frontline Universe”, 少前宇宙):

• Girls' Frontline 2: Exile, a sequel set 8 years after the the start of Girls' Frontline (due to run alongside the first game).
• Project: Neural Cloud, a prequel set some time before the current Girls' Frontline Timeline.
• Girls' Frontline: Glitch Land a fanmade game using some assets and characters from Girls' Frontline. Now shelved.

Players are called "Commanders", or by the Japanese translation "Shikikan" (shortened SKK) due to the game only having Japanese voice acting. The game has assembled a large and active community in several languages, sharing creative works and strategies.

Gameplay

This is a high-level overview of the Girls' Frontline gameplay and features. For a comprehensive overview, see Guide:Tutorial.

For overviews of the interface, see Guide:Main Screen, Guide:Combat Menu, Guide:Formation Menu, Guide:Factory Menu, Guide:Research Menu, Guide:Repair Menu, Guide:Dormitory Menu and Guide:Friend Menu.

An account connection is recommended to play the game, see Guide:Registration.

T-Dolls

Standard T-Dolls receive their name from the weapon they carry. The weapons represented are real-world firearms from many countries and decades, starting from 1847 with the Colt Walker. Special T-Dolls from collaboration events differ from this base concept. Fans often refer to their favorite units as "raifus", as a pun on "rifle" and "waifu". The “poster girl” appearing on the game's icon is ^RF Kar98kKar98kKar98k (^RF SpringfieldSpringfieldSpringfield and ^RF WA2000WA2000WA2000 are also used on some social medias).

Each T-Doll has a rarity, a type, a set of statistics, a formation buff and an active skill (two with Neural Upgrade). Standard rarities rank from two to five star (with exceptions for one-star collaboration events T-Dolls) and the rarity of a T-Doll can increase with Neural Upgrade (up to six stars). Rarer T-Dolls have a higher statistics threshold. There are six types of T-Dolls: Handgun, Submachine Gun, Rifle, Assault Rifle, Machine Gun and Shotgun, each type having specific synergies with other types. Each T-Doll receive a Combat Efficiency rating representing its global statistics.

The statistics of a doll are its level, experience, Dummy Link level, Health Points, Ammo and Ration level, damage, accuracy, evasion, rate of fire, mobility and Affection. T-Dolls gain experience in battle and when they receive Combat Reports as a gift, which is used to increase their level up to 100, or up to 120 with Neural Upgrade. The Health Points of a T-Doll increase with its level and Dummy Linking, as well as its damage, accuracy, evasion, rate of fire and mobility thresholds. The actual numbers of these five statistics are increased separately from the level, by using T-Doll Enhancement. Affection is gained from successful combat encounters or by gifting sweets up to 100 (up to 200 with Neural Upgrade and Oath) and give bonuses to damage, accuracy and evasion, but can decrease if the Dolls are defeated in combat. Ammo and Ration are resources that are depleted in combat and must be replenished on specific nodes so the Doll can continue fighting.

The formation buff is a passive bonus to damage, accuracy, evasion and rate of fire granted by a T-Doll to other T-Dolls adjacent to her. The buff's grid pattern, the buffed statistics and the amount of buff varies from T-Doll to T-Doll and can change with Dummy Linking and Neural Upgrade. The active skill of a T-Doll can have a variety of effects on her, her teammates or enemies and requires a charge delay between activation. The level of the skill can be increased by skill training, expending one of three types of training data.

Neural Upgrade is a three-level process requiring resources, Dummy Cores and Memory Fragments that can be used on certain T-Dolls when they reach their maximum level and maximum affection. Neural Upgrade provides various statistics buffs, a new active skill at MOD2, and a new appearance and unique equipment at MOD3.

Outside of combat, the appearance of a T-Doll can be changed with costumes acquired in the currency shop, the dorm gacha, Luffberry Chess or Code Redemption. Some of these costumes are animated and interactive through Live2D technology. Players can also set a T-Doll as their Adjutant so she can be displayed and interacted with in the main menu.

Special types of playable units were introduced with HOCs and Protocol Assimilation.

For lists of T-Dolls, see the T-Doll Index.

Combat

Before combat deployment, players must set echelons comprising up to five T-Dolls and one Support or Combat Technical Fairy, a drone which will provide statistics boost to the echelon, can use an active skill and may trigger its Talent to provide further buffs. Depending on its level, a T-Doll can also be equipped with up to three equipment pieces to boost its statistics. Equipment and Fairies can be enhanced with resources and calibrated with Calibration Tickets to further increase their bonus. The nature of the equipment a T-Doll can receive vary depending on T-Doll type and special cases. T-Dolls positions are set on a 3 by 3 grid used in combat, which will define how each T-Dolls' formation buff will affect her teammates. The efficiency of an echelon is highly dependent on the synergy of the T-Dolls active skills and formation buffs.

Combat Missions have two different states: the map and the combat screen.

On the map, the player can see the layout of the nodes, their nature and who controls each node (or if they are unclaimed). They can then spend Action Points to move their echelons from node to node or deploy new echelons on the map if they control an heliport. A player can also take actions without depleting Action Points at heliports, like deploying a friend echelon, resupplying an echelon, performing emergency repairs or extracting a rescue target. Players can end their turn even if they still have Action Points. A node is controlled by a faction if an echelon end their turn on it, or if all adjacent nodes are controlled. In most maps, the objective for the player is to control the enemy Command Post without losing their own, but it can also be to defeat all enemy unit (standard objective for Night Missions), to defeat a boss unit, to save a unit from being killed or to maintain a supply route for a set number of turns. Some maps can be completed by achieving one of several objectives. The map screen is also where the player can spend Fairy Command Points to use Support Fairies skills or prepare Combat Fairies skills for the next fight. The player can partially automate the fight by entering planning mode and setting a path for deployed echelons to follow.

When two opposing echelons meet on a node, the game shifts to the combat screen. The player echelon advances from the left to meet the enemy units coming from the right. Player units are set up in a 3 by 3 grid and can be moved freely during combat. Moving T-Dolls can be necessary to avoid attacks targeting a certain area on the grid. T-Dolls skills and their charge delay are displayed at the bottom of the screen, and can be set to be autoactivated. T-Dolls are granted experience and affection gains after each successful encounter. If a T-Dolls is in danger, it can be withdrawn from the encounter while still being available for later encounters. But if the entire echelon is withdrawn, it disappears from the map and must be redeployed. If the health of a T-Doll in an echelon is depleted, it cannot be redeployed before it has been repaired from the main menu.

When the mission ends, the player is given a score from B to S (or C if they failed the mission) depending on whether they completed certain objectives, lost echelons or used emergency repairs. Night Missions are special missions with no ranking, where the objective is to destroy all enemies on a map where enemy position is not always visible. Players must use a Handgun T-Doll to provide an echelon visibility to adjacent nodes, and capture radar nodes or use an Illumination Fairy to further expand their detection radius. A harsh penalty to accuracy is also in effect, which can be countered with the PEQ equipment.

Main missions are story missions, unlocked in a sequential order, and can be replayed freely. They can be either Normal missions, harder Emergency missions or Night Battle missions. Combat Simulations are special missions dedicated to gathering Enhancement Capsules, Training Data, experience points, Memory Fragments or Calibration Tickets. A slow-replenishing Sim Energy currency is used to play Combat Simulations, and available Combat Simulations missions rotate daily. The missions in limited time events often introduce new combat mechanics. Events critical to the storyline are made available as main missions later after their initial run.

For details information about combat modes, see Combat and Guide:Combat Missions. For a list of equipment, see Equipment Index. For a list of enemies encountered in combat, see Enemy Index.

Resources and production

T-Dolls, Fairies or equipment can be acquired by random drops during combat missions or purchased in the various shops, but are mainly produced from the Factory screen by expending T-Doll and Equipment Contracts. Production is the main gacha aspect of the game, it doesn't provide a specific result on demand but selects a random one in a pool of possibilities. The content of the pool is modified by the amount of resources pledged, the use of Standard or Heavy Production and the occasional rate-up events. Production also takes a fixed amount of time (from 20 minutes to more than 8 hours for T-Dolls) but timers can be skipped with Quick Production Contracts. Unwanted production results can be Retired to provide some resources, and Dummy Cores for higher rarities T-Dolls.

Not all Dolls are available in production. Many were only unlocked by completing a certain amount of daily logins on a specific month (monthly unlock was replaced by equipment), or can drop from certain enemies or be purchased from the shop during limited-time events. Many of these formerly time-limited Dolls were later added as drops in other events, in Campaign or in Gray Zone Exploration. Edge cases include ^AR FALFALFAL which can be produced but also acquired with the first microtransaction purchase in the permanent shop, and ^HG GSh-18GSh-18GSh-18 which is unlocked by purchasing comics in the Cafe. Most Dolls are added to the CN server first and later to the other servers, but the other servers had a short time of exclusivity for certain Dolls: ^AR K2K2K2 for KR in 2017, ^AR T91T91T91 for TW in 2017, ^SMG Type 100Type 100Type 100 and ^AR Howa Type 89Howa Type 89Howa Type 89 for JP in 2018 and 2019 respectively, and ^RF M200M200M200 for Global in 2019.

The main resources in the game are Manpower, Ammo, Rations and Parts. A small quantity is acquired over time or by stepping on random nodes, but they are mostly gathered by sending echelons on Logistic Support missions and by completing quests. Ammo and Rations are used to supply T-Dolls in combat, and Manpower and Parts are used to repair damaged T-Dolls (along with Quick Repair Contracts to bypass the repair timer). All four primary resources are used in production, Neural Upgrade, and equipment and Fairy enhancement.

Other necessary resources are: Dummy Cores used for Dummy Linking, Heavy Production and Neural Upgrade, gathered by retiring rare T-Dolls ; Calibration Tickets used to calibrate equipment and Fairies, gathered in Defense Drill ; Batteries acquired daily in the Dorms, used to upgrade the base and train Heavy Ordnance Corps ; And Memory Fragments used to perform Neural Upgrade on T-Dolls. Most resources can also be gathered from completing quests, exploration runs, daily mail and event mail, or purchased with gems in the shop.

For detailed information about production, see T-Doll Production and Equipment Production.

Base

Players can spend their resources outside of combat to upgrade the various features in their base. Some of these features are unlocked after reaching a certain point in the story, or by reaching a certain Commander Level.

The Data Room is used to convert experience surplus into Combat Reports to give experience to T-Dolls and Fairies. The Fairy Chamber unlocks more Fairy Command Points to use in combat and boosts Fairies experience gathering. The Forward Basecamp is used to send T-Dolls and pets in exploration missions and gather various objects and special currencies to spend in the Black Market shop, replenished monthly. The Cafe is used to read the side stories of Neural Upgrades and costumes, and exchange Batteries for promotional videos and official gag comics.

The Intelligence Center produces information samples that are analyzed to gather Enhancement Chips and Central Data for Heavy Ordnance Corps. The Heavy Ordnance Corps can be deployed on some maps from Heavy Helipads to act as artillery support for regular echelons. They are managed from the Garage, where they can be trained to enhance either their level with Batteries and Special Combat Reports or one of their three skills with Training Data. Heavy Ordnance Corps can also receive statistics boost by using Enhancement Chips, and repaired from the Garage.

The Dorms are customizable rooms where T-Dolls in an echelon can live. Only one Dorm is available by default, up to 10 Dorms can be purchased with Gems. Dorms produce Batteries daily depending on their comfort level, which is dependent on the quantity and rarity of the Furniture in the dorm, and the presence of pets acquired in exchange of batteries in the Rescue Station. Furniture is acquired through the second gacha component in the game, which uses Tokens. This gacha is also used to get T-Dolls costumes from limited-time gacha pools, or from the fixed pool called Radiant Collection. Spending tokens on a limited gacha pools will grant Exchange Tickets usable to get a specific item in the pool, and duplicate costumes can be exchanged for Black Tickets usable to get any past or current costume.

For a list of costumes, see T-Doll Costume Index.

Player progression and interaction

The player gains Commander Experience and levels by playing the game, gradually unlocking new gameplay features. The player's avatar can be customized with objects exchanged for Gems in the clothes shop. Quests can also be completed during gameplay, granting various resources and sometimes T-Dolls upon completion. Some quests are refreshed daily or weekly.

Commanders in a friend list can help each other by setting up a friend echelon that can be deployed in most battles. Both the helped and helper commanders receive Friend Points, usable to purchase cosmetic items in the friendship store like ID cards backgrounds and icon, and base backgrounds (these can also be purchased with Gems). A Dorm can be opened to visit by other commanders, where they can get bonus Batteries daily and leave likes for 10 Friend Points. Commanders can also compete in ranked leaderboards in Defense Drill and during some events, but not in direct battle.

For details about quests, see Quests. For a list of customization features, see Commander Customization.

Paid shop

The main source of revenue for the game is the paid shop, where players can purchase Gems to spend on game content. Small amounts of Gems can be gathered from weekly social media sharing and completion of certain quests. The shop sells limited costumes, resources, production contracts, Tokens for the Dorms gacha, surplus Sim Energy for Combat Simulation, commander customization options and infrastructure upgrade, like echelon slots, new Dorm, T-Dolls storage and production slots.

Some limited-time events also let players gather special currencies when playing event missions, which can be spent in the event shop instead of Gems for limited-time bonuses, resources or T-Dolls.

In August 2022 (December 2022 in Global), a monthly battle pass system dubbed Frontline Protocol was introduced. The base tier costs 9.99USD and unlocks basic resources, premium resources and an limited exclusive costume (eventually added into a premium costume shop), and the premium tier at 14.99USD grants more resources.

Plot

The story starts in 2062. The player is a new Commander of the Private Military Contractor Griffin and Kryuger, directing Tactical Dolls in battle. Griffin is tasked with fighting against the T-Dolls of Sangvis Ferri, who rebelled against mankind after the Butterfly Incident, but one special T-Doll in Griffin's AR Team, ^AR M4A1M4A1M4A1, comes at the center of the attention of Sangvis Ferri and other factions as Griffin is drawn into a conspiracy involving Relic Technology.

Aside from the main storyline, Girls' Frontline tells side stories in limited time events, character costumes and the Neural Upgrade feature. The world of Girls' Frontline has been expanded on by Confidential Files and is set 30 years before the game Codename: Bakery Girl, set in the same universe.

For a list of story chapters, see Story. For a list of limited time events, including story events, see Events Overview. For information on the world of Girls' Frontline, see Lore. For events with storylines, see Story Events and Collaboration Events.

Development

History

A screenshot of Girls' Frontline's first beta.

Concept art for AR Team.

Unpublished artworks of Dolls used in a humorous comic in April 2016.

Girls' Frontline can be seen as the fusion of the concepts from MICA Team's previous projects, using both the Sci-Fi war story from the Codename: Bakery Girl game and the light-hearted gun anthropomorphism from the Guns&Girls doujin series. Multiple music tracks in Girls' Frontline are inherited from Codename: Bakery Girl.

Mica Team (incorporated as Shanghai LBX Network Technology Company, and later Shanghai Sunborn Network Technology Company) started development on Girls' Frontline in early 2015. Mica's lead Yuzhong (羽中, a pseudonym) enlisted the help of his personal friend and CEO of Yostar, Yao Meng (姚蒙), who established Shanghai Array Network Technology Company (上海阵面网络公司) to help fund and produce the game. Yuzhong and Yao Meng had previously worked together on a short-lived amateur games fanzine, then on Codename: Bakery Girl in 2013 with Yao Meng's previous company GameMaster. Array was expected to handle distribution of the game and its derivative products and share revenues with Sunborn in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Japan.

The core gameplay of the game was decided based on the absence of a strategy RPG game on mobile, rather than analysis of market data. Sunborn aimed at creating a game with a long lifespan in a niche market segment rather than reusing popular but short-lived concepts. Yuzhong cited Command & Conquer: Red Alert as an inspiration. While the characters in Girls' Frontline were not conceived as anthropomorphic guns, Sunborn used the popularity of military anthropomorphic designs (擬人化) started by Kantai Collection in 2013. Firearms were chosen to differentiate the game from existing warships and tanks-based games. Microtransactions were limited to costumes in a system dubbed “Pay to Look”, in opposition to “Pay to Win”, in order to build the franchise over the years rather than generate profits quickly. An estimated 30 Sunborn members worked on the initial game development. The Japanese voices were recorded at Dax Production in Japan.

The game was first announced on 4 June 2015 with an expected release date for October 2015, then shown during ComiCup 16. The first beta for the game launched on 31 August 2015 with an initial distribution of 500 accounts, and attracted a total of about 6000 people. The second beta launched on 26 October 2015, with an initial distribution of 6000 codes. With 3000 to 4000 players logging in at once, the game's servers crashed for 8 hours due to various technical oversights from Mica Team. About 10,000 activation codes were distributed in total for the second beta. 2 hours after the launch of the third beta on 25 January 2016, the servers went unresponsive for 9 days and problems with the game's Weibo account prevented Mica Team from communicating on the issue during a day and a half. The beta players nonetheless spent around 2 million RMB in the cash shop, expecting their accounts to be transferred in full to the final game. The game was delayed after the third beta, then scheduled for release in Mainland China on 20 May 2016.

Chuapp reported that the game's development was significantly hindered by repeated miscommunication, reduced team sizes, lack of internal skills, unclear distribution of responsibilities, legal disputes and general trust issues between Sunborn and Array. Shanghai Xinfan Asset Management, one of Sunborn's main investors, reportedly pushed Sunborn to end their partnership with Array in favor of Windplay and later Digital Sky, who would become Sunborn's launch partners. The internal debacle was followed by the general public on Weibo and described by Chuapp as the second big public drama on the Chinese mobile games market after Warship Girls R. Due to contractual issues with Array, Sunborn was denied access to data from the third beta and asked beta players to take on a multi-steps verification system to transfer their accounts to the final game. Array ceased operating after the partnership with Sunborn ended. For more than a year after launch, girls-frontline.com, owned by Array, displayed their official response to Sunborn's change of distributor, while Digital Sky operated the address gf.ppgame.com, properly marketing the game (superseded by gf-cn.sunborngame.com in 2020 when the contract with Digital Sky ended).

The game released for Android in 20 May 2016, and for iOS on 7 July 2016. By September 2016, the game had one million accounts with over 200,000 daily active players. As of the game's fifth anniversary, more than 13,400,000 player accounts had been registered.

Skills for the characters Neptunia, Noire and Blanc from Compile Heart and Idea Factory's Hyperdimension Neptunia series dating from early 2018 point to a collab event being considered. Datamined chibi files found in November 2018 revealed that Sunborn had worked on characters Aliasse and Riela, and later Imca, Selvaria, Alicia and Edy from Sega's Valkyria Chronicles series, including normal, swimsuit and Valkyria form chibis, as well as enemies and Technical Fairies based on Isara and Juliana, hinting that a collaboration event had been planned at some point. Soon after, an anonymous source claimed that Sunborn and Sega had cancelled the partnership after Sega pushed contractual terms disadvantageous to Sunborn.

Dormitories and Costumes were added to the game in October 2016, Shotgun T-Dolls in January 2017, Technical Fairies in July 2017, Neural Upgrade in January 2018, Heavy Ordnance Corps in July 2018, Forward Base in August 2019, Protocol Assimilation in March 2020 and Luffberry Chess in April 2021. Mobile Armor was announced during the announcement livestream for Slow Shock and added in September 2023, but it had been teased as far back as 2018 during the 2nd Anniversary livestream. In 2020, lead designer Shaonian had said that vehicles had gone through multiple design iterations but that the developers had troubles coming up with a fun system.

The partnership between Sunborn and Digital Sky for distribution of the game in Mainland China ended in April 2020. Sunborn distributes the game internally in all regions (through its subsidiary Darkwinter Software for the Android release) except in Korea and Taiwan, where it is distributed by local branches of XD Global. On 30 June 2020, it was announced that Girls' Frontline KR changed publisher from XD Global to Young Phoenix. Just four days later, it was announced that the change was just a temporary contract issue and the game returned under XD Global's operation (Young Phoenix later became HaoPlay, operator of Project Neural Cloud KR and Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium).

The game is often included among the foundational titles of Chinese gacha games due to its historical connections with Yostar, who later published influential gacha games Azur Lane and Arknights. Though Girls' Frontline has long been less financially successful compared to competing games and CN players regularly called it a “pill” (药丸, a mobile game soon to end its service) due to technical issues during beta and after, it has regardless continuously received new content since its launch in 2016. This led to Sunborn's reputation as a studio that never closes their games (known as EOS for "End of Service" in the gacha community) whereas even games supported by big IPs struggle to survive past a few years in the gacha market segment.

Following the CN launch of its sequel Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium in December 2023, Girls' Frontline began to setup the final arc of its main story with an in-game message from Kryuger on 6 February 2024. Game files referring to a future main story chapter called Blazar Backscatter were found. The Summer Garden of Forking Paths in April 2024 started a year-long series of small events folded into Episode 15 of the main story. The trailer for the 2024 storyline, titled “Cantor Dust”, was released on 20 May 2024 along with a roadmap up to December 2024. The 2020 Anniversary stream announced that the game is due to continue running alongside its sequel.

On 31 October 2024, new account creation was closed on the CN server and it was announced that the servers would become inactive on 31 December 2024. The reason stated was the failure to negotiate the renewal of a contract with former operator Digital Sky, involving the game's government registration numbers. Compensation schemes for premium currencies were put in place. Sunborn announced that work was already being done to make the CN game playable again and that servers in other countries would be unaffected.

Japanese release

The Japanese Twitter account for the game was created in June 2015, during the original game's development, and announced that a JP server was being considered. The account used the name 少女前線 (Shoujo Zensen), written with the same characters and using the same logo as the TW version (the CN logo was sometimes used by accident). The Japanese release was officially announced in January 2016 to be handled by Wave-Game (who at one point were to handle customer service for the original release) and planned for the same year. Sunborn also planned to open offices in Japan under the direction of Sunborn vice-president Jiao Fuyao, while other regions were managed by the Shanghai branch, but struggled to recruit staff. ^SMG Type 100Type 100Type 100 was announced as an exclusive JP-first unit.

However, the partnership was scrapped and the game delayed due to a trademark dispute where Sunborn Japan engaged in legal proceedings to buy the name Girls' Frontline (少女前線) from its local owners, but was unable to do so as it had been transferred to a third party before the expected transaction date. Fuyao later denounced the dispute as intentionally malicious, aiming to prevent the game from launching in Japan.

After the JP server closed beta test from 10 to 15 July 2018, it was announced on 17 July that the game would officially be called Doll's Frontline (ドールズフロントライン) in Japan. A regional logo was introduced in the announcement and would replace the TW logo in all official JP material afterward, and the game officially released on 1 August 2018. The voice line in Japanese played on the login screen of the game still uses the game's originally planned title.

The original trademark was acquired by Sunborn in Japan on December 2020, but the Doll's Frontline title remained in use.

Story

“	With the [the Gunslinger Girls] collab event, we want to recreate the deep emotions left by the characters in the original work. Girls’ Frontline is a work full of love and hope after all, so surely everyone will get a happy ending in this new story… Surely. (在这次联动中, 剧情有考虑还原原作中少女们最令人印象深刻的经历, 不过毕竟少女前线是一个充满了爱与希望的作品, 所以在联动的剧情中大家都会得到幸福的结局……大概。) — Yuzhong	”

As of Slow Shock, the English version of the main story is 854,849 words long.

One of the inspirations for Girls' Frontline's story is the Gunslinger Girls anime, a two-parts action thriller and drama manga about cyborg assassin girls that left a deep impression on Yuzhong in high school. Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid, Death Stranding) has been quoted as an inspiration for world building, and the inclusion of fantastical elements such as colorful android girls into a detailed post-apocalyptic Cold War world. In a 2020 Q&A, Yuzhong shared that the story was originally planned to end by chapter 10, which ended up being released only a year and a half after the game launched, but that, by that point in time, the game was already popular enough for the story to continue. He shared in a 2017 Gamecores podcast that 20 story chapters were planned, an amount exceeded in 2020. Due to most illustration work being outsourced, story sprites tend to reuse assets for secondary characters.

The early plot was simple, underestimating player expectations and causing negative reviews. Yuzhong became more involved in the writing and introduced more complexity to the story starting with Chapter 6. The plot continued to get more complex as Sunborn tested the limits of player involvement in the story. On Weibo, Yuzhong detailed the difficult process of producing the more ambitious Singularity event and the writing troubles associated with the increased complexity in the interplay of characters and factions. With Chapter 10 released at the end of December 2017 and after a holiday break, the team had less than a month to produce the event before its release date in early February, using the HOC System and image assets prepared in advance. The “Bad End” routes introduced in Continuum Turbulence were planned for Singularity, but had to be abandoned and only the notion of multiple stories unfolding at the same time was kept. The lengthy exposition by Havier in part 3 was originally intended to be pieced together by the players instead, but this would have required too many levels. Part 3 also originally contained three story routes, but they had to be merged into one. Yuzhong announced a slower release pace to increase quality of the next events. He had previously complained about the quality of Chapter 10 not meeting his expectations due to tight time constraints.

In a 2022 interview, Yuzhong described the phases of the writing process: logic structure (logical sequence of events and character motivations), narrative structure (storytelling techniques such as flashbacks and interludes), then polishing (“making the most of each sentence” to create intensity, Dunkirk is used as a stylistic example). Characterization is not a separate part of the process, character traits instead develop from their roles in the story.

The story of Girls' Frontline completes a narrative arc over the course of two to three years of development time. While following the general plot direction already decided, Mirror Stage was made intentionally darker because the writers thought the previous chapter Dual Randomness was too light-hearted, marking the beginning of “the most intense stage of the story”. The writers compared the story of Poincare Recurrence to the show 24, and this event also introduced the notion of the Commander, who is the player character, possessing information unknown to the player. Longitudinal Strain was presented as one of the story's final chapters.

According to then writer Jano, special in-game dialogues for the second anniversary are meant to take place after Singularity. Gunslinger Girl's author Yu Aida confirmed in a Twitter post that the Dream Theatre event was not to be considered canon to Girls' Frontline story. Girls' Frontline official Korean Twitter account acknowledged that they used a version of the story differing from the author's intents.

Girls' Frontline's main story has gained a reputation for being dark and gritty. The ironic quote “Girls' Frontline is a game full of love and hope” (“少女前线是一款爱与希望的游戏”), and the shortened form “Love and Hope” (“爱与希望” in Simplified Chinese, “愛與希望” in Traditional Chinese, “사랑과 희망” in Korean and “愛と希望”　in Japanese), appears in fan communities in early 2020 and became widely adopted by the community after Yuzhong used it in an interview in July 2020, and again in later interviews and in a Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium dev log a year later. According to Yuzhong, this is in line with the overall tone of the story, which he described as “the road is tortuous, the ending is bright” (“道路是曲折的，结局是光明的”). Fans have compared this approach to Gen Urobuchi's "Warrior of Love" (愛の戦士) story pattern. Kim Yong-Ha, producer of Blue Archive, conceived his game in opposition to the dark tone of Girls' Frontline and Arknights' stories.

Prerelease media

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  First trailer stills.
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  Release trailer stills.
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  Original lore introduction (2015-10).
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  Revised lore introduction (2018-2).

• First trailer from ComiCup 16.5
• Release trailer

Derivative works

Girls' Frontline's identity has expanded over a variety of books, animated productions and merchandising articles.

Artbooks

• The Art of Girls' Frontline Vol.1
• The Art of Girls' Frontline Vol.2
• A third artbook was announced in 2021.

The artbooks by Jiaxing Wuyue Digital Media provide details on the design of T-Dolls and other graphical elements, as well as some background on the story, especially in the Confidential Files attached with the Chinese versions. Kadokawa also released two Official Skin Collection artbooks.

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  The Art of Girls' Frontline.
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  Official Skin Collections.
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Manhua

The official manhua adapting the game's story is titled Girls' Frontline: Doll's Song.

Manga

A manga titled Girls' Frontline: The Works of Hiroji Mishima (ドールズフロントライン みしまひろじ作品集) by the eponymous author was published by Dengeki Comics Next. It follows M4A1 as she meets various T-Dolls at a cafe and hears their stories and experiences.

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Animations

An anime series based on the game aired in 2022. Chibi Dolls Theater are parody shorts divided in the light-hearted “Healing Chapters” and more chaotic “Madness Chapters”.

While most PVs for in-game events only use Live2D and lightly animated 3D assets, the PVs for Shattered Connexion (2019) and Polarized Light (2020) contain exclusive animated segments. A first fully animated PV by KJJ Animation was announced during the preview stream for Deep Dive on 21 July 2017, and the final version shown (in low quality) during the 18 May 2018 devlog.

An officially sanctioned 1h45 long fan-animation compilation titled “Burning Griffin” (蹈火狮鹫) was released for 2021 Chinese New Year.

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  Still of Shattered Connexion's PV used in the event story.
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  Still of Polarized Light's PV.
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  “Burning Griffin” logo.

4koma

Artist:AC130 illustrated 4-panels (4koma) humorous and informational cartoons for the game's loading screens at launch, and for the game's social medias. On 25 January 2018, a game client update replaced the cartoons with new ones by Artist:MADCORE. In the same update, the Comic Stand was added to the Cafe, where new comics from AC130 can be unlocked. AC130 and MADCORE's characters and gags were later used in Chibi Dolls Theater.

Girls' Frontline: Trigger Happy (ドールフロントライン トリガーハッピー) is an official Japanese 4koma by tobimura (鳶村), serialized in 11 chapters from December 2019 to June 2020 on the official Japanese Twitter account. It received a paper serialization in Manga 4koma Palette from February to August 2020.

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Comics anthologies

Japanese publishers Ichijinsa and Kadokawa have released comics anthologies under their labels DNA Media Comics and Dengeki Comics NEXT since 2018.

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  DNA Anthologies.
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  NEXT Anthologies.
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Music

Girls' Frontline Original Soundtrack spans more than 200 tracks including collab event tracks, and original songs from the album Girls' Frontline ECHOES. Multiple concerts played the music made for the game.

Merchandising

Like all successful ACG franchises, Girls' Frontline has received many merchandising articles such as figures, acrylic stands, keychains and phone straps, badges and pins, plushies, dolls and cushions, mousepads (including a notable one for ^SG DP-12DP-12DP-12), clothing, bags, umbrellas, fans, stationery and utensils, wall decorations and drinks (including a Collapse Fluid-branded one). Some in-game costumes are sold only along with merchandising products. Merchandising is promoted on Weibo by the IOP Special Goods Department and its mascots Rice and Nico.

Companies who produced Girls' Frontline figures include Hobbymax, Animester, Goodsmile (including Nendoroids #1087, #1146, #1264, #1292 and #1338), Actoys, Ribose, Reverse Studio, Arctech, Bigfirebird and Phat Company. Companies who ran brand deals with Girls' Frontline include Moondrop (wireless earbuds with ^AR QBZ-191QBZ-191QBZ-191), KFC (fast food), Lawson (convenience stores), Nissin (instant noodles) and Happy Zoo (cosplay cafe).

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  Rice and Nico.
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  Nissin instant noodles chibi illustration.
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  Collapse Fluid chilled drink.
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  Liquid-filled rocking acrylic stands with ^RF WA2000WA2000WA2000 and Architect - NVW Model

Girls' Frontline in other games

The Mainland China server for Call of Duty Mobile had a collaboration event on 9 July 2021. The SEA server (“Garena CODM”) received the event on 18 January 2022. It contained a skin for the character Scylla based on ^AR AN-94AN-94AN-94 ; multiple animated weapon skins and accessories based on ^AR Type 95Type 95Type 95, ^AR HK416HK416HK416, ^SMG MP5MP5MP5, ^SMG PP-19PP-19PP-19, ^SMG AUG ParaAUG ParaAUG Para, ^AR M16A1M16A1M16A1, ^HG Desert EagleDesert EagleDesert Eagle, ^SG M1887M1887M1887, ^AR AS ValAS ValAS Val and ^RF Kar98kKar98kKar98k ; a special mission against Dinergates ; and various other small references and easter eggs. Another event titled “Duet” was held on 4 August 2023 on CN and SEA servers, featuring skins of ^AR M4A1M4A1M4A1 and ^AR HK416HK416HK416 for the characters Dusk and Kestrel respectively, an "Impenetrable Wall" Bull Charge operator skill camo based on ^SMG UMP45UMP45UMP45, and weapon skins featuring ^MG MG36MG36MG36, ^AR Ak 5Ak 5Ak 5, ^SMG MP5MP5MP5, ^AR Type 95Type 95Type 95, ^HG Desert EagleDesert EagleDesert Eagle, ^SMG MP7MP7MP7, ^SMG UMP45UMP45UMP45 and ^RF Kar98kKar98kKar98k.

In the FPS Ready or Not by VOID Interactive, markings on the weapons are references to Girls' Frontline:

• The P92X bears the markings GFLHG003, referring to ^HG M9M9M9 (index number 3).
• The G19 bears the markings GFLHG015, referring to ^HG Glock 17Glock 17Glock 17 (index number 15).
• The MP5/10MM bears the markings PN #00026, referring to ^SMG MP5MP5MP5 (index number 26).
• The MP7 bears the markings Id. No: 2:18:00 028, referring to ^SMG MP7MP7MP7 (index number 28).
• The MK18 bears the markings 16148054, referring to ^AR M16A1M16A1M16A1 (index number 54).
• The SR-16 bears the markings GFL IH-3 55, referring to ^AR M4A1M4A1M4A1 (index number 55).
• The MK1 Carbine bears the markings 072219-56, referring to ^AR M4 SOPMOD IIM4 SOPMOD IIM4 SOPMOD II (index number 56).
• The SLR47 bears the markings ☆59, referring to ^SMG AK-74UAK-74UAK-74U (index number 59).
• The F90 bears the markings THF90-073, referring to ^AR AUGAUGAUG (index number 73).
• The G36C bears the markings 95-0104, referring to ^SMG G36CG36CG36C (index number 104).
• The SA-58 bears the markings DSA 00106, referring to ^AR FALFALFAL (index number 106).
• The MP9 bears the markings US 17-0176, referring to ^SMG TMPTMPTMP (index number 176).
• The M11 Compact bears the markings SSPNO186, referring to ^HG P226P226P226 (index number 186).
• The 870 CQB and Beanbag bear the markings S. 000229, referring to ^SG M870M870M870 (index number 229).
• The P90 bears the markings FN000245, referring to ^SMG P90P90P90 (index number 245).
• The SPC9 bears the markings US 21-000341, referring to ^SMG SP9SP9SP9 (index number 341).
• The GA416 bears the marking 65-000404 as a reference to ^AR HK416HK416HK416 (index number 65) being part of Squad 404.
  • The marking GFLSG404 is also found on the B1301.
• The M45A1 bears a QR code displaying the phrase Oya oya, kyo wa nani o shimasu ka? in reference to the greeting quote of ^HG M1911M1911M1911.

From the Glory Day story event, a Girls' Frontline song pack was released for DJMax Respect V for PlayStation 4 on 4 September 2018 and for Steam on 10 December 2020, containing the tracks Barbarous Funera, Frontline and What am I fighting for? and a Girls' Frontline visual skin.

• Steam page for DJMax Respect V - Girls' Frontline Pack

Gallery

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  English logo.
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  Japanese logo.
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  Taiwanese logo (also used for pre-release JP).
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  Korean logo.
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  ^SMG UMP45UMP45UMP45 and ^SMG UMP9UMP9UMP9 chibis used on patch notes.
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  Kalina, ^SMG IDWIDWIDW, ^HG P7P7P7 and ^AR M4 SOPMOD IIM4 SOPMOD IIM4 SOPMOD II chibis used on server issues announcements.

Links

English

• Official website
• Twitter account
• Facebook account
• YouTube account

Chinese

• Official website (Mainland China)
• Official website (Taiwan)
• Official online shop
• Weibo account
• IOP Special Goods Department (Official merchandising Weibo account)
• Bilibili account
• Taiwan Facebook account
• Taiwan YouTube account (Longcheng channel)
• Legacy website (girls-frontline.com)
• Legacy website (gf.ppgame.com)

Japanese

• Official website
• Twitter account
• Medias online shop

Korean

• Official website
• Twitter account

References

Games Released: Girl of the Bakehouse · Codename: Bakery Girl · Girls' Frontline · Project Neural Cloud · Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium · Reverse Collapse: Code Name Bakery Canceled: Girls' Frontline: Glitch Land Anime Girls' Frontline (anime) · Healing Chapter & Madness Chapter Books Guns&Girls · The Art of Girls' Frontline Vol.1 · The Art of Girls' Frontline Vol.2 · Confidential Files · Girls' Frontline: Doll's Song · Others Music Withered · Codename: Bakery Girl Original Soundtrack · Girls' Frontline Original Soundtrack · Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium Original Soundtrack · Project Neural Cloud Original Soundtrack · Reverse Collapse: Code Name Bakery Soundtrack · Girls' Frontline ECHOES · Mankind Is No longer Solitary · Girls' Frontline Concerts Companies Big Firebird and Liverless · Sunborn (Mica Team) · Vanguard Sound · Game publishers Community Community Resources · Community Events Misc. April Fools · List of cultural references · Minigames · Shadow Confrontation