A Look at “Spin Gacha, Recruit New Comrades, and Build The Strongest Army of Beautiful Girls!!” Manga

Various Title Names

• ガチャを回して仲間を増やす 最強の美少女軍団を作り上げろ
• Gacha o Mawashite Nakama o Fuyasu Saikyou no Bishoujo Gundan o Tsukuriagero (romaji)
• Spin Gacha, Recruit New Comrades, and Build the Strongest Army of Beautiful Girls!! (literal translation)
• You Increase Families and Make Beautiful Girl Army Corps, and put it up (official English subtitle of the Japanese release)
• Gacha Girl Corps (Short title)

As many of you know, I play the gacha game Fate/Grand Order. I believe it was during one of my live-streams of playing that game that I received a recommendation to check out this manga. What brought Spin Gacha, Recruit New Comrades, and Build the Strongest Army of Beautiful Girls!! manga to the top of my “must check out” list was its parody connection to Fate/Grand Order.

The Story, in Brief

A young man named Heihachi Okura (not sure which is the family name) is addicted to a gacha battle game called Girls Corps, where one collects cute female, fantasy characters and does battle. Despite being low on money, he still spends ¥5000 to attempt to get the new mage character, Luna-chan. Okura is excited when the gacha roll gives him an ultra-rare loot box. However, instead of Luna-chan, he gets a letter inviting him to another world.

Okura accepts the invitation and finds himself transported into the Girls Corps game world. Shortly after he arrives, a goblin attacks Okura, forcing him to flee. He climbs a tree and finds the game app on his phone works, but he’s a level 1 character. However, he has the premium currency to roll a gacha with a guaranteed good pull. He discovers that the items pulled in the gacha become physical objects. As such, since he pulled the  sword-woman Norl Fanya, he summons her.

With that, Norl teaches Okura the basics of how things work in the real game world, which are somewhat different to how the gacha game played. Further, although he can use the game app on his smart phone to do summons and such, he cannot spend actual money to get what he wants. As such, Okura has to go the free-to-play route, only with the notion of saving premium currency to get ultra-rare loot. And that means he and Norl have to grind like mad if he wants a chance at getting another girl to join his party.

Gacha Parody

While it is true that there are parody elements to Fate/Grand Order in Gacha Girl Corps, it is more accurate to say that this manga series is a generalized, fantasy gacha parody series. This manga series, which is an adaptation of the light novel of the same name, written by Chinkururi, isn’t anything particularly special. The story is somewhat generic, with Okura and Norl doing things until they finally pull the ultra rare mage Estelle to join their party.

However, for those of you who play fantasy gacha games, there is a certain level of humor in seeing a gacha addict being forced to manually grind for the premium currency needed in order to make those gacha pulls during rate-up gacha events. Further, the first chapter touches on the mindset the Japanese have toward gacha and fandom in general. Basically, one spends all of one’s money on whatever thing you are a fan of. In this case, it was the fantasy gacha game.

The Fate/Grand Order parody elements comes from the character, Norl. She’s a sword-woman, similar to Saber Artoria in the Fate franchise. She even starts to say Saber’s infamous line after being summoned. And Norl loves food in the same way Saber does. But that’s pretty much where the FGO parody ends. Other fantasy gacha games take over from there.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

If Seven Seas licensed Gacha Girl Corps, and retained the Japanese honorifics, I would buy the series. For me, the gacha parody elements are amusing, though not laugh out loud funny. HARUNO Shuu’s artwork is pleasant to look at. While the stories aren’t anything to write home about, I found them entertaining enough to want to keep reading more. And there’s a tiny, harem aspect to the series.

Note: To date, three volumes of the manga have been released in Japan. I only read the first 14 chapters. The source light novel contains at least four published volumes and 124 published chapters.