Rifle Is Beautiful
Rifle Is Beautiful, also known as Chidori RSC, is a Japanese shooting sport four-panel manga series by Salmiakki. It was serialized online via Shueisha's Tonari no Young Jump website from April 2015 to July 2020, and was collected in six tankōbon volumes. It follows a young incoming high school student who is excited to join her school's shooting club, which was shut down, only for her attempts to revive it.
An anime television series adaptation by studio 3Hz aired from October 2019 to January 2020.Plot
Hikari Kokura, a passionate marksman, enrolls at Chidori High School, which has a ISSF [10 meter air rifle|target shooting club], but discovers the club was dissolved due to a lack of members. She restarts the club by finding three new members to join her, with the goal of making it into a national competition.Characters
Chidori High School
Asaka Academy
Other characters
Media
Manga
Rifle Is Beautiful, written and illustrated by Salmiakki, began on Shueisha's Tonari no Young Jump website on April 9, 2015, and it ended on July 2, 2020. Shueisha has compiled and published its chapters into six individual tankōbon volumes from May 19, 2016, to September 18, 2020.Volume list
Anime
An anime adaptation was announced in the 46th issue of Weekly Young Jump magazine on October 18, 2018. The series was animated by studio 3Hz and directed by Masanori Takahashi, with Tatsuya Takahashi handling series composition, and Ken Mukaigawara designing the characters. It aired from October 13, 2019, to January 18, 2020, on Tokyo MX, SUN, KBS, and BS11. The series' opening theme song is "Let's go! Rifling 4!!!!", while the series' ending theme song is "Yūyake Friends", both performed by Rifling 4. The series ran for 12 episodes.International release and distribution
Chidori RSC is licensed in North America through Sentai Filmworks and streamed on its Hidive platform. An English dub starring Brittney Karbowski and Juliet Simmons premiered on Hidive on December 28, 2020, with the Blu-ray released via Section23 Films on December 15, 2020. In the United Kingdom, MVM Films licensed the series and was released on Blu-ray on April 12, 2021. Anime House has licensed the series in Germany.Episode list
Reception
had four editors review the first episode of the anime: Theron Martin found the artistic qualities "nothing special" but gave praise to the main cast's comedic delivery and detailed information about laser-target rifles, calling it a "light-hearted diversion with enough humor to make it work." James Beckett found the plot, characters and production overall to be "blandly competent" and found little interest in the show's subject matter, saying it will probably cater only to an all-girl slice-of-life audience; Nick Creamer commended the "visual execution" of the humor delivered and the camaraderie amongst the main cast feeling believable, but gave note of the "stilted scene transitions, uneven jokes, and total predictability of structure and characterization" throughout the episode, saying it will only appeal to fans of the slice-of-life genre. The fourth reviewer, Rebecca Silverman, felt the plot was barebones and lacked urgency so that the girls' personalities can bounce off one another while using the rifles as more of a background setting.