Huge

Several types of Huge attacking a city

The Huge are mysterious life forms that appeared on Earth several decades ago and have indiscriminately attacked humans ever since. They have overrun much of the planet. Lilies fight to protect what remains of the human race from the Huge, as the only ones who can.

The precise nature of the Huge differs between the various Assault Lily stories.

Characteristics

Original Lore

The original description of the Huge applies to the lore pamphlets included with the dolls, the novels by Kasama Hiroyuki, the Dengeki world guide, and possibly some of the stage plays like Schwester's Secret.

The Huge are life forms created by the rampant growth of cells of unusual size, known as Huge cells, that consume and parasitize other living beings. They first emerged around the year 2000, and soon grew to numbers that allowed them to overrun much of the Earth and nearly wipe out human civilization.

While a wide variety of Huge exist, they have the following characteristics in common:

• They are as huge as their name implies, and bullets have difficulty piercing their sturdy, curved armor.
• The most effective weapon against them is the Magi Crystal Force that CHARMs can discharge. A single solid hit from a CHARM is enough to kill weaker types of Huge.
• Huge mount attacks in two primary ways: by flying unseen through the air to their targets, or through interdimensional wormholes known as Caves.

In the present day, one of the main organizations researching the Huge is GEHENA, whose discoveries have made significant contributions to the war against the Huge. One of their notable discoveries are 'Huge particles', a hard-to-detect phenomenon that appears in places where a Cave will form in short order. This has made it possible to make rough predictions of when and where Caves will appear.

After the first Huge nest was observed in Taiwan, they began to rapidly spread and became an extreme threat to almost every inhabited place on the planet. As a country with particularly favorable conditions for the stronger varieties of Huge, Japan in particular suffered greatly from Huge attacks in urban and rural areas alike. Governments and weapons manufacturers worldwide worked tirelessly to develop countermeasures against the Huge, and eventually succeeded in inventing CHARMs. This lead to the rise of Lilies and the Gardens that train and house them.

New Lore

Some of the newer stories such as Assault Lily: Bouquet and Assault Lily: Last Bullet state that the Huge are created directly by Magi, rather than by parasitic cells.

• In episode 3 of Bouquet, Shirai Yuyu says "Huge are normal organisms made monstrous by Magi."
• In episode 7, Futagawa Fumi says "Huge are formed entirely by the power of Magi, so they shouldn't eat anything." Kuo Shenlin adds "Without Magi, a Huge should be unable to maintain its giant body and collapse. The soft tissues decompose into inorganic matter overnight. The bones in a few days."

In the possibly non-canon Last Bullet event The Magic of Promises, Miliam Hildegard von Guropius said that the Huge can only be fought with CHARMs because "the bigger ones have a much more stable connection to Magi", rather than because of their armor.

Despite being created by Magi, the Huge still have cells, which are used by GEHENA to create Boosted Lilies and also to implant aberrations into Lilies. They also have DNA, which contains the DNA of all other life that has ever existed on Earth, including that of humans.

Other Lore

Huge have been known to capture Lilies and drain their Magi to the point of causing them permanent harm. Several Yurigaoka Lilies are captured in this manner in the Last Bullet event Ensemble of the Eldren Valkyries.

In Assault Lily Wunder, the Ultra-type and caves are repeatedly described as supplying the other Huge around with Magi. When the Ultra-type is killed and the Great Cave is destroyed, all the other Huge on Odaiba rapidly dissolve into Magi particles, leaving nothing behind.

In December 2023, the official Assault Lily stage play account posted an image describing the Huge as "life forms from another dimension that suddenly appeared 50 years ago".

Types of Huge

The types of Huge, with people, a tank, an LAC and a gunship for scale.

The Huge are broadly categorized by size in the following fashion: small-type, mid-type, large-type, gigant-type, and ultra-type.

According to the Assault Lily Setting Materials, small-type Huge are smaller than humans. However, following its publication, small-types of up to 3 meters in height have occasionally been depicted. They can be killed relatively easily by a Lily or even a Madec, and soldiers with conventional weapons can also fight them, albeit with greater difficulty.

Mid-types are difficult for Madecs and nigh impossible for other non-Lilies to kill. Large-types and above can only be fought effectively by Lilies.

The formidable gigant-types can usually only be injured with combination attacks such as the Neunwelt Tactic, and individual Lilies can hold them off at best. Ultra-types, sometimes known as the "queen bees of the Huge," are a rare variety with the ability to create new Huge nests. Like gigants, they can only be injured with combination attacks.

Gigant-types did not exist at the time of the Antarctic Campaign. This was one of the things that made male CHARM users (as well as the equivalent of Madecs, who weren't yet called by that name) more viable combatants at the time.

Special-type Huge

Special-types are Huge with abilities that ordinary Huge do not have. These can include the power to divide into multiple identical Huge, contaminate humans with negative Magi that cannot be neutralized through ordinary means, jam radio communications, reflect Neunwelt magispheres with Magi-Reflector, and more. They are often mid-type in size, but significantly harder to defeat than other Huge of their size class, so caution must be taken when fighting them.

The abilities of Special-type Huge can become generalized across the entire Huge population; one theory states that this happens when they survive and grow large enough to build a Nest. This is thought to have begin occurring with Magi-Reflector. For this reason, despite the danger involved in doing so, it's imperative for Lilies to kill every Special-type Huge they discover.

The Seven Great Ultras

Up until the Niigata Recapture, seven Ultra-types that were particularly mighty even for Ultras (making them the strongest known Huge in existence) were known as the Seven Great Ultras. Two of them have since been destroyed, but five remain.

The known members of the Seven Great Ultras are:

• Charybdis, a Restore who has eaten "countless" Lilies. It was recently encountered near the Senba Insular Shelf Nest off the coast of Izu Oshima. Charybdis studied the human and lily it consumed, and then “gives birth” to Rusalka, a Huge with appearance like Lily and can even communicate.
• Hræsvelgr, said to have been involved in the fall of Shizuoka
• Jabberwock, which has its Nest on the fallen continent of Australia
• Nuckelavee, who resides in the main nest of the Fuji Five Lakes group in the fallen Koshuu region.
• Azhi Dahaka, which resembled a three-headed dragon. During the operation to destroy the nests off the shores of Izu Oshima, it appeared near the Inoko Submarine Valley Nest, where it was destroyed by a large alliance of legions from Gardens throughout Kamakura and Tokyo.
• Fafnir, destroyed by the second-generation Legion Álfheimr during the Niigata Recapture. Despite the name, its shape is described as like a centaur.

According to Futagawa Fumi, the Seven Great Ultras already existed during the Antarctic Campaign, but had not yet grown into Ultra-types or even gigant-types (since gigant-types did not exist at the time). Later, Fumi stated the 7 Great Ultras are ‘Restored’, survivors of the Antarctic Campaign.

Nests created by the Seven Great Ultras can cause a phenomenon called "Nest resonance" which causes other Nests to increase in activity. This phenomenon extends for an extremely long distance from the triggering Nest (at least 320 km).

Trivia

• The Huge seem to be capable of surviving in extreme cold, as they have Nests in Antarctica.
• There are two visually distinct sets of Huge used by the Assault Lily franchise: the 'original' designs used in the stage plays and Assault Lily: League of Gardens -full bloom-, and the more mechanical Huge used in Assault Lily: Bouquet and Assault Lily: Last Bullet. It is not known why the Huge design vocabulary was changed for the anime/game.

Gallery

• 
  Artwork from the Dengeki World Guide of the 'original' Huge designs
• 
  A Huge depicted in Assault Lily: Bouquet