Ash Echoes' New Gacha Cards Hit With BL Content Scandal — Players Furious Over 'Bait-and-Switch' in a Supposedly General-Audience Game

Cards that were rumored to be axed? Still shipped — Ash Echoes just trampled all over its 'general audience' claim.

Here's the deal: Ash Echoes previewed new gacha cards showing two male characters in suggestive, intimate poses — clearly BL (Boys' Love) coded. Rumors had swirled earlier that the dev team would scrap these cards due to controversy, but they went ahead and released them anyway. The OP fired off, claiming this is definitive proof that 'general-audience' (一般向) games in China are basically just LGBT content in disguise.

The comment section can be summed up in one word: **hideous**. One player bluntly said 'the art is genuinely ugly — a normal person would puke seeing it.' Another wrote 'I don't even mind BL content but I can't stand how UGLY this is.' A fan-favorite comment? 'It just looks... smelly.' The art quality crashed before the ideology debate even started.

But it's not just about aesthetics. Some pointed out these are legacy characters from the old GuJian (古剑奇谭) MMORPG, accusing the devs of sneaking in BL bait through nostalgic IP. Others took aim at the marketing: 'My Bilibili homepage keeps shoving this game in my face, but they never once mentioned it had BL content' — comparing the strategy to a scam operation, luring unsuspecting players in with false advertising.

A few players tried to defend it, saying this aesthetic is 'not uncommon' in the Chinese historical fantasy (古风) art community. They got shut down immediately — 'For anime-style (二次元) fans, this is way too much. Slap this on promotional material and tons of people will nope out.' Someone even quipped with a meme caption: 'The blessing of playing games alongside extreme fujoshi (XXN).jpg'.

Bottom line: Ash Echoes managed to trigger two landmines simultaneously — aesthetically questionable card art AND the perception of hiding BL content inside a 'general audience' gacha without proper disclosure. The comment section is one big chorus of 'wish it dead on arrival.' The window for Ash Echoes to turn this around? Looking mighty slim.