While one glance at Miresi: Invisible Future's curvaceous art style might solidify your opinion, there's more to this upcoming gacha game than meets the eye. If you've ever defended Genshin Impact before, because beneath the anime girl slot machine sits a truly compelling gameplay experience, you're prepared for what I'm about to say. This game has some deep, enjoyable combat mechanics beneath all the potential gooning.

I went hands-on with Miresi: Invisible Future and spoke with creative director Se Woong Kwong, project director Sun Gu Cho, and art director Hyung Sup Kim at Anime Expo 2026 to pull back the curtain on the game's inspiration, art style, and more.

Embracing Its Provocative Style

Simply glancing around the Miresi: Invisible Future's booth made one thing absolutely clear: this game has a very seductive art style. And the rotating images at AX 2026 showing off some of the protagonists and their incredible fabric physics let me know exactly what it’s going for - to be sexy, stylish, and eager to pull players in.

I spoke to art director Hyung Sup Kim for insights on how exactly the team approaches character design and which aspects are prioritized. "There's a story behind each character and their personality,” he tells me. "Miresi’s top priority is art quality, but also because it's a game, keeping it fun is just a given."

There’s no doubt that the art style is going to be precisely what appeals to certain audiences while repelling others, but a game for everyone is a game for no one. The team is leaning into the art style as a major hook considering how much of the genre tends to operate, but that’s far from the only thing that Miresi: Invisible Future has going for it.

While an attractive art style is often an easy way to grab attention, games without substance typically shrink and fade away in the highly competitive gacha game landscape. So if you're going to lean into a highly specific aesthetic, as Miresi does, then you're going to need to back it up with fun mechanics – or an engaging story.

If the brief taste I got from AX was any indication, Miresi: Invisible Future might have both. While there's still plenty of time for the story to unfold even after release, the game's combat system connects to it directly through the concept of time travel.

Taking Inspiration From An All-Time Great

As we dove deeper into the concept of time in Miresi: Invisible Future, the developers likened the system to Chrono Trigger – a major source of inspiration for their rules of time-travel.

"It is derived from Chrono Trigger. So in Chrono Trigger, the players go back to the past to change the future, and you can see how it is changed. So that's basically the same with Miresi," Sun Go Cho explains. "And sometimes they already know what the future looks like. So they actually go back to the past to change that future." With that cleared up, you might be wondering what this means for the combat itself.

During combat, you control a party of up to four characters, whose abilities are all on timed cooldowns, visualized by a progress bar at the bottom of the screen featuring moving portraits of each party member. However, you can also manipulate time during battle to your advantage. "If you make a mistake, there is a button that lets you just go back [and change] your moves," Cho tells me.

In addition, the team explains that there's a progression system for increasing your ability recharge rate, allowing you to unleash more powerful attacks more often. However, you won't be able to unleash your Ultimate attack all the time, meaning you'll need to interweave your regular attacks and effective dodging to create openings and deal major damage. These nuanced mechanics create the opportunity to use powerful ability combinations to maximize your damage output.

Combine a promising combat system that ties into a time-travel adventure with Miresi's captivating looks, and there are plenty of reasons to be excited about it. While it's far from a sure thing that the potential delivered during the demo will carry over to the full experience, I’ll be crossing my fingers until it launches later this year for iOS, Android, and PC.