Gunjou no Magmell

I hate it. I hate it when anime with potential disappoints me. It’s different when anime I know is bad turn out the way they do. When it comes to promising anime that turns sour is what really irks me. I don’t mean that the anime has a bad ending or something, I mean that there is no ending because the story goes nowhere. Why oh why did Gunjou No Magmel have to be that anime.

Gunjou No Magmel starts out with some potential. You have this huge island appear out of nowhere. Endless adventures and discoveries can be had. The characters are eager to ... explore their surroundings as are the viewers. They throw in tidbits of an overarching story that has remnants of Hunter x Hunter or One Piece. Everything was being set up nicely. The first few episodes do a good job at establishing the world with some self contained one off episodes giving this feeling of anticipation that they are going to launch into something big soon. Halfway through the series and they continue to only show self contained one off episodes. Now I’m starting to get a bit worried. Usually by now a story should be established. Despite this red flag I decide to keep going. A few more episodes pass and now I’m starting to get bored. I now have made the stark realization that there is no story and there never will be. I spoke to fast however as Gunjou No Magmel finally got around to having a story by episode 11. Keep in mind this is a 13 episode series. I cannot stand it when an anime with the potential for a good story decides to abandon it outright in favor of filler episodes and then decides to attempt a half ass story at the very end of the series. Now I don’t have a problem with filler episodes. I understand they are integral to long running series. What I do have a problem with is short one cour series where 90% of the show is filler. That is a problem and unfortunately the show has more.

The characters with the exception of one are completely unlikeable. The main character and his loli partner show potential early on but then show their true colors a few episodes in by harassing an innocent store clerk for shits and giggles. Other than those two you have the store clerk who I initially felt sorry for till I found out he was a creepy old pervert. The rest of the cast appear only once or twice for the filler episodes so they aren’t worth digging into. For all the bad characters though there was one good one. A girl who had a positive attitude and was pleasant to look at. Ironically the best episodes were the ones with her in it.

Nothing really special in terms of music nor is the art and animation. It’s decent I suppose. Doesn’t stand out in a good way or bad way.

Gunjou no Magmel will be remembered as the story that went nowhere. An anime with the potential to be interesting and engaging is ignored in favor of bogging down all the airtime with endless filler. Thanks for wasting my time.

Black hair.
German attire from circa 1935
“Niggard.” — Inyou

I did nazi that coming.

Ever since the days of Lewis and Clark traveling towards the Pacific ocean to partake in as much Native pungtang as they could handle, exploration has been a human fascination. Anime being no exception. Shows like Hunter x Hunter, Made in Abyss, and The Twelve Kingdoms demonstrate the appeal of an adventure in uncharted territories. The latest iteration of this theme, Gunjou no Magmel (Magmel of the Sea Blue), treads a similar path to its forerunners, albeit in a less ambitious, banal fashion. But why does Gunjou no Magmel underachieve?

Each ... episode begins with a new character seeking the aid of an “angler” — a search and rescue specialist in Magmel. Inyou, an aforementioned “angler,” possess a wealth of knowledge concerning the cryptic continent, and impressive magical abilities to boot. However, as opposed to traversing the expansive landscape it conceived for itself, significant portions of Gunjou no Magmel are dedicated toward emotional anguish. This is expected of an environment with immensely powerful creatures. But with the allocation of one episode per individual, the ‘poignant’ stories never blossom as intended. Simply put, the rapid pace hinders the emotional impact it attempted to deliver.

Furthermore, the juxtaposition between the high octane action and methodical somberness did not meld well. Full Metal Alchemist pulled off this tenuous dynamic, but had the benefit of 51 episodes to coax the optimal engagement from the viewer. Unfortunately for Gunjou no Magmel, with only thirteen episodes to work with, the characters fly by without impacting the viewer. As for the two recurring characters, Inyou and Zero, they are archetypal ‘stand-ins’ that yield nothing of consequence. Inyou is an invincible anti-hero who acts supremely confident and spouts useless platitudes to feign intelligence. And Zero is a girl who feels inadequate because her bust is….well, inadequate. Also, they both enjoy pudding. Yet when food preferences serve as characterization, then the writing staff needs to reconsider their priorities.

The action sequences are devoid of tension, along with energy. The Godzilla-like monster in episode two moved at a snail’s pace. Sure, he tossed boulders like baseballs. But the climatic battle did not live up to the expectations. As was the case with the other battles, thus far. Zapping the only potential Gujou no Magmel had at delighting the viewer.

This anime is really bad wherein the trailer and cover will give you a shonen, action or worth story but its not. Theres no plotline and each episode seems a story of its own. The first episode will give a misleading overall story. The character development is really dreadful and theres really no progression. By that i mean you can't really relate to the characters.
There are scene where the a lot of thing left unexplained or maybe it just me. The anime seems trying to establish a plot by having some flashbacks of the MCs life but it doesn't really contribute or help to ... what the anime is trying.
The art is good like what all anime this season. Oh, the music also give a misleading vibe like a serious tone but the scene itself is not really like that.
Overall, don't watch the anime. The art might strike as interesting anime but the story is in all time low. You can't really understand what is MCs purpose, what his goal or it doesn't give a vibe that at the end something worthwhile will happen to him. Watch at your own discretion.

When I first began this anime, it had piqued my interest from the start just by how much potential it was given by the fascinating setting. A new continent "Magmel" had been discovered, which was full of all kind of varieties of beasts, to dangerous plants and who knows what else could be there. But in fact, the mystic part of it would make it exciting and make you curious about exploring the island and figure out new things as you move on. Of course, also all sorts of people wanted to explore this new continent to gain fame, discover new things that could possibly ... make them insanely rich. Here comes the "Angler" whose job is to save those who are stupid enough to get into all kinds of trouble over there. They also possess a really cool power which can pretty much materialize anything. Form simple blocks to something more sophisticated like big mechanic hands, even machinery was an option. It was kind of implied the possibilities where endless. Sadly we never explored it, and it was there from the start with no genuine explanation given.

As you might've noticed by my subtle hints, these possible ideas that could make the anime much more appealing and engaging were just dumped in the trash can and lost all its a mystic vibe in the process. Not to mention, even the character that could offer some form of entertainment. Were used once in their own respective one episode long mini-arc, given some kind of half-assed characterization that didn't do much really. Even then they were an uninteresting and a boring bunch from the start. In the end, they didn't serve any real purpose and just became a means to an end and nothing more. On the other hand, you had Inyou and Zero, who were somewhat amusing but nothing that changed the sad predicament we already were in. The story, in a nutshell, was episodic "monster-of-the-week" format or you could also say it was "which dumb person to save next." In other words, some idiot ventured into Magmell ended up endangering himself or someone else and had to call "Anglers" to rescue them from there. Inyou was one of them, and along with his cute companion Zero, they were up to the task.

However, they also gave us an absurd amount of whacky and useless filler episodes. When we finally got a random villain out of nowhere, he ended up being just plain annoying and nothing special too. It was a depthless effort to try and wrap up the anime, and make the ending give some kind of sense of closure. Most likely also an implication that time wasted up to this point was worth it. But I can assure that's not the case, it ended up being a complete waste of time. The foundation for some nice story-telling was ruined quickly in a matter of three episodes. The first few episodes were somewhat in the clear but were barely hanging on to cliff toward absolute ruin. Art and animation were also average and nothing special in general either. Though, If you want something similar than watch "7seeds" instead, that one was at least entertaining from start to end and had a lot of varieties of characters. Even if the execution and direction for both was undoubtedly a failure. However, stay completely clear from "Gunjou no Magmel," which indeed was a waste of precious hours of my time and thus you can just skip over it altogether.

It's amazing how to pretentious first chapter can be turned into an anime if not bad but neither good in my biggest disappointment of the season. In its first chapter we intend to be animated with a childish touch but with a dark background, good animation, interesting characters with pasts, heartbreaking that would make you think that the real monsters are the same humans, accompanied by a feeling of exploration in a final world full of mysteries and the final result is a childhood anime with humor to rather ungrateful opinion, a generic final that endured a much less tragic ending than the villain of ... the first chapter. While the anime has another good thing, it is the opaque by other points, not very good, what could be the rescue of the relationship of Zero with Inyo, but there is a lot to see that relationship progress. All the characters are quite forgettable and if that were not enough, the soundtrack was not much better. It came to the end with the hope that my opinion has changed and that it has been memorable but it was not like

As I said, my biggest disappointment of the season 4/10

I apologize if there is any error in the writing of this review.

My first impressions of the show were very hopeful. After the first episode, I had the thought that the show would be a grand story about a humble/reserved overpowered hero who fights his way through a dangerous environment...boy was I wrong. Every episode is something new, and not the good new. All the stories feel very rushed and there are no explanation for many things. Besides the main hero and his mysterious master, all the other characters backgrounds are just uncomparable. I hope in upcoming seasons(if there are any), the writers will focus more towards a longer story for the main character instead of having ... a different story with different, unlikable characters every episode.

Why? How? How did this even make it past the publishers?

This show's baselines is based on some very popular and old shounen anime/mangas out there with barely a plot on its own; Toriko, One Piece and HxH influences can be seen from the start, intro gives the vibe of both already away, first filler character is a Killua wanna be then later on even an obvious Toriko reference can be seen as a filler character.

Both female and male MC's lore aside, it's more focused on the discovery of the dark nature of humanity that they get to see during their work time WHILE it's ... also sort of squeeze the relevance of our MCs and MCs back stories in. It's trying to get the audience's blood pumping on the premise of adventure and fantasy with adding a poor attempt at seasoning the show with the dark twists. You can hardly get motivated to feel for the main characters, not to mention side characters, due to the confusing attempt of a build up.
It was a 5-6 of a score until it tried to be humorous as well. The MCs suddenly turn into cancerous "It's just a prank, bruh" characters who're tormenting an average hard working man until he resorts to restore some of the damages that the MCs have done to his life but they sort of kept stalking and bullying him for days after days straight for their own conveniences.

TL; DR: It's trying to hard to be too many things it cannot be since all the details have not been worked out properly. Mainly also has no plot because there's nothing happening that gets you pumped for next episode and MC is as pumped about life as your average salary man.

Art and design is mediocre at best, the mentor reminds me of tegami bachi & HxH (radiating the I'm a calm and collected mentor aura), male MC reminds me of the MC from a tennis anime whose catch phrase is "mada mada dane" , there are already so many official references being made based on story, there's really hardly anything original that stands out about their design, and I'm looking hard here to find anything, okay? That goes as well as for the characteristics, it fully radiates the all to very much "I've seen this somewhere" vibe.

Down the line, all of these points together make the show hardly enjoyable and overall since it doesn't make any sense of what it's trying to do here either. The oblivious scenes of trying to gain empathy from the viewers makes me eye roll instead, the fighting scenes are plain paired up with the equally "I've heard this somewhere before" vibe of BGM.

I couldn't watch on anymore after sitting through half of it, but skimped through till the end and the show kept it's consistency of just being purely poorly made. If you would want to give it a go, I'd recommend to watch it with the minimum of expectations one can hold for a show.
.
.
.
No srsly, how did this make it past the publishers?
And considering it made it's way to animation studios and gets produced by Shueisha it's a big why & how.

First of all let me start by telling that I am the kind of guy that enjoys a good story so the story weighs heavy in my overall enjoyment of the show. I like to see a thread connecting each episodes due to a plot unfolding or a secret being uncovered to deliver the viewer one hell of a good time.

Gunjou no Magmel honestly had me hyped. A story about pretty much an alien island filled with unknown goods variating from species to fruits with certain extra's. With that we get presented one hell of an amazing looking and acting main character and his ... side-kick, a strange but interesting girl that usually guides our mc around with her robot.

Our mc has made quite the reputation and great high status for him in a positive way. This is mainly due to his teacher though. This leaves space for great back story content.

Since the island is so dangerous a lot of people ask the mc help for his services which comes at a price. His adventures on the island is extremely interesting due to the mc having loads of knowledge about the island and the inhabitants. There are so many mysteries surrounding the island and the mc especially the connection between the two! Or three if you count his side kick. She is extremely talented, knowledgeable and fun!

BUT... this show isn't about all that. Most shows usually start by getting the audience familiar with the daily routine of the mc and potentially his friends/others involved to the plot. Here it is the mc doing his daily things (won't spoil it for you). So 2-3 episodes pass and this is where shows will show you that something is happening that forces the mc to not live his daily routine any longer! This is all based on a basic story structure that has proven to be successful, interesting and fairly enjoyable for both the writer and reader/viewer. This is called "Hero's journey". Feel free to google it to find a great summary about it to understand it.

So after the mc is introduced to something that isn't his daily routine the plot will begin and the story starts to unfold. This combined with a mysterious island, people with ridiculous abilities and a mc with quite a hefty reputation.. sounds like the ingredients for a quality show right?

The show however doesn't get past the point of daily routine. This show is only about his daily routine. There is no plot. There is no story. It is just a character with certain powers, a sidekick and a mysterious island doing daily things. Nothing more than that. The mc doesn't have a goal and won't get one. Each few episodes consists of small missions that are unique to each other. The only connection is the mc and his sidekick and the island. But we will never learn anything useful about these 3. We learn more about the people involved in his daily routine.

Since I love stories I can't enjoy this show since there is none. Even if it was a show with an unique story (or more) per episode I would rate it a lot higher. I am confident that not many people share my thoughts and opinion so I do suggest to watch the first 3 episodes. What you see is everything you will get. It won't get better, it might get worse depending on the "mission". If you enjoy it then you should watch it.

I find it extremely difficult to describe that this show has no story, but just boring daily routines from someone. But I hope I got my point across. This is because the summary is extremely misleading. There is no actual exploration at unknown grounds (from character perspective). The continent already exists for quite some time and plenty of people in this show know it, so it isn't brand new.

The synopsis tricked me into being hyped for nothing. Hope it won't do the same for you. If you enjoy these type of shows, you might be able to rate it more fair than I can, have a blast.

Do note that only the story is non existent. The art is stunning! Animations are great as well. Sound effects are fitting and good. Characters are extremely interesting, but there is no development, meaning you will learn pretty much nothing of value, making them mediocre at best. This combined with no story gives me a hard time in enjoying this show. If those 2 don't matter to you then the show might easily hit a 7-8 for overall enjoyment. For example if art and sound were bad, but there was a great story + character development present I would rate it 7+ as overall enjoyment. That is because I don't care as much for animation + sounds as story and character development.

The story premise of discovering and exploring a new part of the world is very interesting and has been used before in anime like Hunter x Hunter or Made in Abyss. But unlike those anime Gunjou no Magmel doesnt succeed in making the story and characters flow together or even make it seem interesting. The first episode gives you a false view of the anime because it starts the set up for a coherent story line and it starts of amazingly good. But then every other episode is almost the exact same! Every episode starts off with the introduction of a new character, then our ... main character Inyou goes off to save them. The anime barely uses the environment, which seems very interesting, but it is almost never used and explored.

The anime also lays heavy emphasis on the emotional part and uses a lot of flashbacks. There is barely any action and when there is a part that has action it cuts off very suddenly and gives you no satisfaction.

The characterzations of our main characters Inyou and Zero are also very poorly done. Once in a while there is a small flashback that gives us some information about them but even 8 episodes later we still know nothing about their motivations, dreams, likes, dislikes and their past. The only characterzation that is used almost every episode is what food they like or dislike or that theyre broke. The abilities that they have are also never explained as to what exactly it is or why they have them.

The animation and music are the only good things in this anime. The animation is pretty good and fits the aesthetic of the anime and story. It also flows really good when there is an action part but on some of the characters the animation just doesnt fit. The music is also pretty good overall, but with some moments it almost seems as if music parts were switched around and where it should be more peacefull or suspensfull music there are action filled beats and visa versa. The opening sequence of the anime is also amazingly good. The animation that spins around, the neon highlights and the music choice all fit together.

All in all I would only recommend to listen to the opening because the rest really isnt worth your time.

The story of this anime is just dreadful. Man, I can't see how you could have started off a kind of interesting plot into something so boring. And worst of all, it's pretty episodic, which makes it worse. I have absolutely no interest in the main character or his side kick, and nor do I care to learn about his edgy past in store.
The individual episodes don't really make for anything engaging, and story is nowhere to be seen.
Instead of one long story arc, this anime loves to have individual small arcs that are all equally bad so as to play it safe and ... make it so that there is no creative input available.
Everything is poorly written and the plot is nonexistent. You'd wish that there was a semblance of pacing, but things are quickly rushed through to go through the motions rather than trying to have any meaningful story.
And the OST...the OST. What was this abomination of a soundtrack? Literally every episode and half of all the soundtracks have an er hu (Chinese instrument). Why is a Chinese instrument the soundtrack of choice, and why are you slapping it on every scene regardless of context? It's excessively so on the "edgy" scenes, but it doesn't even fit those either. Just why? I really don't care for sound tracks unless they are amazing or just terrible, and I'm proud to say that this anime has by far the worst soundtrack I have ever watched in my 13 years of watching anime.
Like I said before, I have no investment in the main characters since there is minimal interaction or development among them. Rather, they serve as a backdrop to the new character appearing in the episode.
An overall mess to something that could have been pretty good with the synopsis and setting. How unfortunate.

Disguises itself as a Hunter x Hunter clone but in reality is a generic, forgettable mess. The gist of the plot is this: some new continent suddenly appeared and people want to explore it. Are we given any information as to why this happened? No, of course not. The characters are beyond bland and can be described completely by their character archetype. There’s over powered main character Inyo whose powers are never fully explained then there’s token loli Zero who, of course has a crush on the protagonist. There’s other characters but they aren’t developed enough to even qualify as real characters and none are ... particularly important to the overall story. If you can even call it that.

The show is episodic and most episodes aside from the last couple have little to no connection with the other so in all honesty you can watch the first and last episodes without having missed anything. I actually recommend you do that and save yourself some time.

Wow.
It's sad how much potential has been wasted.The idea of ​​such a world is quite creative and would also be very good for an exciting story, but you have an average to bad story with average characters.

I am an emotional person, especially when it comes to music and anime. And there was almost no scene where I felt anything. Neither sadness nor absolute happiness.

The music in the anime was pretty okay. Nothing that stays in the head, rather average. The Japanese voice actors were pretty good. The German voice actors were dull and boring.

The animations were okay at the beginning, a bit flat ... but okay. At a certain point the animations just got boring and bad. At some point you couldn't really enjoy it anymore.

Let me start off by saying, I usually have certain expectations by different genres, an action is supposed to hype me up in some ways and an adventure is supposed to sparkle my imagination...

That being said, when a series doesn't make true on those expectations, I'm certainly dissappointed, and an action adventure like this is therefore an utter dissappointment for me.

Gunjou no Magmell is a series about a new continent popping up in the pacific with all kinds of alien creatures which ushers in a new age of exploration. The problem is just that the creatures of Magmell are all Australia on steroids, everything can ... and will kill you. This hasn't stopped people from going there though because the continent will make you rich if you take only one thing back from it.

I think that's really cool, a dangerous and unexplored continent will certainly fill the abyss in my heart that made in abyss left 2 years ago. It's a shame that this series doesn't make up on it.

The story follows some guy who rescues people from the continent who are stuck there, he's the only one seemingly able to stand his own in Magmell because he has been trained by some mysterious predecessor of his in the art of creating things with thunder power or something. Now that's also cool I guess, there's the continent to explore, there's his back story to explore... But... It doesn't do that, and I think that's where this series fails.

As I said in the beginning, an adventure is supposed to sparkle my imagination, Made in Abyss did that with its mysterious and increasingly dangerous world, it leaves me asking questions about it. Hunter X Hunter did that the exact same way. This series just makes me tired.

I think that's due to a few factors, firstly, its episodic nature. Every episode someone else is being rescued by the main character, with that, the new character needs to be introduced, his/her family needs to be introduced etc. That's all time wasted which you could have spent on exploring the world or exploring the questions you have about the main character, instead it's a kind of monster of the week format.

Funny thing is though, the monster of the week is actually the human. This is more of an environmental series. It's about our impact on the world and the evilness of humans, not the idea of adventure. And... That's fine, I'm glad even, because we need environmental messages with climate change deniers being elected all around the planet... But could you at least make it more intriguing??

I think a series could be environmental in some ways and still be an interesting adventure anime. This season even has another anime with an adventure/evil of humans focus: Dororo, which does execute its message well. This one though is just predictable and boring, almost every episode is like:
Generic character: "Help me Angler guy (he's nicknamed the angler or whatever), my _____ is stuck in magmel rescue him please. " ->They go to the continent after the main character is being kind of difficult about it. -> Turns out the character they need to rescue is poaching spooky but cute animals in Magmell. -> Character gets sense beaten into him/her and/or dies in some ironic way.

Now I don't want my action adventures to be predictable in that fashion, this series has just failed to intrigue me in every single way. And therefore failed as an adventure anime in my eyes.

For the rest, I guess I could go on about the sloppy writing, poor comedy, and its lack of success when it actually does try to intrigue you, it's poor action scenes, which it all has... But yeah... You get the point by now. Don't watch it if you like action adventure the way I enjoy it.

This show is episodic and every episode is basically the same theme.

Mother Nature is weird and beautiful and we shouldn't disturb it, then comes something disturbing mother nature on this new crazy continent it made. Then the Eco-terrorist (as I like to call them) of the episode gets punished in some way.

Then it goes on like that for every episode except the last 2, where it decides to have a plot? The 2 part episode however, is the exact same format as every other episode except there is more exposition on the main characters. Then it ends.

Neat concept for an anime. Terrible execution. Repetitious ... pacing. I'm generally not a fan of episodic modern anime unless it's a comedy or something not serious.

At first this anime seems promising. I have an absolute obsession with characters that overpowered or at least very powerful and any type of exploring a new world anime catches my eye.

In the first episode we are shown an interesting setting and characters that have a cool attitude and some pretty good character designs.

I think this anime went wrong when decided not to tack on any story. With a few episodes the anime looses any momentum it had in the beginning as you slowly begin to realize that the story isnt going to come. Each conflict in an episode is pretty much solved in ... the same episode. The existence of the setting is never really well explained and they dont go more in depth with it after the beginning. They attempt to give the main character a back story with some flashbacks, but he never becomes a relatable character.

If you like any kind of story in your anime, rewatch some other anime, as you'd be wasting your time with this one.

The terribly drawn characters, old-school style huge eyes, and overly lazy skimping on animated parts I could get over. What I find particularly annoying is the scrooge type trope that is added in for no reason and the character that without the slightest guilt or humanity through negligence causes the death of his client, a boy, without a care. Meanwhile the author is basically trying to tell us he is cool and awesome and secretly a good guy. NO, I'm sorry. An author trying to jam down my throat that it's cool and secretly good to abandon a weak sick boy ... in the most dangerous woods on Earth, get him killed, and then walk off is not my idea of entertainment or a good story. Were I to continue beyond this episode I would merely be hoping that the author torture the main character in hopes that he somehow grows a conscience and becomes sufferably bearable.

Gunjou no Magmell is an adventure anime in which a boy and a girl take on assignments related to the island of Magmell, a place isolated from the world where the flora and fauna are very different from normal.

The first episodes narrate the first missions of the protagonists. As the series progresses, they explain the background of some characters.

My opinion:
Plot → Typical anime in which each chapter develops a mission, except for some in which they explain the origin of the protagonist. Nothing relevant or interesting happens.
Setting → Nothing to highlight.
Characters → No characters stand out and their backgrounds are nothing special.

Conclusion: In general, it ... was a boring anime for me, because it gives the feeling that there is no interesting plot to follow. It is a generic anime with nothing to contribute.