Granbelm

Long ago, magic was abundant and enriched the lives of all people until its usage in war. To end the chaos, seven of the most powerful mages gave up their lives in order to seal all magic. Now, almost one thousand years later, their magic seal Magiaconatus hosts Granbelm, a monthly series of battles meant to determine who among its participants is worthy of the title of Princeps, the one true mage.

On the night of a full moon, high school student Mangetsu Kohinata is suddenly transported to an illusionary world where six mages are participating in Granbelm. Mistaken for an enemy mage, Mangetsu is attacked by two mages until she is rescued by Shingetsu Ernesta Fukami and her Armanox Viola Katze. However, when Shingetsu is ambushed for protecting her, Magiaconatus grants Mangetsu the Armanox White Lily, allowing her to fight off Shingetsu's assailant. Overwhelmed by the revelations presented to her, Mangetsu decides to help her new friend fight in Granbelm and make her wish come true.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Characters & Voice Actors

Fukami, Shingetsu Ernesta

Main

Tanezaki, Atsumi
Japanese

Kohinata, Mangetsu

Main

Shimabukuro, Miyuri
Japanese

Hakamada, Suishou

Supporting

Yuuki, Aoi
Japanese

Rin, Nene

Supporting

Kubo, Yurika
Japanese

Tsuchimikado, Shisui

Supporting

Tamura, Yukari
Japanese

Fugo, Anna

Supporting

Hikasa, Youko
Japanese

Rosa

Supporting

Akasaki, Chinatsu
Japanese

Tsuchimikado, Kuon

Supporting

Iwami, Manaka
Japanese

Kohinata, Kibou

Supporting

Akao, Hikaru
Japanese

Rin, Mimi

Supporting

Kasuga, Nozomi
Japanese

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Staff

Kamei, Hiroshi

Producer

Nagatani, Takayuki

Producer

Nakamura, Hiroshi

Producer

Watanabe, Masaharu

Director

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Opening Theme

"Tsuki wo Ou Mayonaka (月を追う真夜中)" by Eir Aoi

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Ending Theme

	1: "Negai (願い)" by Uru (eps 1-6)
	2: "Scenery" by Uru (eps 7)

Reviews

Sep 27, 2023

EatKimchi

Recommended

TL;DR: Watch Granbelm if you want a dark magical girl show that not only delivers a healthy dose of screaming anime girls battling to the death in mechas but also delivers a compelling story about identity and what it means to be remembered.

Long review:
You ever just watch Madoka Magica and think, "man, if this anime had mechs in it and had them fight in a battle royale, it would be perfect"?

And then said anime comes out and not only does it live up to your expectations, it also sets itself apart as something wholly unique and special?

That's Granbelm. In 2019, Masaharu Watanabe, just finishing up ... the then-most recent season of critically acclaimed fantasy isekai anime Re:Zero, teamed up with a couple of other notable figures in the Japanese animation industry (original character designer Shinichirou Ootsuka, script writer and series composer Jukki Hanada, among others) to bring us what I unironically think is one of the best entries to ever come out of the magical girl genre.

Yes, it's derivative; on first glance, it's yet another edgy and dark magical girl show that does yet another take on the subgenre that Madoka popularized. Here's the thing, though: while other dark magical girl shows stumbled and fell, Granbelm more than exceeds.

Take one of the largest pitfalls of said genre, for instance: the tone. Dark magical girl shows tend to take the wrong lesson from Madoka episode 3 (cough cough magical girl raising project cough cough mahou shoujo site cough cough) and dump an excessively dark and edgy tone on their viewers from the beginning. While that's not inherently a wrong approach, it will very much alienate a good portion of viewers who view said "edginess" as weakness in storytelling. Why do those same viewers like Madoka so much then? Moderation in use of said tone. Madoka didn't dump despair and death on its viewers from the beginning: it eased them into it, even with sudden jumps like episode 3. It knew when to use tone to its greatest narrative advantage and it's a lesson that similar successful dark mahou shoujo shows, like Yuuki Yuuna, and now Granbelm, learnt and used well. There's time for levity, and time for overbearing seriousness, and Granbelm manages both well.

The characters are also top-tier. One of the main characters, Mangetsu, simply has a manic, hyper energy about her that simply makes her interactions with the other characters, in particular the other main character, Shingetsu, fun to watch. Shingetsu, quite frankly, is the typical dark mahou shoujo protagonist archetype that Homura from Madoka popularized: an emotional stone wall that's "cool" and "stoic". The creative minds behind Granbelm knew that having yet another Homura-like would not guarantee success, and they ingeniously decided to pair her up with a manic character type like Mangetsu to wring out the emotions. I personally believed it works: as a result, the dynamic between the two main characters never gets stale or boring, and investment in how these two characters' stories turn out becomes quite easy. The other participants in the battle royale are surprisingly quite decent in the character-building front as well; even the characters like token Chinese girl Nene and stereotypical shrine maiden Kuon get much more development than they needed. The standouts are obviously Anna and (best girl) Suishou; Anna is very much unlike any villainous character type seen in any magical girl show, and her story in Granbelm is compelling in how it unfolds and clashes with the main pair's paths. Suishou is best girl. There is no argument, there is no bias whatsoever.

The plot and themes, however, are what made Granbelm go from just another seasonal show for me to a personal favorite that I can't help but think about every other day. Granbelm didn't have to make a deep plot; its fellow members of the dark mahou shoujo subgenre, like Yuuki Yuuna, settled for "SUFFERING IS THE BEST PLOT" and found great success. However, evidently the Re:Zero director had enough of that with his primary work, so he decided to actually have Granbelm's characters suffer for a purpose and a distinct theme. And he over-performs. Identity is the connecting word of Granbelm, and the core of every single character's struggles as they battle each other. The plot greatly benefits from it, making the emotional beats and fights more impactful than they would've been with a normal genre plot. Even the typical twists and "edgy" moments that you'd expected from a dark magical girl show factor back to this theme, and it makes those moments so much more powerful. The staff of Granbelm clearly had a vision for what they wanted to say with the show, and it very much works in its favor.

The one "weak" point, although this may be up to your mileage, is the animation. The animation, performed by Studio Nexus, is more than up to the task for the characters and plot: the characters are very animated and fun to watch, and the animation helped supplement the engaging plot for the entirety of the show. However, Studio Nexus decided to animate the entire show with hand 2d animation, rather than relying on any CG as the majority of mech shows do that are not named Sunrise. In my opinion, this animation style is good, even rising to exceptional as needed. However, as a 2019 anime, in an era where Sunrise has set the standard of mecha fights in Gundam and related works, the 2d animated style used by Nexus may not be enough depending on your tastes. For me, it worked; for others, it may not, and that's totally fair.

If you liked Madoka Magica and the subgenre it created, or hell, even think that any aspect of this show sounds interesting, I implore you to give it a try. I sure as hell am glad I did; I nearly dropped this show on episode 1, as did justifiably many others when the show first came out, but something kept me coming back each week, and I'm so glad I kept with the show. This show is the entire reason why I keep trucking through seasonal anime looking for those hidden nuggets of quality, and is a big part of my faith that small anime studios still can create compelling stories outside of the 999th generic isekai or the 450th CGCDT adaptation.

As a certain redhead once said: "There's no rule saying that an imitation cannot defeat the original."

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May 11, 2020

Himahito12

Mixed Feelings

Welcome to Grammar Nazi Review

Story : 5

The story is kinda cliche at first, the comedy is all i enjoy in this series.
The ending of the story disappointed me a lot...

Character Design : 9
...

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Dec 20, 2020

dokai_

Not Recommended

The 2010s gave anime fans a revival of sorts for the magical girl genre. This can be attributed to shows like Madoka Magica, which gave a darker, more story-based spin on the usual "girl meets talking animal and gets powers" plot, and was targeted towards an older demographic, unlike Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura. Before long, a new wave of sleeker, story-based magical girl anime hit the scene, some more obscure than others.

Granbelm is one of these shows that spawned out of the shadow of Madoka, but it fails to live up to the show that it's so clearly inspired by.

The story follows the story ... of the pink-haired protagonist Mangetsu, who, on the night of a full moon, is suddenly transmitted into Granbelm, a battle-royale set in another world, where girls fight eachother in massive magical mech suits. There, Mangetsu meets the mysterious Shingetsu, who tells her about the battle for unlimited magical power, and they end up forming a team to fight in Granbelm.

Without going into too many spoilers, this show's plot is pretty weak and derivative. It borrows a lot of tropes from other anime without really putting any sort of creative spin on them other than "cool big robot". There is a plot twist towards the end of the show that kind of shakes things up, but by then there's not enough time to get deep into any character development, so the twist ends up coming off as sort of "fake deep".

Speaking of character development, let's talk about this show's characters are probably its most lackluster feature. The protagonist features pretty much no unique qualities other than being naive and determined. Granted, this could be explained by future revelations in the show that I won't spoil, but it still doesn't make for a very interesting character. The same can be said for pretty much all of the other characters in the show; they have very one-note, uninteresting personalities that make it really hard for me to care about them in the slightest. There's one girl who's only personality trait is screaming in anger, like she doesn't have any sort of chill switch.

The animation in this show is fine, for the most part. Where it really fails is during the fight scenes, where the show really just tries to throw out as much bright, seizure-inducing visual vomit as possible without really showing any dynamism or fluidity. Not all of the action scenes are bad, but the ones that are are really difficult to follow due to the show's need to overload the screen with neon lasers and explosions every 12 seconds. Not to mention that the show's opening sequence blatantly rips off Neon Genesis Evangelion in several ways.

The soundtrack is decent. It has some pretty tracks, but it's not anything too crazy.

Overall, this show just didn't really click for me. It just felt derivative to the point of losing almost all of its seriousness, from the opening sequence to the show's resolution. There were aspects of it that showed promise, but it ultimately failed at providing me with anything that I couldn't get out of Madoka Magica.

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Granbelm

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Characters & Voice Actors

Fukami, Shingetsu Ernesta

Kohinata, Mangetsu

Hakamada, Suishou

Rin, Nene

Tsuchimikado, Shisui

Fugo, Anna

Rosa

Tsuchimikado, Kuon

Kohinata, Kibou

Rin, Mimi

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Granbelm

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