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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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, 2019

phiraeth

Recommended

"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God."

- Romans, 8:18

Have you ever wondered why you’re alive? It seems like such a silly question, one that a lot of people wouldn’t really ...

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Sep 27, 2019

AnimeBW

Mixed Feelings

When it comes to Granbelm, I feel like you fall into one of two camps: you either get it, or you don’t.

I realize that’s a pretty vague and unhelpful statement, so let me clarify. To some extent, your ability to enjoy any piece of media is determined by how well you connect with its specific wavelength. The subtle differences in cinematography, dialogue, visual aesthetic, themes and so on can make all the difference in the world in determining why, for example, I dislike the Haruhi franchise, yet I love a show that starts from pretty much the exact same premise, Chuunibyou. If you can latch ... onto a show’s overriding attitude, you’re going to enjoy it. If you can’t, you won’t. Simple enough on its surface right?

Well, I feel like that Granbelm supercharges that dichotomy to a far greater extent than I’ve seen in a while. Despite it being one of the least watched anime of Summer 2019, there’s a sizeable contingent of fans who absolutely adore it. On the MAL forums, on Anime News Network, scattered across the internet, there are plenty of people who love this mashup of dark magical girl tropes and mecha action with all their heart, praising the characters and the ideas explored and putting it right up there near the top of their lists for anime of the season. And on the other hand, you have the rest of the anime fandom, who lost interest in it, dropped off after a couple episodes, hated it from the get-go, couldn’t be bothered to care about it, or are still watching but not quite sure why. Something about the particulars of Granbelm’s storytelling leave very little middle ground for an audience to fill you either get it, or you don’t. If you get it, it’s a powerful, resonant piece of art that will stick with you long after it finishes airing. If you don’t get it, it’s a bizarre, disappointing, not really insulting, but overall uninteresting waste of time.

The story, an original script from the director and animation team behind Re:Zero, centers around the titular Granbelm, a Fate/Stay-Night-esque battle royale between young mages that occurs every full moon. These mages, all young girls, fight in stout, stocky mecha that channel their magical energy in powerful attacks, shield them from damage, do weird wobbly magic business and all that good stuff. Defeat doesn’t mean death, thankfully; it just means you’re knocked out of the running, and the competitors who last the night pick the battle right back up when the next full moon rises. The ultimate prize? A supposedly unlimited wish from an unseen entity that’s probably got a monkey’s paw or two up its ass, because this wasn’t enough like Fate already.

At any rate, into this ongoing tournament is thrust our protagonist: Mangetsu, a seemingly normal girl who gets air-dropped into the middle of a Granbelm match and quickly finds herself fighting alongside everyone else in her own mystical dwarf mecha. No one is quite sure what to make of her, least of all herself; if she’s able to compete, it means she’s descended from a mage’s bloodline, but nobody knows which one, and at any rate, her unwittingly joining up after the tournament is already under way it weird enough itself. But if she’s part of Granbelm, there’s nothing to be done; she can either drop out, or keep competing and fight to have her own wish realized. Mangestu, unsurprisingly, chooses to fight, and thus she begins her quest to beat out the rest of the colorful characters who are participating in this tournament, all while forging an initially uneasy alliance with a fellow competitor- Shingetsu- who’s decided to help her orient herself in this confusing new world. No points for guessing that things are darker than they initially appear, the Granbelm tournament itself might be a lie, and everyone’s got a closet full of skeletons ready to expose when it’s time for Maximum Drama(tm)

Honestly, though, for as much as I poke fun, Granbelm’s a lot better constructed than that description would lead you to believe. Calling it a mashup of Madoka and Fate wouldn’t be wrong, but it would also be a disservice to the many original ideas Granbelm comes up with. Even if you can guess the general trajectory of the story, the specifics of what’s actually going on will completely take you by surprise, with enough foreshadowing in the opening episodes for the eventual reveals to make sense. I know I was thrown for a loop when I realized that a couple things that were bugging me about Mangestu’s characterization turned out to be entirely intentional. There’s a damn smart narrative contraption at the core of this thing; no surprise, considering how good Re:Zero was at planting and payoff. And speaking of Re:Zero, another strength its director carries over here is sheer force of hype. The mecha battles are all riveting spectacles, rendered with kinetic cinematography, dizzying displays of power, and lush color palettes steeped in purple and blue. You feel the propulsion of these pieces of psychic armor zooming through the sky, aided by a killer sound design that makes them feel less like lumbering chunks of metal and more like Tron-esque digital programs. There’s so much confidence in every decision that it’s easy enough to get lost in the flow and jam out to the chaos.

So here’s the question I’m left with; If Granbelm is so good at crafting an engaging spectacle, with cool action and direction and interesting plot turns, then why did I- and so many other people- keep getting sucked out of it?

It’s here that we must turn our focus inward and talk about themes and meaning. This, I think, is where the heart of the divide lies between the people who love this show and those who don’t: do you get what it’s trying to say? Do you connect with how it tries to say it? Because from my perspective, Granbelm goes about exploring its themes in a very, very unclear and unfocused manner. Just take a look at the first episode if you want proof of this; it’s entirely dedicated to throwing Mangetsu right into the deep end of Granbelm and watching her experience it from the ground up. It’s certainly cool, but a nagging question I kept coming back to all throughout that episode was, “Why?” We’re given plenty of information about the players of Granbelm, the mechanics and lore, the cool shit we can expect from the battles, but we’re given no context into the emotional stakes involved. We learn nothing about why these girls are fighting, what’s at stake for losing, what deeper meaning is driving their stories, nothing. We’re given no reason to care about Mangestu until the end of the second episode, and even then it’s such a weak motivation- she wants to be useful to people- that it doesn’t feel worth the wait. Sure, you don’t need to dump the entirety of your show’s thesis on the audience right at the start, but at least some context is needed to help them get invested, right?

Unfortunately, I would find myself asking that question of “Why?” plenty of times throughout Granbelm. It takes a while for the scope of the story to really come into focus, and while the eventual reveals are, as I said, cool, it feels like the meaning behind them should’ve been driving the story forward from a lot earlier. Everything feels disconnected and unclear, like every conversation the characters have is meant to be the defining moral statement of an entirely different show. There’s some stuff about self-determination, there’s some stuff about humanity’s natural inclination to abuse power, and I think the ultimate point was something related to accepting the responsibility to evolve, but I feel like I’m scrambling around in the dark trying to piece together an incomplete puzzle. And it’s not a fun mystery where the pursuit of meaning is part of the point; the way Granbelm presents the ideas it explores, it feels like it’s trying to be clear about the point it’s making. But for me, at least, it really wasn’t.

Actually, now that I think about it, the real problem might stem from this: Granbelm is bad at connecting its planting to its payoff. Too many times over the course of this show, it would set up a conflict, and then eventually solve that conflict in a way that technically made sense, but also felt incredibly lacking. To use the most obvious example, Shingetsu’s biggest rival is Anna, a fellow witch who grew up as her close friend and adopted sister. They used to be incredibly close, but Anna eventually descended into jealousy and envy as Shingetsu’s talents far outstripped her own, to the point where she would do anything to take her down, even as Shingetsu desperately wants to mend their broken bond. It’s an understandable enough conflict on its surface, and without spoiling anything, the conclusion it reaches is probably the only conclusion it could have in a story of this nature. But actually watching the conflict play out getting to that point is so. Unbelievably. Not. Interesting. Anna as a character is far too arch, far too underwritten to care about. All she does is scream and make rage faces with increasingly unhinged fury, to the point where it’s impossible to buy into the supposed tragedy of her situation. She’s like a caricature of the jealous rival character, and at every point the story could’ve taken to let her indulge in some actual goddamn pathos, it instead instructs her voice actor to blow out yet another vocal chord and the animators to increase the dilation of her pupils. The way her arc resolves makes sense, but the character herself is so broken that it’s impossible to get invested in her.

And this isn’t the only time something of this nature occurs. There’s another character whose arc revolves around trying to save their sister from a curse, and the exact nature of how they get to the end of that arc feels just as half-baked and underwritten. There’s a lot of question I still have about the nature of the magic system, whether it was supposed to be good or bad or something in between. Occasionally, the show pulls a magic power out of its ass that feels like it’s supposed to be important and meaningful, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how it got there. Granbelm feels like a well-constructed show from the outside, but on the inside it’s just a mess. Not an annoying mess (okay, Anna’s shtick got insufferable at times), but a mess all the same, a plot that felt like it did actually know what it was doing, but for some reason couldn’t communicate that knowledge to me. I kept feeling like these was some missing piece I wasn’t getting, some aspect that I wasn’t picking up on that would make all the pieces fit together. But for the life of me, I couldn’t find that piece.

At least, that’s what I got out of it. Like I said, there are plenty of people who really like this show. So maybe that missing piece is still out there, and I just couldn’t find it for whatever reason. Maybe there’s some aspect of Granbelm that just speaks to some people with more clarity than others. All that considered, despite how down I’ve been on this show, I do recommend checking it out. It’s possible you’ll be one of the lucky few who’s able to figure out what it’s going for and thus find a new anime to add to your favorite’s list. And then maybe you can come back and explain it to me, because I’d really like to know what’s so potentially powerful about Granbelm that I just couldn’t figure out. For the moment, though, while I can’t call this show a disaster, I’m definitely frustrated that it never clicked together the way I wanted it to.

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Sep 27, 2019

Fircoal

Not Recommended

The problem with anime and edge is that so often you get edge for the sake of edge rather than edge as the result of well thought out ideas and the natural conclusion of events. And while Granbelm tries to be interesting with its edge, it fails massively and comes off as yet another edgefest that has no idea how to write its ideas well.

The biggest rub is that Granbelm does have some good ideas. There is intrigue in a competition where girls compete to be the sole magical entity in the world. The premise is a bit forced but there is a lot to ... work with there. You can show why all the characters want that power, how they react when they don't get it, and the lengths that they'll go through for that power. And while Granbelm attempts to hit some of this ideas, and even comes close in some cases, the execution and result is quite lacking and lackluster. For example in the first episode there is a girl who is clearly in the battle, loses, and thusly loses her magical abilities. Rather than exploring this girl and her circumstance and the future that she must now pivot, they just cast her off and focus on less interesting characters. This is a theme with Granbelm.

Because despite having some interesting characters in its cast, Granbelm decides to focus on the most bland of the characters. We have the traditional pink haired magical girl who has no talents, no purpose in life, but for some reason seems to be really good at this magic thing despite never having any experience in it what so ever before. And second to her is the magical girl with long black hair, insane skills and work ethic, who happens to be very cold. Both of these tropes have been done to death. And while a good show can be made out of tired tropes, neither of these two are particularly interesting, and it's even more frustrating when they take away time from much more interesting characters in the cast.

For example, Anna is a girl from a talented mage family who has a grudge against Ernesta. It is clear she hates her for some reason and has a burning desire to out do her. As the show progresses her mental state erodes and you can see how the stress of the competition and her hatred is effecting her. But despite this she is more of a side character than a main one. There are interesting points to her character and her relation with Ernesta but it's often seen in the lens of Ernesta, the main character, rather than Anna. By focusing on Ernesta more the show willingly focuses on a much weaker and flat character and don't explore the interesting traits of Anna quite nearly as much as they should.

This is what the show is like as a whole, it'll bring up good ideas, give hope that it'll explore them and cover something meaningful before diverting back to Mangetsu and Ernesta and ending up failing its potential. The most baffling thing about this show though is despite how edgy it tries to be, whenever the show can actually do something with that edge and give an interesting situation for the characters the show decides to zag in a different route to give a slight less edgy but also a lot less interesting result. It's as if it's trying to both be as edgy and uninteresting as possible. So while the show is very content to make the characters miserable and to make their lives that much worse with each episode, it's also content to take a slightly less miserable path if it means that the characters won't have to react to something interesting or unique.

The art is actually pretty good, and would be nice to have in a much better show. Sadly, the problems with Granblem far outweigh the good art. The sound is passable and doesn't help or hurt the show. The production of the show is pretty good although the fight scenes to me are still pretty boring. They can be dynamic, but they lack the power to really make them shine.

Overall Granbelm is a massive disappointment and forgoes its interesting ideas for bland uninteresting edge. I don't recommend it for anyone unless you need more edge in your life and have ran out of other options.

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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

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Tsuchimikado, Kuon

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Granbelm

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Episode Videos

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