Grand Blue

It's not often that a Manga makes me literally laughing out loud.
Most comedy Manga were either totally unfunny and boring or just managed to make me blow the air slightly more forceful through my nostrils.
Grand Blue isn't one of those Manga.

The story isn't very special. The art is good but nothing outstanding. Except when one of the characters goes bonkers. Most of the time you'll probably laugh because of the ridiculous over the top depiction of certain emotions.
If you just want to lean back, have a good laugh and not worry about your (shitty) life, then this is the Manga for you.
If you look for anything deeper than just stupid, but very funny, comedy, than this one isn't for you.

EDIT: I initially rated this manga an 8 because i only read 6 chapters or so and thought that it would get stale over the time. Turns out, i still laugh my ass of and look forward to every new chapter. Shit's a solid 9, bois.

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Grand Blue is a diving manga.

It is about college freshmen confused with what club they want to join and how to spend their college lives. They get invited by their incredibly nice senpai and join the diving club. This review will focus on how this manga portrays diving and how people discover love for an activity they were completely new to.

The story of Grand Blue is quite simple yet very satisfying to read. It follows the generic new students don't know what they want to do with their lives and end up joining a club out of curiosity but Grand Blue executes this very well. They outline diving in a very simplistic yet intriguing way. You do not need any knowledge on diving beforehand as they explain most of the basics as well as different stages of diving as you start to get more comfortable with the water. They outline how easy it may look on the surface but how difficult an essentially dangerous this activity can get, which leads to some really gut wrenching scenes in the manga. We don't have much stories that go in depth on diving so this feels refreshing to read, definitely on the unique side in that aspect.

The art is best described as simplistic yet beautiful. The diving scenes are drawn with so much detail, it really tries to put the reader in the position the characters are in. The character's faces are beautifully and realistically drawn in almost every panel. You can tell the mangaka put time and research into figuring out the minute details of a human body. Since it's a diving manga, the character's take their clothes off almost all the time and the author did an amazing job showing male and female aesthetics.

The cast of Grand Blue seems a bit generic at first glance, but really grow on you as the series goes on. We have our MC, Kitahara Iori, a college freshmen who is confused on how to spend his college life and ends up discovering a passion for something he previously had no interest in. Grand Blue isn't just all diving though, the characters interact with one another outside of diving in multiple ways developing their relationships with one another, especially the members of the diving club. We have Imamura Kouhei, an outgoing handsome man who doesn't care what other people think of him. He likes to truly express what he has a passion for even if other people may label him in a negative way. He is the first friend Iori makes and the story mainly focuses on their friendship, the struggles that come from it, and their new found love for diving.

If you want a unique manga that outlines the beauty of diving, give Grand Blue a shot.

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Grand Blue is a masterclass work of slapstick and gag humor.

Although the series is about "diving", the setting and premise serve primarily as guidelines for the plot to direct its comedy. In other words, characters can derail into basically any subplot and then realign itself at the end of each arc to ensure the series doesn't go too far off on a tangent and overwhelm the reader with too much absurdity.

The setting itself provides a reasonable justification for the kind of humor you see. Drinking naturally comes with college parties and nudity "naturally" comes with drinking. Diving also offers a unique focal point to branch humor from with things such as diving signal gags, and of course, nudity.

In comedic manga, characters are essential to driving a joke home. Although every character is the complete opposite of normal, what they do makes sense because it’s part of their character and that allows the humor to flow. In Drifters, comedy can become awkward at times because malicious and serious characters would suddenly turn goofy for no reason and it messed with the image the characters were supposed to maintain. Every character in Grand Blue has a unique personality and together they can turn any normal scenario into a circus.

Most of what has been said can be said for many other series, but what makes this series stand above the rest? The Art. In Fullmetal Alchemist and Onepunch Man, gags are made by lowering the quality of art to portray the lighthearted or casual attitude of the characters in a high stake scenario, but in Grand Blue, the art quality goes up at the punchline to portray the high tension in the characters despite their situation being nothing serious. This drastic imbalance in what we see versus what we feel serves almost like another joke making it so that each punchline is two jokes rather than one . The flow of text is also superb as it feeds you puns and gags at a precise rate. In Gintama, the comedy is goes by the same formula as Grand Blue, but if you read the manga, the pages are covered in text and content within each chapter is way too condensed. Seeing the emotion and expressions of the characters is harder to visualize compared to Grand Blue, where each facial expression perfectly expresses the absurdity and emotional peak of the characters.

So that’s basically why I think Grand Blue is a comedy gold mine. Hopefully this review makes sense and if it doesn’t, there are plenty of other excellent review that give you an idea how amazing this series is.

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There are very few anime/manga which actually make me laugh and this is definitely one of them! The humor is absolutely amazing and the artwork compliments it perfectly. I really hope this manga gets more attention and becomes popular because I've enjoyed this much more than the more popular comedy manga at the moment like prison school. This is a fresh breather from all the high school comedies since this takes place in college so it has a bit more freedom with comedy involving alcohol, which happens to be where most of the comedy is based on. The misunderstandings are what make this manga one of the funniest around and if you are looking for a hilarious manga it would be a waste to pass this one up!

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