Grand Blue
Grand Blue Dreaming

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There are a total of four things that I absolutely love in pieces that I read when well done. The first is realistic suffering, see characters pass throught bad things, and be successful(or the opposite of it) is amazing. The second is relationships, I love to see how characters interact with each other, and develop throught that. The third is worldbuilding, a good and nice world can transmit a sense of wonder that enhances the experience to new levels. An fourth is simply put, the funnies, how much a manga makes me laugh or smirk is heavily correlated with my enjoyement. But comedy is very ... particular, and varies very much from individual to individual, and because of that is a genre very hard to recommend. When it hits, whoever, oh, does it hit hard.
And Grand Blue hit the hardest. Grand blue scores a big fat zero in 2 of the categories(suffering and worldbuilding). However, when it comes to the funnies, this piece has the highest score of any other. If I had to rank in that alone, it would be first no doubt. Everything in this manga revolves around the comedy, even the relationships between character is used as a step stone for bring something funny to reality.
You will not see profound relationships, development of characters, or a rich world, but for this one, that doesn't matter. The enjoyement comes throught slapstick comedy, reocurring gags and character behaviour. From "The Boys(TM)" being absolute pieces of shit, to using a lighter to see if it really is water, to "this is a diving club", everything is worked up with the purpose of laughs. And the author is a master at this. He knows how to perfectly use a gag in the right moment to extract most laughs, he knows when to go hard, and when to stop abruptly, he simply knows.
But of course, this manga wouldn't be so funny if it wasn't for the artist. The art is used in excelence to bring extreme reactions and make the slapstick moments works wonderfully. It was actually what I missed most in the anime, since the art in the manga is used very much as a sudden punchline, which was lost in translation.
If you don't like the style of comedy don't bother, this manga lives and dies in that genre. But if you enjoy it,if you even remotely like, then dive in, and enjoy. This is one of the best

Has a lot of ups and downs.. It started out strong but thinned out the pacing too much, I would give the first 30 chapters an 8. The focus probably should have been tighter around the club where they could develop the upperclassmen more, given how those characters have been there since the beginning it feels odd not to have learned much about them. There were way too many chapters about "The boys" since it's the same joke every time. Given the frustrating pace I ended up skimming the last third pretty aggressively

That sums up what I thought about the manga but apparently there's a ... soft floor for word count

I'm dropping this after 30 chapters, I really don't know how it's in the top ten but then again mal is a cesspool of circlejerkers who can't be trusted to have opinions of their own. I will give it credit there were moments that genuinely make me laugh but I really expected that at this point something would have progressed, if not the plot then at least the characters and the comedy. But it seems as though Grand Blue will carry on with its same overplayed jokes and gags without doing anything new to keep me interested.

My main issue is that the premise has ... a lot of potential for a wide range of experiences and interactions along with the crazy over-the-top scenes (which I enjoyed but again it gets old very fast) that is never explored; the fact that it's set in college could be utilized so much more because characters have a lot more freedom both literally and figuratively when they aren't tied down by the cliches of high school slice of life or underage drinking laws.

All in all I can see why this manga appeals to some but I had pretty high expectations and Grand Blue falls very short.