Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash manages to do nothing with its 12 episode length and provided me with one of the most boring, slow-paced and generic animes I've ever seen. I really couldn't find a whole lot to like about this show, and it makes me wonder why its been given a 7.90 average user rating. I haven't seen as many animes as other people, and I've never really written a review on my own volition before, so I'm probably not the most qualified to say anything, but I thought I'd share my thoughts regardless.
Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash takes place in a medieval, RPG-esque
...
environment filled with magic and monsters. Our story starts off with a handful of teenagers who have been magically transported, from the modern era, to this world with
little memories about where they came from. Off the bat the story doesn't do much to explain their amnesia. They cant remember certain words like "game" and "cell-phone" and their confusion is mentioned briefly in the first few episodes, but seems to completely disappear as the story goes on. I can understand the characters wanting to adapt to their new environment and having their memories of their previous life fade over time but when you NEVER explain who they were before this incident happened, its makes me ask why even do the amnesia thing to begin with and makes me connect with the characters even less.
Anyways, the kids appear on top of a tower of some sort, none of them really know each other or whats going on and some begin to worry until they are all directed into a tavern where some stripper clown dude tells them they all need to become voluntary soldiers, form a party, join a guild (where they pick what role they will fill within their groups like an RPG and learn skills from a master) and protect the town from monsters. Naturally, the stronger, bigger, edgier kids group together and leave Yume, Manato, Haruhiro, Mogzo, Shihoru, Ranta and eventually Marry to become the main group the story focuses on. Yume is the humble, friendly and outgoing girl character in which the story finds every way to show off her ass. Manato is kind and very peaceful, who becomes the group's leader and role model and is overall just the perfect human being with no outstanding character flaws. Haruhiro is also pretty kind, although pretty boring and I can really only describe him as "The MC" (think of Kirito). Mogzo is a peaceful giant who likes to cook. Shihoru is the quiet, shy and emotional girl with large breasts. Ranta is very loud, obnoxious and a braggart who no one really likes but they put up with his shit anyways (kind of like a younger sibling). Marry is cold and a bit jaded but becomes friendlier at the end of the show. All of these characters pretty much stay the same throughout the show and don't really develop much at all. Grimgar uses a lot montages and time skips to show how the group developed from struggling to kill a single goblin into a fairly competent team, but when you use montages to speed through everything and not actually show most moments of character development, you struggle to connect with any of these character or empathize with their struggles. I think the only two characters that kinda develop were Ratga and Marry. Ranta's personality stays the same but he has conflicts with the group about teamwork early on since no one really likes him (which is understandable since he's very annoying) but he eventually becomes more of a team player by the last episode. Marry is introduced as extremely cold and struggles to fit into the group since she doesn't really seem to want to get to know anyone. It is later revealed that after not being able to save her friends from some wolf monster thing in her previous party that she's traumatized and acts the way she does out of fear for not being able to save anyone else. After bonding with this new group and facing her fear by defeating the wolf thing that killed her friends (or having Haruhiro do it to be more specific), she starts to warm up and finally recognize her group as friends. While Marry is the most developed, for me personally, by this point in the show when she gets introduced I really couldn't be bothered to care.
I think what upset me to most is Monato's death and how the show handles it. Monato barely gets any development apart from having small talk with Haruhiro before going to bed occasionally. We know absolutely nothing about this guy and as far as I can tell his personality only extends as far as being "the nice guy", yet everyone looks up to him like some sort of outstanding role model and when he dies, the show spends the rest of its time mourning his loss. It's like they expect me to care and empathize with the everyone's sadness but when I barely know anything about Monato (or really any character for that matter) I really can't. I'm assuming that somewhere in the montages they all bonded with him and being the party's leader and healer will give you a pretty good cause for being so strongly liked but I felt none of it was truly shown and I could connect with any of it at all.
All together I can't really say this show was good. I thought the animation was nice and the water color painting used for the backgrounds was cool and I guess the sounds were okay (i'm not very big into anime music so this isn't something I really pay attention to but I guess it wasn't terrible) but the story's pacing and characters were garbage. I feel like the show could have been better with more episodes, but with how everything was handled before, I doubt it would have been a huge improvement. There are so many questions i was left with that weren't answered. Will these people ever be able to go back to the modern world? Why were they chosen to come here? What were they like before all of this? How do their role's skills work? The show ends with everyone coming to terms with living in Grimgar and forgetting about their previous lives but, for me personally, I couldn't feel any closure with many of these questions remaining unanswered.
I can really only recommend this to people who just want to waste time by watching anime. Yume's ass was pretty good though.
3/10
Jul 29, 2016
Hai to Gensou no Grimgar
(Anime)
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Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash manages to do nothing with its 12 episode length and provided me with one of the most boring, slow-paced and generic animes I've ever seen. I really couldn't find a whole lot to like about this show, and it makes me wonder why its been given a 7.90 average user rating. I haven't seen as many animes as other people, and I've never really written a review on my own volition before, so I'm probably not the most qualified to say anything, but I thought I'd share my thoughts regardless.
Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash takes place in a medieval, RPG-esque ... |
