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Hai to Gensou no Grimgar anime review – Pretty nice

I’ve watched my fair share of “hero taken to a fantasy world” kind of shows and generally enjoy the genre, but it does tend to get kind of stale after the 10th “Hero of the World” iteration. I heard Hai to Gensou no Grimgar was a different, grittier take on the trope, all about what would really happen if a bunch of regular people were thrown into another world and had to survive without all the modern amenities and protections we’re used to, so I gave it a try. And you know, it was actually pretty good.

Blurb: Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash (灰と幻想のグリムガル Hai to Gensō no Gurimugaru^?) is a Japanese light novel series written by Ao Jūmonji and illustrated by Eiri Shirai. The story follows a group of people who suddenly find themselves in a fantasy world with no memories from before their arrival, and chronicles their struggles to survive and make a life for themselves. (source:Wikipedia)

First, before you get scared off, Grimgar is not that dark a series. The darkest take on the trope I’ve ever seen is Now and Then, Here and There (recommended watching if you’re feeling too happy and just want to be pissed off), and Grimgar never gets quite as unhappy as that. Nevertheless it does chronicle the likely struggles of a bunch of regular teenagers who have never even killed a chicken before and who now have to fend for themselves in the wilds of a new world by killing sentient, highly intelligent monsters and living off the proceeds.

Positives

I liked that Grimgar wasn’t that dark and still contained plenty of fantasy staples like magic and skills and a super-talented main character who overcomes great odds etc etc. I’m cool with that kind of thing, especially since nothing comes easy to the party so it feels like they deserve everything they eventually get. The show also ends on a highly positive note and is very well-wrapped up so unlike most light novel adaptations you don’t feel like you have to go out and get the books to get the full experience, even though the show does make you interested enough to want to do so.

Other positives: the watercolor-like backgrounds are lovely and a nice, mellow change from the often-garish colors of other fantasy series. The action sequences are not as good as the better ones from Sword Art Online or even Yes It’s Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon, but it’s still clear and easy to follow even when things get hectic. The fights keep you on edge a bit because the rookies are so raw that anything can and frequently does happen in that world. It’s also nice that the characters have to deal with everyday stuff like buying food and getting clean underwear. It’s good for people who like slice-of-life and immersion into fantasy worlds.

Negatives

Now for the stuff that wasn’t so good. The voice-acting isn’t very impressive. It’s a strike against those who insist on how wonderful Japanese VAs always are. The MC’s voice was too deep and too impassive, Manato’s voice was too screechy and piercing, Ranta always sounded like he was trying too hard, the other characters weren’t very memorable. I don’t remember anything about the music either. The fanservice episodes and excessive discussions of bust-sizes and other vulgar topics was also something I could have done without. The long sequences where people just stand around while some annoying high-pitched singer warbles about nothing important weren’t necessary to the show either, IMO.

Those minor nitpicks aside, the main negative of Hai to Gensou no Grimgar (for me) is that far too much time is spent talking about stuff that doesn’t really interest the viewer. Especially at inappropriate times like in the middle of dungeons (they pay for that at least once, but they don’t learn their lesson). I’m like “Can’t this wait till you get back home where it’s nice and safe?”

But really, they just like to talk. Talk talk talk about their feelings. Tell me how you feel. I feel this, we feel this, feel feel feel. I get it, I get, but you really don’t need to spend 10 minutes in one episode talking about your depression, then 5 minutes in another episodes going on about the same thing, and then again in another ep, and on and on. It could be faster paced, is what I’m saying.

But there’s no perfect series, and I think Grimgar did pretty well keeping a balance between being upbeat and being realistic. It’s a great watch for anyone who likes fantasy, other worlds, tragedy, slice of life or straight up action. Or a fun combination of all these like Hai to Gensou no Grimgar.

Sword Art Online Season 1 anime review (spoilers)

Sword Art Online is one of those anime shows you watch just to see if it lives up to the hype. And there is a LOT of hype about SAO, both positive and negative. The bad seems to outweigh the good, but having watched it for myself I can say it’s neither as bad or as good as fans and haters try to make it out to be. The first arc of the show is pretty good, the second half is pretty bad and together you get a decent show that is worth a watch, at least.

Premise (taken from Amazon): In the year 2022, a next-generation game known as “Nerve Gear” has been developed, making Full Dives into a virtual dimension possible. “Nerve Gear” The world’s first true VRMMORPG. “Sword Art Online (SAO)” has generated worldwide buzz, and on its official launch day, one player, Kirito, immerses himself in its virtual world. But Akihiko Kayaba, the developer of SAO, proclaims the following to all players. This game is inescapable unless all levels are cleared. And in this world, “Game Over” is equivalent to death in the real world.

That’s a description of the first ‘Aincrad’ arc, the best part of the show simply because of the tension created by the “death is final” condition in the game. As time passes in the game you get genuinely worried for the bodies of the players in real life, and many of them do indeed die from starvation or because a well-meaning parent takes their VR equipment off without knowing it will fry their brain. It’s actually surprising more of them weren’t lost to carelessness, but we’ll let some things slide for the sake of fiction.

People say Kirito is a boring Gary Stu, which I do see later on in the show, but in the beginning he doesn’t come across all that badly. In a game where the weak die for real, of course your main character has to get strong in a hurry. He’s bit colorless, yes, but a good sort just trying to do his best in a bad situation. I was rooting for him to make it out alive.

The problem began, as it always does, when he got involved with a girl. Asuna. For the record I like Asuna too. It’s just their “romance” that was hard to stomach, both from a moral and a regular viewer point of view. It’s not that surprising to see teenagers jumping into relationships with each other, and in a world where you might die at any second it’s not that strange that they’d jump for a little human companionship, but still! The more SAO tried to portray the Kirito-Asuna lustfest as “sweet” and “romantic” the more I cringed within.

I still finished the show, though, because the ‘romance’ aside it wasn’t that bad. I was especially pleased by the unexpected ending to the Aincrad arc, which I suppose I won’t spoil for you even though I’ve already spoiled everything else. I heard people complain that it came out of nowhere, but that’s precisely why it’s so good! It’s an RPG world so you expect things to go the RPG way, then boom, something out of left field. Really cool.

After that the Elfheim arc where Asuna is a damsel in distress needing to be rescued was a bit of a letdown. More than a bit, it was just bad. That’s where I started to see the Kirito as Gary Stu thing in full force, because even though he was in a new world, somehow he had all his skills and all his abilities and he was so cool and he was saving everybody and everybody thought he was so awesome etc etc blah di blah. Yeah, that was boring. The villain was also so comically evil and incompetent that I thought for sure someone more capable was pulling the strings behind him. But no, it was just poor writing made worse by one of Takehito Koyasu’s hammier performances. And the awkward “romantic tension” between Kirito and his cousin only made things worse.

In a nutshell, Sword Art Online is good when it’s portraying online RPGs and their battles, tensions and mechanics. The action sequences are fairly exciting in the Aincrad arc where one wrong move spells death, and battles are still quite interesting later on even when we know there’s no chance Kirito will lose. When it comes to any kind of human relationships, though, the writing just sucks and is flat-out painful to watch. It’s still a decent show which wraps everything up well enough that I feel no need to watch Season 2. I’d give it 7/10 for the first half and 4/10 for the second arc. That’s 11/20, just slightly above average, which is about what the show deserves.

It would have gotten a higher score if they had spent more time exploring the world and thereby exciting my imagination about how things actually work and what it would really feel like to being in that virtual world, but the months and years just pass away at a blistering pace and before you know it Kirito is level 99 or whatever, before you know it he’s in love with Asuna (or thinks he is anyway) then this, then that, it’s all kind of sudden. A watchable show nonetheless, but not quite worthy of all the fuss it’s gotten. Or worthy of all the hate, as I said earlier. You won’t go wrong watching it, just don’t expect too much and you’ll be fine.

More quick drops: Aoharu x Kikanjuu, Classroom Crisis, Etotama

Regular readers should be used to me failing to make it through even the first 10 minutes of most anime shows by now. At least it helps me get through my massive backlog faster, right? The most recent victims:

Aoharu x Kikanjuu: I tried it when it started airing and didn’t even make it past the point where Tachibana’s friend Hotaru starts groping her. I liked the whole fiery school council president schtick, but the vulgarity ruined the moment. This time I tried again and made it to the point where Tachibana confronts the guy who won’t shut up about breasts. More vulgarity and more talking than I was hoping for from this kind of show. If I have to struggle this hard to make it to the 10-minute mark then the show doesn’t have a future with me. Dropped.

Classroom Crisis: I wanted to like this, since it was trying to do something different with the sci-fi and the high schoolers also being employees tackling a hostage crisis while flying into space etc etc, but in the end there was just too much going on. Even worse, the transfer student they saved ended up being a huge jerk – but a jerk with a point i.e. they wasted too much money on the rescue + butted their noses in where it didn’t belong. Nevertheless the dumb, money-wasting “passionate” kids and their teachers are going to be portrayed as the good guys while the sensible jerk Nagisa is slowly going to be won over to their side and so on. And there’s going to be all this business intrigue and drama and stuff going on. Not interested, pass.

Etotama: Etotama was a cute and silly show and not nearly as fanservicey as I’d expected (in fact, hardly fanservicey at all). I liked Takeru’s stoic reactions to Nya-tan’s silliness, though it probably won’t last once he gets to know her better. It’s just that this is one of those shows where one episode is really enough. Nya-tan’s antics are cute enough for one episode, but I can see them getting real old real quick, so I’d rather leave Etotama with good memories. Maybe one day when I’m really bored I’ll watch another episode. Until then!

Dragon Ball Super – Loving it after 32 episodes

Dragon Ball Super is set to be a long-runner, so if I wait for the whole show to be done before writing some thoughts the world might end first.

I haven’t watched the Battle of the Gods and Resurrection ‘F’ movies, so the first two arcs were entirely new to me. It was pretty awesome because I studiously avoided spoilers. I had no idea what the Super Saiyan god transformation would look like until it finally appeared so on one hand I thought “That looks kind of goofy” with the pink hair and all, but after the long wait the DBZ fan in me was going “Oh man oh man oh man this is so awesome!!!” Same with the blue-haired whatsitcalled transformation they did later on the show. Now that was cool. I want to see it again.

DB Super is the same mix of comedy and action we got used to in the Buu saga, but IMO the comedy is a bit flat and not that funny. The skits featuring the misadventures of the Pilaf Gang in the middle of a tense situation with Beerus had me tapping my feet impatiently. Get on with iiiiit. I haven’t seen whichever show features Jaco the policeman either, so I get annoyed when I see him. Get on with it already.

The action is the same old DBZ action we’re used to. The picture quality and animation is a lot better this time round, as becomes blatantly clear whenever they flash back to an old scene. Whoa! I used to watch that? Yes, yes I did. So it looks a lot better, but it doesn’t tense me up the way it used to when I was younger and more naive. I mean by the end of the Buu saga everyone in the show except Hercule/Mr. Satan has died and revived and even the Earth has made it back from destruction. And it’s been shown that the afterlife isn’t that terrible a place either (unless you’re Frieza) so there’s none of that nail-biting tension you usually get when the fate of the world is supposedly hanging in the balance. I already know things are going to work out okay, I’m just watching to find out how.

To be honest I kind of like it this way. There are plenty of other shows out there where people die when they are killed and stay dead to boot. This “death as a revolving door” concept is one of Dragon Ball’s defining features now, and very few series can match that same Having Fun while Saving the World mood they have going on. It’s when I watch the show and someone does a tearful sacrifice only to appear again hale and hearty a few episodes later that I really feel “Aaaah, this is Dragon Ball all right.”

So as the title says, I’m loving the show so far after two and a half arcs. That said I’ve taken a little break because I find I enjoy DB the most when I’m marathoning it. The Champa tournament arc has been a bit slow to get going, so I’m waiting for it to end completely before jumping back in. Once it’s over I’ll be all over it again. See you again in another two arcs or so!

Gunslinger Stratos anime review (surprisingly enjoyable)

Sometimes it pays to keep your expectations low. As soon as I heard Gunslinger Stratos was based on a videogame, I mentally shook my head a little bit and thought “Okay, let’s see how bad it can get.” Maybe because of that it wasn’t bad at all and I actually enjoyed it more than I’ve enjoyed a lot of other recent shows.

Story (according to Wikipedia): In 2115, the country known formerly as Japan has been split into two parallel worlds: the Frontier S (Stratos) and the 17th Far East Imperial City Management District. When the two universes are starting to fuse into one, the government of each worlds initiates the Operation Stratos, a world-scale protocol wherein a handpicked group of gunslingers, mercenaries, and special individuals, each from the two universes, will be sent in the year 2015 to alter the past by eliminating the other side until only one group survives, erasing a parallel universe in the process.

The story revolves on a group of gunslingers, each from the two universes who participate in Operation Stratos, particularly on a group of four childhood friends: Tohru Kazasumi, Kyōka Katagiri, Kyōma Katagiri, and Shizune Rindo, who all must confront their own flaws and differences when they battle their alternate selves in order to survive.

It’s an action show, but the action was neither very good or very bad, just enough to get the story across. It was easy enough to see at a glance who was doing what to who, and the action sequences had an efficient blend of flash and practicality, i.e. seriously trying to kill the other person, not just firing bullets into thin air.

Deaths are telegraphed well in advance, but at the same time writers aren’t scared to rack up a pretty high body count. This adds a lot of tension to the show because right till the very end I wasn’t sure which, if any of the main characters were going to survive. Would one of the Tohru’s make a heroic sacrifice? Both of them? One of the Kyokas? Would someone get sniped right at the moment of victory? You’ll have to watch it yourself to find out, but Gunslinger Stratos is one of the few shows I’ve watched recently that kept me guessing right to the end.

The characters are perhaps best described as stereotypes with a twist. Hero Tohru starts out as the usual namby-pamby hero, but when he has to step up to the plate he does so with remarkable aplomb, proving to be even tougher than the “hardcore” rival Tohru. His love interest Kyoka, both Kyokas in fact, are both girls of action despite their cutesy looks. They’re not afraid to get down and dirty in action and they’re both quick to do something about their feelings instead of dragging the show out with “Will they won’t they” nonsense. The other side characters are largely forgettable, but when the main cast is this strong they’re enough to pull the show along.

The story was very fast-paced even for a 13-episode show, feeling almost rushed in places. The advantage of that is there were no wasted episodes that made you feel “Well that was a big load of nothing.” The reveals come fast and hard, it’s not one of those shows where a mystery is introduced in episode one and only resolved in episode 95.

When questions are raised they are answered fairly quickly, then new questions come up and those are answered too. The story as a whole was quite satisfying and well-resolved. Everything’s wrapped up in this one show, none of that “Go read the manga/light novel/wait for season 2 to find out what happens next” stuff. Sure there are a few things you’d probably need to play the game to get (like the full role of the Katagiri Corporation and background data on the two worlds) but you don’t get the sense that the anime is made for fans of the game only. It’s approachable to all.

Long story short, you should probably watch Gunslinger Stratos if you like shows where stuff actually happens, and quickly too. Watch if you like action and romance that goes somewhere. Avoid if you’re looking for a deep, involving story or lots of character interaction/dialogue/comedy.