Anime: Hai to Gensou no Grimgar

Fantasy lovers sure have a glut of choices of late. Grimgar is one of the more serious takes of the genre, focusing on a group of low-level leftovers that are forced to band together for sheer survival. Very few things go well for the group, which starts off so weak as to not even fend off the lowest class of enemy. It's a pretty stark contrast with Konosuba, the slapstick, giant-toad fighting alternative in the genre. Grimgar doesn't have all that many comic moments as its inhabitants are all too often reminded of their fragile existence.

Grimgar is a grind, its characters take time to build on the viewer and the early episodes aren't particularly good. However, if you do sit through it, it develops into an involved, intriguing world full of opportunities and character relationships. Though still outclassed in atmosphere and story by SAO, Grimgar is an interesting, if slightly dark, take on the genre.

Animation:
The show wants to tell you that it's different from other shows, and that comes across immediately in its unique drawing style. The show's backgrounds are drawn with thick brushes to give it a patchy, painted appearance, a sharp departure from the crisp and clear style typical of other current shows. This is combined with nice effects such as lens flares during sunsets to give an immersive feel. Interesting details are put into the show as well, such as specialized tools to deal with the archaic means of cooking. Unlike Konosuba the characters here don't focus on cuteness or ecchi, they're more understated overall. Character styling isn't what I'd consider the show's strong point, and likewise character expressions are only average. You do get a FSN Archer clone as a background character though. Antagonists in the show are mostly unrecognizable fodder mobs with a few more notable creatures later in the show. There are also a few wardrobe malfunctions where clothing magically change color within a scene.

There is a significant amount of action in this show; that said, we're not watching master swordsmen like in SAO or Rurouni Kenshin. The breed of action in this show is more brute force as our newbies continue to land ineffective blows or outright miss. Expect a significant amount of blood and light gore as early on the show highlights each battle and details every single death. There is a bit of suggestive ecchi in the forms of bouncy body parts and a rather exposed teacher for our protagonist, but relatively insignificant compared to the direct nature found in Konosuba.

Sound:
The sound package of the show was much more typical than the animation. The show opens with a rock-based piece with a fitting though slightly bland melody. The ED is a slow piece that starts a bit sad but builds to a nice melody. The BGM isn't particularly unique but serves its purpose well enough; some of the calmer pieces are a bit sleep-inducing though. There is a ton of nice insert songs but the animation is mostly just still frames summarizing events.

Our protagonist hails from former leading roles in 35th Anti-Magic Platoon and Strike the Blood. Though fairly strong, I wasn't convinced that the voice fit the wishy-washy lead character. Mikako Komatsu is by far the strongest voice as the energetic and free-spirited Yume, who also often refers to herself in the third person. The rest of the cast was mixed, ranging from the underwhelming presence of Shihoru to the honestly annoying commentary from Ranta.

Story:
Unlike other stuck-in-MMO shows that I've watched, the characters here just mysteriously wake up in Grimgar, with only faint memories of their previous lives in references to cell phones and planes. Given only a petty sum of money, they are forced to form teams and complete kill quests to survive.

Though nothing like Konosuba in atmosphere, the show does feel similar in how random the plot is at times; this is more of a character-driven show. The pacing is almost painfully slow early on but eventually starts to pick up pace in the later episodes. The show builds to a pretty intense climax and ends with a fair conclusion.

In terms of overall feel, the show is a bit on the dark side with an almost obsessive focus on death and dealing with loss. That said their inhibition towards murdering low-level monsters definitely diminishes through the show. There are a few unanswered questions in the show such as the nature of the Kara no Kyoukai like cutting lines and why there is a need for so many different classes in a party.

Ultimately, the show doesn't feel like it makes a lot of progress and that is unfortunately what sticks out the strongest.

Character:
For what it's worth, there are some pretty nice character interactions; not the boy endlessly fondling girls type of interactions but actual conversations and arguments over various topics. However, that's about it for the positives here. The characters grow through the show but not in the ways I would have expected. Yes, everyone gains new abilities and perhaps a tad bit of HP but there is only fleeting moments of character relationships. What's worse, I felt that all the characters besides Merry (a comically ironic name) are essentially flat, static characters. You can take your typical range of character archetypes and add a sprinkling of occasional gloom and you'll land with what's in the show. Perhaps what really did it for me was the lack of relatability, without which the entire imminent death thing was irrelevant.

Value:
While carrying interesting visuals and a unique, underdog approach to the fantasy genre, Grimgar ultimately failed to captivate me. Often lost in a plethora of uninspiring and frankly pessimistic characters, the show greatly lacks energy until the final scenes. If you're looking for an immersive environment and don't mind shallow characters, give this a try. If you're looking for an entertaining fantasy show, Konosuba is the show of the season. If you're looking strong characters and plot, go for SAO.

Hey, look at that, another trapped in a videogame show, made by A-1 Pictures which established the trend with Sword Art Online. If there is a studio you can trust for making good anime, that would be this studio, because SAO is very popular and that means it’s good (not). While it was airing, Grimgar had a lot of people who liked it for its more down to earth approach to isekai. This was, unfortunately, counterbalanced by not doing much with them.

1) The slice of life aspect of the show allocates a lot of screentime on the way the characters interact with each other, thus giving you enough time to feel sympathy for them. Even the monsters performed daily activities during calm moments and felt like they had lives outside of looting and killing. At the same time, nothing much happened in the setting, since the plot was left incomplete as a yet another example of an anime made solely for promoting the light novels.

2) As much as you might have liked the characters for not being overpowered special chosen ones, at the same time they were bland archetypes with no name or backdrop or even memories of their past. They popped into existence in that world and thus they never felt like they existed naturally in it. They came off as generic cardboards with generic classes roaming around in a generic fantasy setting, killing generic monsters. And sure, they had a few character gimmicks as an excuse for personality, but that was giving them as much depth as a smurf that has nothing to do outside of repeating its one and only gimmick.

3) There was detailed fighting choreography in every battle since it wasn’t about the characters standing still and spamming epic spells that easily defeat entire armies. At the same time the fights weren’t that elaborate. Despite being a team, when one of them was fighting the rest were standing still. Seriously, it’s as if time froze for the sake of having a duel. Beyond that, having more realism in fights is a very minor thing when there is no investment in the characters that are doing the fighting. Since they were cardboards you never really cared about them, therefore it didn’t matter how much attention to physics the action scenes had and they end up being unmemorable.

4) As pretty as the background art and the slice of life moments may have been, there was close to zero world building or lore, since everything in this world and its inhabitants was a blank sheet of paper. The visuals had nothing to tell you other than this was a forest and that was a city. Nothing had a story to tell. Why were the monsters attacking? Was there some sort of a king? Was there a goal in these conflicts? Without something to distinguish all that from any other fantasy show it was hard to give a damn about anything that was going on, since it didn’t feel like a living, breathing world.

5) The fans of the show got really emotional in the middle when one of the characters died and got replaced by another character of the same class. They made this big fuss about how deeply this event affected the rest of the cast, and how it made them far more relatable since they got character development by the death they experienced. What actually happened was the show trying to make you care about the way a character died instead of the way he lived. I mean, seriously, there was absolutely nothing to talk about that character and the only memorable thing about him was that he died. Also, the person that replaced him was the only character who had a backdrop story, and it was just witnessing others dying as well. The only thing the writer did for making you care and to think these people had a personality, was killing nobodies.

6) The isekai part of the anime was easily its worst aspect since it was badly implemented and didn’t go anywhere. The characters had amnesia and didn’t know they came from our world. And that was it for the isekai part; it didn’t matter in the show. The characters were not trying to return home, nor did they use the knowledge they had from our world to their benefit, because they didn’t remember it. Therefore there was absolutely no point in this show to be an isekai.

7) The amnesia part was also badly implemented, since it was there only as a lazy excuse for the author to leave everything blank. Why bother with lore and character backdrops when you can make them pop into existence with no memories and have them doing whatever they are told without questioning it? Just having them as poor villagers in a fantasy realm, trying to make a living by becoming adventurers would have more depth that this amnesia nonsense. For all I know the author was riding the trapped in a videogame premise just because the otakus prefer that shit over typical fantasy adventures, and then made it an open world type of game where everything is just random missions with no central plot.

8) I also need to point out the fan service. A1-Pictures is notorious for constantly zooming the camera to women’s butts and boobs, and although it wasn’t everpresent like in other anime, it was still fairly tasteless. Are these camera shots supposed to make you care more about the characters? Did these women deserve any respect from you when you were given nothing to remember them for, besides how much horny they made you?

And this was why Grimgar failed to be memorable for many even while it was airing. It was just another crappy isekai in a sea of crappy isekai and was left undeveloped and incomplete since it was made just to promote the novel.