Yahello! My name is CrescentValentine, but you can also just call me CV for short.
This is my first time doing so and I am not really sure if this counts as a review or not since I am only giving my opinion on the subject, but I have been wanting to contribute to this guild and do something for awhile and after racking my brain over and over for the past couple nights, I arrived at doing this. Since I am an avid anime viewer on crunchyroll, I thought I would post up my personal thoughts, impressions, and opinions for new anime on crunchyroll considering I watch about two to three different shows everyday and I figured if I was going for a fresh new start on things, than I should start with something that is literally brand new, on crunchyroll anyway, and this anime, Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash was literally just uploaded to crunchyroll about seven hours ago today, but I won't go into too depth of detail about it since I literally just discovered it and have only watched the first three episodes, which is how most of these, if I do more of them, will go probably. Also, just so you know. Spoilers. I'll only be talking about stuff from the first few episodes I have seen, but if you want to start this show yourself with a "clean slate" then I don't suggest you read further. Please and thank you!
First off, the anime: The first thing that caught my attention was the anime description. Which goes like this...
From A-1 Pictures, the studio behind Fairy Tail and Sword Art Online: When Haruhiro awakens, he’s in the dark surrounded by people who have no memory of where they came from or how they got there. As the darkness fades, a fantastic new world called “Grimgar” appears before them and their adventure begins—but first, they’ll have to choose their guild, class, and special abilities.
Just reading the first few words got me interested in giving this anime a try, because I absolutely love A-1 Pictures and most of their work are some of my favorite animes. Like Sword Art Online, Oreimo, Working!!, Your Lie in April, GATE, The Asterisk War, and Saekano for example. Though in comparison, Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash is a little lacking in substance to those. So far, it's visual effects aren't as flashy or dazzling as in Sword Art Online or GATE, which is something I really admired in both of those shows, but the combat sequences are still pretty fluid and the detail of the characters are still just as nicely done as with their other anime.
And going back to the description again, I get wanting to market your product, but I find something a little off-putting by the fact that the first thing mentioned is the production studio and listing off a couple shows that studio has done, which I know kind of contradicts what I said about getting excited about it when I read it. Maybe it is just me, but I would rather hear about what the anime's story and premise are about first before telling me who it is made by.
Second thing, the story: Though I also get the feeling the description mentions both SAO and Fairy Tail because it feels like this anime draws elements from both... and maybe a little of Log Horizon too, but this anime follows one Haruhiro or at least I am giving him the protagonist status here, because he is the only character's voice we hear doing narration, and the adventures that his party goes through and what I meant by drawing elements from SAO is because the world the characters "suddenly" find themselves in is totally "rpg" like. In the very first episode, one of the characters state that "This isn't a game", but having no memory, they get confused by this term and ask what a "game" is, though they have no answer, not even the guy who said it, but it says it just felt like the right thing to say at the time. Haruhiro himself later in a flashback has an inner thought monologue where he says he doesn't have his cellphone and then immediately wonders what a cellphone is in the first place, but it is clearly evident that it carries kind of the same "death game" feel that SAO delivered where you only get one life and if you die, that's it, it's Game Over permanently. As for where it draws from Fairy Tail, by that there are a couple factions and several guilds in the anime where the characters join, get their class, which are all your basic fanfare of rpg types. Warrior, Thief, Mage, Priest, Hunter, Dark Knight. Our hero, Haruhiro, decides to become a Thief, which as an rpg gamer myself feels very cliché with the main character being a thief or some kind of rogue type. It is a little sad that we never get to see any of the characters go through their training regiments for becoming one of these class types, we just get a couple sentences of them mentioning their teacher's personalities and how strict they were, but as I said, I have only watched the first few episodes so it's possible it could come up in later flashbacks, but my instincts are telling me to doubt it. As we watch Haruhiro and his party in the beginning, it is mostly them just struggling to make a living by going out and taking out some monsters and turning their loot in for profit, another game-like aspect and also a requirement for increasing their skills, but their first challenge is to overcome their fear of having to kill another living being even if they are technically monsters. They go through hell just trying to kill one goblin and to be honest, you do kind of feel really bad for the first goblin they kill in the first episode, because it is pretty brutal and violent and it makes it all the more worse when the goblin panics in fear for it's life and tries to escape. But the bad feeling does not last long as it goes into the second episode and the characters have all obtained a new skill and their teamwork drastically improves suddenly to the point that they manage groups of two to three goblins instead of only being able to manage one.
And several times throughout the first couple episodes, we get images of the moon in Grimgar, but the moon is bright red, but even though it is red, it does not cast a red hue down on the ground or give things a red tint to them, which to me feels a little bit of a missed opportunity for some world building, but their "red" moon is not perfect either. When we see it, it looks fractured that it looks like it is about to break apart with the cracks giving off a bright white light as if someone took our moon and put a red eggshell around it and it was on the verge of hatching. Haruhiro mentions the fact that a red moon is really weird and that he somehow knows for sure that the "other place" he came from before DID NOT have a red moon and the fact that him and all the other random collection of people he arrived in Grimgar wearing regular present day Earth clothes emerging out of some magic-looking monolith makes suspiciously think of Angel Beats. I can totally picture this story being similar to that in a way. Like this "Grimgar" fantasy realm is actually like some sort of afterlife way station after some disaster occurred in the real world where Haruhiro and the others arrived with all died and then they "awaken" to find themselves in some strange place with no recollection of their past memory about where they came from or even who they were before except only knowing their own names. And is it just me or does it feel like this theme of "suddenly finding yourself in some bizarre or strange fantasy world" becoming more prevalent lately?
So, in short. My summary is as thus: 1. Players suddenly find themselves trapped in a MMO (it's not an actual MMO, just using game terms as a reference to help better explain what it is like) 2. The noobs pretty much become adventurers, join a guild to obtain a job class, form a party together, and go hunt monsters to obtain loot and make a profit. 3. Watch the noobs struggle to go from being completely and totally useless, even as cannon fodder, to become one of the LEETS with some small bits of character development happening along the way.
Well... and that is that. Until next week when I decide to pick another anime at random on crunchyroll and talk about it.
Yahello! My name is CrescentValentine, but you can also just call me CV for short.
This is my first time doing so and I am not really sure if this counts as a review or not since I am only giving my opinion on the subject, but I have been wanting to contribute to this guild and do something for awhile and after racking my brain over and over for the past couple nights, I arrived at doing this. Since I am an avid anime viewer on crunchyroll, I thought I would post up my personal thoughts, impressions, and opinions for new anime on crunchyroll considering I watch about two to three different shows everyday and I figured if I was going for a fresh new start on things, than I should start with something that is literally brand new, on crunchyroll anyway, and this anime, Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash was literally just uploaded to crunchyroll about seven hours ago today, but I won't go into too depth of detail about it since I literally just discovered it and have only watched the first three episodes, which is how most of these, if I do more of them, will go probably. Also, just so you know. Spoilers. I'll only be talking about stuff from the first few episodes I have seen, but if you want to start this show yourself with a "clean slate" then I don't suggest you read further. Please and thank you!
First off, the anime: The first thing that caught my attention was the anime description. Which goes like this...
From A-1 Pictures, the studio behind Fairy Tail and Sword Art Online: When Haruhiro awakens, he’s in the dark surrounded by people who have no memory of where they came from or how they got there. As the darkness fades, a fantastic new world called “Grimgar” appears before them and their adventure begins—but first, they’ll have to choose their guild, class, and special abilities.
Just reading the first few words got me interested in giving this anime a try, because I absolutely love A-1 Pictures and most of their work are some of my favorite animes. Like Sword Art Online, Oreimo, Working!!, Your Lie in April, GATE, The Asterisk War, and Saekano for example. Though in comparison, Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash is a little lacking in substance to those. So far, it's visual effects aren't as flashy or dazzling as in Sword Art Online or GATE, which is something I really admired in both of those shows, but the combat sequences are still pretty fluid and the detail of the characters are still just as nicely done as with their other anime.
And going back to the description again, I get wanting to market your product, but I find something a little off-putting by the fact that the first thing mentioned is the production studio and listing off a couple shows that studio has done, which I know kind of contradicts what I said about getting excited about it when I read it. Maybe it is just me, but I would rather hear about what the anime's story and premise are about first before telling me who it is made by.
Second thing, the story: Though I also get the feeling the description mentions both SAO and Fairy Tail because it feels like this anime draws elements from both... and maybe a little of Log Horizon too, but this anime follows one Haruhiro or at least I am giving him the protagonist status here, because he is the only character's voice we hear doing narration, and the adventures that his party goes through and what I meant by drawing elements from SAO is because the world the characters "suddenly" find themselves in is totally "rpg" like. In the very first episode, one of the characters state that "This isn't a game", but having no memory, they get confused by this term and ask what a "game" is, though they have no answer, not even the guy who said it, but it says it just felt like the right thing to say at the time. Haruhiro himself later in a flashback has an inner thought monologue where he says he doesn't have his cellphone and then immediately wonders what a cellphone is in the first place, but it is clearly evident that it carries kind of the same "death game" feel that SAO delivered where you only get one life and if you die, that's it, it's Game Over permanently. As for where it draws from Fairy Tail, by that there are a couple factions and several guilds in the anime where the characters join, get their class, which are all your basic fanfare of rpg types. Warrior, Thief, Mage, Priest, Hunter, Dark Knight. Our hero, Haruhiro, decides to become a Thief, which as an rpg gamer myself feels very cliché with the main character being a thief or some kind of rogue type. It is a little sad that we never get to see any of the characters go through their training regiments for becoming one of these class types, we just get a couple sentences of them mentioning their teacher's personalities and how strict they were, but as I said, I have only watched the first few episodes so it's possible it could come up in later flashbacks, but my instincts are telling me to doubt it. As we watch Haruhiro and his party in the beginning, it is mostly them just struggling to make a living by going out and taking out some monsters and turning their loot in for profit, another game-like aspect and also a requirement for increasing their skills, but their first challenge is to overcome their fear of having to kill another living being even if they are technically monsters. They go through hell just trying to kill one goblin and to be honest, you do kind of feel really bad for the first goblin they kill in the first episode, because it is pretty brutal and violent and it makes it all the more worse when the goblin panics in fear for it's life and tries to escape. But the bad feeling does not last long as it goes into the second episode and the characters have all obtained a new skill and their teamwork drastically improves suddenly to the point that they manage groups of two to three goblins instead of only being able to manage one.
And several times throughout the first couple episodes, we get images of the moon in Grimgar, but the moon is bright red, but even though it is red, it does not cast a red hue down on the ground or give things a red tint to them, which to me feels a little bit of a missed opportunity for some world building, but their "red" moon is not perfect either. When we see it, it looks fractured that it looks like it is about to break apart with the cracks giving off a bright white light as if someone took our moon and put a red eggshell around it and it was on the verge of hatching. Haruhiro mentions the fact that a red moon is really weird and that he somehow knows for sure that the "other place" he came from before DID NOT have a red moon and the fact that him and all the other random collection of people he arrived in Grimgar wearing regular present day Earth clothes emerging out of some magic-looking monolith makes suspiciously think of Angel Beats. I can totally picture this story being similar to that in a way. Like this "Grimgar" fantasy realm is actually like some sort of afterlife way station after some disaster occurred in the real world where Haruhiro and the others arrived with all died and then they "awaken" to find themselves in some strange place with no recollection of their past memory about where they came from or even who they were before except only knowing their own names. And is it just me or does it feel like this theme of "suddenly finding yourself in some bizarre or strange fantasy world" becoming more prevalent lately?
So, in short. My summary is as thus: 1. Players suddenly find themselves trapped in a MMO (it's not an actual MMO, just using game terms as a reference to help better explain what it is like) 2. The noobs pretty much become adventurers, join a guild to obtain a job class, form a party together, and go hunt monsters to obtain loot and make a profit. 3. Watch the noobs struggle to go from being completely and totally useless, even as cannon fodder, to become one of the LEETS with some small bits of character development happening along the way.
Well... and that is that. Until next week when I decide to pick another anime at random on crunchyroll and talk about it.
See you next time! 4laugh
i just transferred this post to the review and rating sub-forum
Aftertaste My final thoughts and impressions on Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash
Kansei shimashita! I have now completed the whole anime of Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash and will now post my final opinions and impressions on the anime as a whole and not just the first few episodes that I did with my post before. There were some other elements I would have liked to see and a couple changes that I would have liked to see to make it more interesting, but this is just my personal opinion of course. A warning once more, there will be spoilers in this so read only at your own discretion.
Picking up where I left off from my post, the anime gets dynamically much more interesting on the fourth episode and even though this a pretty grim way to bring delight to an anime, but it brings so much emotion out of the characters that it gives them much more development and makes them much more interesting than they were before. This is the death of their party leader, Manato and Haruhiro has to step up as the party's new leader. Manato was a Priest and in the start of the anime, is their leader. His death probably does not come as much of a surprise considering how everybody else in the party is sloppy and flawed and makes a lot of mistakes whereas he is well rounded and balanced making him a perfect leader so it's not really too big of a shocker when he dies when they get ambushed by goblins in the goblins territory. The impact of his death upon the rest of the characters causes quite a shocking ripple effect that rocks them all pretty well to their core, which is actually a little more sad since it seemed like a relationship was starting to form between him and Shihoru (Mage), and for the remainder of the episode, all of the characters are at a complete loss of how to proceed, but they knew that they can't just do nothing. They have to hunt to live so the guys, Haru (Haruhiro for short), Ranta (Dark Knight), and Moguzo (Warrior) all decide to hire a Priest, because they know they can't do anything without a Priest to be there to heal their wounds. This is where Mary is introduced. Mary comes in to replace Manato's role as the party's Priest, but the two girls in the group, Yume (Hunter) and Shihoru (Mage) do not take too kindly to it and give the guys the silent treatment and to top it all off, Mary herself is not very cooperative herself and when engaged in conversation, gives everyone a harsh look, but Mary has her own sordid and troubling past that makes her current personality the way it is.
Another of the things I would have liked to see is more of a romantic subplot for the main character, Haruhiro. I announced in my introduction that harems are my favorite genre though I usually dislike when the harem ends without the protagonist making a final decision, but this does not mean I do not like seeing a good love story as well and was one of the great things that I loved about SAO was the relationship that forms between Kirito and Asuna who are one of my favorite anime couples, though they could never hope to trump my ultimate couple, but unfortunately, Grimgar fails to deliver an epic love story like that one. And it's a little tough to say which will you could go with Haruhiro in the story here. You could go with Haruhiro's mentor, Barbara (Thieves Guild Master, who is also one of the only mentors we see for Haruhiro's party besides Manato's when they bring his corpse to him to try and revive him, but can't because Manato was already dead by then and we find out there is no such thing as resurrection magic in Grimgar) who is a sexy, glasses-type sadist character, but considering she tells him to make one of the three girls in his party "his", most likely not. Mostly, you'd think either Yume or Mary. In the episode after Manato's death and Haru's party disaster at working together with their new Priest recruit, Mary, Haru and Yume bond together as they hold each other tightly while they both cry and dump their feelings out on each other in the rain. The scene is really sweet and it gets all the more intimate when Yume actually announces herself that she has discovered that is really calming when she is held tightly by him and the two of them stay that way until Shihoru spots the two of them and Haru immediately breaks away from Yume and tries to explain how what she saw could easily be misunderstood while Yume sits on the ground looking confused for a few moments before she suddenly realizes it too and also starts blushing like crazy, which is kind of a great thing about her character. Yume is actually a little bit of a ditz and is slow to pick up on things, which makes her cute in my opinion. But unfortunately, this intimate embrace is never revisited and nothing ever happens again between the two of them, but from there on in, Haru spends most of his time interacting with Mary and I could also easily see the two of them working out as a couple. After all, Haru is the first one of the party that Mary gives any respect to by addressing him with the nickname of "Hal" and the two continuously bond throughout the rest of the anime after, though the way he tries to get closer to Mary is kind of hackneyed cliché. One of the other people comes up and tells them about Mary's past, that apparently before, she was the center of the party doing several jobs all at once, pretty much making her like Manato, but on a hunt in some, she lost her whole party to a big and giant powerful Kobold called Death Spots, save for her and the one other guy of course, but what is cliché is how Haru words his confession when he tells her about Manato and how he died in order to better help explain the reason why Haru and his party is reluctant to work with Mary as their new Priest. He pretty much uses the same description that Mary's past member told them before, but twists it around and inputs Manato instead of Mary. This may seem clever to some, but I just found it annoying. I would have found it far more interesting if Haru would have came up with an original way to confess Manato's death and the impact that it has on them. From then on, Mary starts to cooperate with the party's teamwork and they eventually take revenge on the goblins who killed their dearest friend and former leader, Manato. Also, alternatively, Haru helps Mary get over the grief and pain of her losing her friends as well.
The flaws. I am sure there are more, but I really only want to talk about a couple here. One is not that big and I am sure it's something everyone has noticed. In the last few episodes of Grimgar, because Haru's party had gotten their revenge and killed the goblins that killed Manato. However, because they freed up that territory the goblins were using as their main base, more stronger and violent monsters moved in and took over prompted Haru's party to switch up their hunting grounds and they decide to go to the Cyrene Mine where the Kobolds and yes, also the place where Mary's friends died in her past so part of it is going to help her get overcome her feeling of fear, which she herself realizes she must also do so she joins them on their new hunt against the Kobolds in the mines. However, things do not go exactly as planned. They trigger an alarm and the powerful Kobold, Death Spots (who is called so because his fur is made up of blotches of black and white giving him a rather cutesy title for such a vicious beast in my opinion). While on the run to retreat away from the pressing Death Spot and the rest of the Kobolds, Ranta gets separated from the rest of the party after he saves Haru allowing Haru to escape, doing the whole heroic sacrifice trope and everything. At this point, you've got know. They are going to go back for their dear friend Ranta, even though it does not seem like anyone in the group even likes Ranta, but while they may not like how he acts or the words coming out of his mouth, he is a dear friend so trying to save him only seems like a natural course to take and I was really REALLY expecting someone to sacrifice themselves. However, in the beginning of the last episode, we see Ranta's helmet hanging on the edge of wooden post and it is dripping with blood and it leaves you to wonder "Oh no, Ranta is dead already and he was so unimportant that they killed him off-screen!?" and then we see Ranta climbing up out of one of the holes in the mine to get back up on the mine's fourth floor so now it's like "Oh, thank goodness. He's not dead, just injured and the blood dripping off his helmet was just from the gash on his face above his right eye" and he is also hurt in a couple other places. Ranta tries to lay low while the Kobolds are searching for him on the fourth floor and Haru and his party are coming back down to rescue him from the third floor. However, Ranta is discovered by Death Spots and Ranta runs off and hides in what looks like a tool shed, which Death Spots obliterates by crushing the shed with a punch. But the blow knocks Ranta away who is immediately back up to his feet and moving to evade Death Spots attacks. However, during this little evasion time, one of the times Ranta has his helmet, even though he clearly should not so it's just a mistake that probably just went unnoticed by the production studio.
The other flaw is just something of a personal opinion of mine, but I wanted more a climatic finale. More so than anything, I have a tendency towards tragedy than love or sad or happy stories and during the finale when Haru's party has successfully recovered Ranta and they plan to keep retreating the mines to return back to the surface and to town, but once again, Death Spots comes back and cuts off their retreat. And this is where I was all like "All right! Haruhiro is totally going to throw his life away and do that whole noble hero sacrificing themselves thing to allow his friends to escape", which I was partly right. Haru decides that the only way for everyone to escape safely is that somebody is going to have to stay to keep Death Spots distracted. Naturally, he can't tell one of his friends to stay to die so he naturally volunteers himself as tribute... I mean, he starts fighting Death Spots himself. Taking his scarf, he gets behind Death Spots, climbs up on his back, and wraps the scarf around Death Spot's neck and used the momentum off kicking off the wall to send both him and Death Spots over the edge and crashing down into the bottom of a ravine. Haru recovers and stirs back into consciousness, hearing Mary crying and pleading out to him and Ranta tells him not to give up and die. So, being encouraged, Haru rises to his feet to start the fight against Death Spots once again, mano e mano. And here, I was actually kind of expecting Haru to die considering that the whole time we have seen Death Spots, who is pretty much like the Kobold Hulk since Mary informs them that attacking him only makes him stronger and up until now would make anyone think that a party of like twenty highly skilled fighters would probably be necessary for taking him out so I was expecting an epic hard fought battle where Haru does everything he can to hold out and uses the last of his strength to create an opening that allows his party to kill Death Spots, but this is what we get instead... First off, I should explain that multiple times throughout the anime, Haruhiro sees these rays of light coming off the monsters like the aurora Northern Lights while in combat, telling him exactly how he should move and where to strike to end the fight in one blow or just as quickly as possible, essentially acquiring a "sixth sense"-like fighting sense. And as he gets up to stand off with Death Spots, he see these lights once more and he follows them, stabbing Death Spots in his one good eye since Yume had shot the other with an arrow before when they were escaping and then somehow he uses his tiny knife to cut Death Spot's big hunking broadsword in two and impales Death Spots with the broken blade, killing him. The whole fight is over in less than a minute and just feels very anti-climatic.
And also, after re-reading over my last post, I really want to clarify something that I should have put in before. With my choice of how I worded and described everything, I get the feeling that I am giving off an off-putting feeling towards Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash, but this is not true at all. I mean, sure, the beginning is slow and the story and characters take some time before building up. It does not start with a great impact on the first episode like SAO does, but that does not mean it isn't good. It's a great show, that has it's flaws here and there, but overall as a whole, I'd give it, probably a 7/10.
Well, that's all from me for this topic. See you next time! 4laugh
