An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

A Show That Exists? – Granblue Fantasy (Season 1) Spoiler Review

A curious thing happened as I sat down to write my review for this week. I knew there was a show I’d intended to review, but for the life of me I could not remember what it was. I knew I had to have made note of it somewhere and so I looked, and I saw… Granblue Fantasy?

Granblue Fantasy?

Ah, right! Granblue Fantasy. I certainly saw a show by that name. It had characters, and a plot, that much was certain. And, um…

Okay, I’ll cut the comedy routine here. The point is that I didn’t find Granblue Fantasy particularly distinctive or memorable. In many ways it’s actually remarkable how standard it really is, so much so that I could quite easily refer to the characters and moments by the archetypes they evoke or the better characters from other media whose notes they’ve seemingly copied. Yet, at the same time, can I really consider it to be that bad, or worth scorn? Is it like Hundred where the laziness is insulting and noxious, or is it more like Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs, where being a largely unremarkable expression of a genre is just that, unremarkable?

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