Granblue Fantasy

Do These Characters Move? Granblue Fantasy, I’m Not Sure.

In the absence of being really caught up in the story here, or even distracted by characters that are particularly interesting, I’m really starting to pay attention to how little animation seems to be present in Granblue Fantasy The Animation Season 2. Episode 7 puts this particular trait on full display with scene after scene of nearly stagnant characters standing dead centre and reacting while nothing happens in the background.

It isn’t as though season one was particularly polished in its animation however, I’m finding as season two continues it feels like even less effort is put into breaking up the endless scenes of sitting and eating or standing and talking. The occasional fight sequence or chase scene that used to pop up is feeling further and further away. It is like they used all their oomph on the Katalina back story and now we’re just kind of hoping that the gloomy clouds on the haunted island and the constant background changes as we meander through Io’s memory will somehow confuse the viewer into thinking something is actually happening.

And I guess they do occasionally open some doors and Gran does stand in a circle with Ferry to summon the ghost ship. However there’s just not much visually going on and the plot of this episode can entirely be summed up by the girls wander around Io’s memories while the other characters rally to find them. it isn’t exactly compelling and the few moments where it looks like Io might really be in trouble are swiftly moved on from.

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Even when we finally get to the ‘villain’ of the piece it is more a homage to the Wizard of Oz and if anything else there’s even less being animated in this scene. We pan over plenty of frozen faces of previous victims but there’s no actual movement going on here. Murky colour palette or not it just isn’t interesting to look at.

All of this adds to the basic underwhelming feeling that season 2 of Granblue Fantasy continues to dish up. Admittedly season one was hardly mind blowing but it almost feels like season two is aiming to be as forgettable as humanly possible. And if that is it’s aim, it is succeeding admirably.

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Karandi James

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Images from: Granblue Fantasy The Animation Season 2. Dir. Y Umemoto. MAPPA. 2019.

No Need To Fear in Granblue Fantasy

Except perhaps fearing that maybe Granblue Fantasy didn’t need a second season as we more or less walk through the same beats as season one without really adding anything to the plot. And maybe that’s fine because season one was enjoyable enough, but the rinse and repeat of land on island, determine there’s a problem caused by a primal beast (or a human messing with a primal beast), before Lyria puts on a light show and saves the day is possibly running a little thin at this point.

And that’s probably the whole review of the episode except that we don’t actually get to the problem solving part here. The crew of the Grandcypher are fleeing the empire, again, and choose to enter the mist and land on the misty island where they realise the ship is damaged and the instruments are out of whack. While Rackman and the older crew members look at repairs, Gran and the others opt to go find a village and look for food (I’m not sure if this is them being helpful by removing themselves or if they just really like food).

They then find a village where a whole bunch of zombies live and apparently 100 years ago an epidemic was wiping out the village but a ghost ship showed up, they all became zombies and that’s it. Only the ship apparently also occasionally eats the zombies so one wonders why they are all so happy about things.

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Naturally Gran and the others aren’t just going to leave it alone. Even if their airship could leave, which apparently it can’t because it will end up back at the island, they’d stick around to figure out what is going on. And that was before you threw the invisible girl into the mix who Lyria can see and then made appear to everyone.

There’s not a thing wrong with this episode and yet it really wasn’t all that interesting either. It was more of the same and more of what is expected from Granblue at this point and to be honest I just wasn’t really feeling it this week. Hopefully next week will be a bit more exciting when they face off against the ghost ship/ primal beast.

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Karandi James

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Images from: Granblue Fantasy The Animation Season 2. Dir. Y Umemoto. MAPPA. 2019.

Perhaps We Should Take A Moment To Reflect

We finally get the showdown between Gran, Katalina and Vira. After all the build-up you’d kind of expect more than a shout your feelings kind of fight sequence while waiting for the mage to power up their spell but that’s more or less what it comes down to. As the city is crumbling under the empire’s attack and Vira’s own power, Vira is going to vent all her frustration and direct it straight at Gran.

In honesty, it seems a little misplaced. Lyria was the reason Katalina ran away from the Empire and ended up becoming an outlaw. Gran had nothing to do with that as she was already on the run when he met her. As usual, Gran has ended up the centre of an incident that really doesn’t seem to have anything to do with him and yet somehow the show keeps trying to convince me that his decisions and actions matter when Katalina is the one who saves Lyria, the sniper is the reason they weren’t all dead already, and Io is the reason they ultimately managed to wear Vira down. All Gran did was get stabbed (which for whatever reason no one ever seems to mention again).

Of course, I’m not sure that Vira was playing with a full deck of cards by the time we got to this fight so maybe I’m looking for logic where none is supposed to exist. Gotta love her crazy eyes though.

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But, it wouldn’t be the series we’ve come to know if they didn’t get a heart felt speech and somehow make everything better. Don’t worry about the trauma to the citizens who had to flee the rubble (even if you protected them from death, it is still pretty terrifying seeing your world crumbling around you). Don’t worry about the fact that someone with a massive amount of power is clearly emotionally unstable and co-dependent to a scary point. It’s fine. We’ll talk and catch up and everything will be okay.

Of course, that is part of the charm of the anime in general. It isn’t heavy going and it doesn’t tax the viewer mentally. Meanwhile, you have bright pretty colours zipping about the screen and characters who appear at regular intervals just to remind you that they exist and are relevant. I am curious as to where we will go now that we’ve finally closed this saga.

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Karandi James

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Images from: Granblue Fantasy The Animation Season 2. Dir. Y Umemoto. MAPPA. 2019.

Did Anyone Take the Pardon Seriously?

A good six minutes of episode 4 of Granblue Fantasy Season 2 is taken up with Vira reminiscing about her time at the academy making sandwiches for Katalina. Apparently sandwiches are an indicator that you are a deeply amazing cook and someone eating them is a sure sign that you are soul mates and should sacrifice literally everything for the rest of forever for someone else. That might sound a bit catty, but I’m just wondering what we were supposed to get out of this flashback. Sure it is a different perspective but other than the food there really isn’t anything new revealed that we didn’t already figure out from the previous flashbacks.

Of course, Gran and the others have decided that taking matters into their own hands involves essentially tearing up the pardon while taunting the empire’s representative. They couldn’t just sneak in and steal Katalina away. It most definitely had to be loud, flashy, and involve jumping off of a precipice and onto the deck of an airship before engaging in a fight with the empire’s soldiers who despite living in a world full of people who can use magic seem endlessly surprised when it is used against them.

But ultimately none of that matters because Vira’s plan is for Katalina to stay with her forever and she already arranged for the general to blow the others out of the sky regardless. Which makes almost all of what we just watched pretty pointless. And then of course there is the inevitable betrayal where the general decides to just blow everyone up including Katalina but gets defeated almost instantly when Vira loses her cool.

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Granblue Fantasy is never the most subtle or well written of anime and the characters most definitely lean toward the simplistic, however this episode also feels like they jettisoned their brains and just ran-around on auto-pilot hoping somehow that we’ll come out the other end of the smack-down that will probably start next week with most viewers still viewing. I don’t know that it is a solid plan.

Equally concerning is that each episode has given a small teaser of other people doing other things and setting things in motion and it all looks so much more interesting than what the majority of these episodes has delivered. Had they wrapped up Katalina’s story in two or even three episodes it would have been fine, but now it feels like they are stretching the friendship. I guess we’ll see how much longer this story will drag out this conflict.

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Karandi James

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Images from: Granblue Fantasy The Animation Season 2. Dir. Y Umemoto. MAPPA. 2019.

Oh No, The Group Is Breaking Up

After Katalina slunk off in the night the kids decide that its not on and are determined to get her back, even if that means sneaking into a heavily fortified military school while the empire that just signed their pardon is still present on the island. Well, no one ever claimed Gran was good at planning ahead. Besides, Katalina, who had her own life and dreams before she absconded with Lyria, decided not to travel around with them anymore. Oh the horror.

Okay, that may have been a little bit sarcastic and part of the issue is that Katalina’s choice turns out to be fuelled by past guilt rather than rational decision making on her part. Still, given this group came together by sheer happenstance while meandering about it kind of makes sense that characters might decide to leave and actually set some sort of plan other than keep travelling at some point. What will Gran do then?

On the bright side, Vyrn was actually an almost useful character this week as he distracted the guards and allowed for an incredibly comically bad attempt by Lyria, Io and Gran at sneaking in. I’m wondering if they have Saturday morning cartoons in that world because that is what they looked like as they tried to ‘sneak’.

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We finally do reunite with Katalina and she gives us a sad little back story which explains her feelings of guilt and then she more or less tells the kids to go fly a kite and leaves them to get thrown out. That’s pretty straight forward and yet apparently not good enough for the younger crew members. They have a brief interaction with Rosetta who apparently just shows up to remind us she exists and then we’re back to planning how to get into trouble with the empire again and get the band crew back together.

This was not Granblue’s finest works and coupled with very lacklustre animation outside of the fight scenes in Katalina’s flash backs (a lot of characters were very still for just that little bit too long this week) this was perhaps one of the poorer showings the anime has given us even when taking into account some of season one. It is nice that Katalina’s story is getting some attention but the execution hasn’t been great this week. Here’s hoping there’s a big finish to this particularly character arc.

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Karandi James

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Images from: Granblue Fantasy The Animation Season 2. Dir. Y Umemoto. MAPPA. 2019.

Just Like That
We’re No Longer Criminals

Episodes like episode 2 of Granblue Fantasy season 2 are kind of hard to review for the simple reason that there isn’t much that really caught my interest while the episode was airing. There wasn’t actually anything bad about the episode, other than the usual issues with characters faces kind of losing detail at times and not animating the tour of the city but rather just giving us a montage of stills. It was more that they built up the whole idea of negotiating with the empire only for the actual process to be over with almost before it started and while no one really believes it to be a legitimate peace offering the story moves on to balls and Katalina’s past.

The thing is, there’s a lot bubbling away underneath the surface of this episode, but within the episode itself very little of it is revealed. Instead we watch characters twirl in dresses, eat lots of food, have conversations where what needs to be said isn’t said, and then the episode ends with the vary obviously telegraphed departure of a character they are almost certain to follow anyway so it isn’t all that dramatic.

About the only real tension comes from watching Gran’s stiff performance at the ball itself as he awkwardly deals with the other guests before retreating to the comfort of the familiar and then slips out entirely. Lyria on the other hand knows what’s important – the buffet.

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However, with secrets in the past, more primal beasts, and the mysterious black knight character all still hovering around I guess season 2 has plenty it can explore. It would be nice to see Gran get a bit closer to his goal or finding his dad at some point, though no one seems to be in a rush to pursue that and it seems like Katalina’s past is probably more likely to be explored first (which given she’s been around since episode 1 and hadn’t had a back story yet it does kind of feel like she’s due).

So not the most exciting episode but serviceable and as usual the characters were pleasant enough to spend time with.

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Karandi James

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Images from: Granblue Fantasy The Animation Season 2. Dir. Y Umemoto. MAPPA. 2019.

The Return of The
Forgettable Adventurers

When I reviewed season 1 of Granblue Fantasy The Animation back in 2017 I said I enjoyed the anime enough but followed that up by saying it wasn’t really something I would recommend. As season 2 begins I was kind of torn as to whether I would continue, but to be honest, Granblue while a little too safe and a little on the duller side was always pleasant to watch and pleasant is sometimes relaxing enough to watch even if it isn’t overly memorable.

And so we embark on season 2 with Gran, Lyria and the rest of the crew and it is exactly the same as it was. I actually really liked the opening to this season. Instead of forcing through character reintroduction we had a sequence on the airship with Vyrn chasing an apple and interacting with each character as he pursued it. There was no dialogue and the sequence just worked. It reminded those who had watched season one of who was now part of the crew and their basic personality and it did it expediently. Much appreciated.

This was followed by the OP which is very generically pop but it works and honestly it fits the tone of what the first season offered perfectly and given what followed in this episode I can’t say that the OP isn’t appropriate.

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There’s a sequence early on where the characters are eating and the owner of the Knick-Knack Shack gives them a new adventure to go on and I loved how the necessary exposition was embedded within real conversation around passing salt and asking for more food and the general chit-chat that would occur when a large group were dining together. Admittedly, in a high stakes anime or one with a driving story, this kind of scene would just be eating screen time, but here it is Granblue. The characters are pleasant to spend time with and they have downtime as well as times when they are in danger.

Soon though we are back out on a floating island and hunting down the source of a strange noise. Turns out it is a primal beast (when isn’t it) and once again the Empire are torturing the thing in the name of research (when aren’t they). Gran and the others are forced to fight the crazy beast and the fight sequence is a little messy visually, but it is resolved the way these fights always are.

There is an attempt at the end to set up the next stage with one person from the Empire asking Gran and the others to attend a peace negotiation. It is clearly shady but no doubt they’ll head along to it anyway and really I don’t expect much from this anime anyway. If you want a generic fantasy where you don’t really need much emotional investment (and you are wanting a break from isekai stories), Granblue Fantasy might be worth the effort but don’t jump in to season 2. Without season one this episode makes little sense.

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Karandi James

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Images from: Granblue Fantasy The Animation Season 2. Dir. Y Umemoto. MAPPA. 2019.