Summer 2019 First Impressions – Granbelm

In a world that long ago featured the existence of magic, but has long since lost that ability. The story begins when the very normal high school student Mangetsu Kohinata meets Shingetsu Ernesta Fukami, who has migrated back to Japan from Germany, on a night with a full moon. – MAL

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: TBA

Source: Original

Episode Summary: Mangetsu is a typical high school student whose propensity toward helping others has resulted in her making lunches for many of her classmates. One evening, as the full moon shines brightly out her window, she realizes that she’s left a lunch box at school, so she goes to retrieve it. As she’s about the leave the school, the world seems to dissolve, leaving in its place an illusory world that’s somehow familiar, but very different.

Outside several girls in magical mecha entities battle one-another, and they wonder why Mangetsu doesn’t seem to have her own suit of armor. One of them, Shingetsu Ernesta, defends Mangetsu until she’s able to hear the truth – at one time, the world was filled with magic, but it was sealed away to save humanity. Now, those from magical bloodlines meet at the full moon and battle for dominance until only one remains. Soon Mangetsu numbers among them as her powers are awakened and she quickly learns to draw upon them.

Impressions: Granbelm has been getting a lot of buzz this season, and despite not actually reading any reviews of it, I’ve picked up on a lot of online chatter over the past few weeks. It wasn’t something that really caught my eye prior to the season, and considering the many high-profile adaptations that are airing right now, I suppose that isn’t really a surprise. The first episode wasn’t mind-blowing for me, but I have to say that it’s at least a little bit intriguing.

I’ve never been a big fan of “battle royale” anime, in which a group of participants fight to the death until one person arises the overall victor. It’s a concept that’s great for social commentary, but the reality is that the format is more often just used for shock value and watching characters suffer, which is not really my preferred type of story. I’m also a little bit weary of “edgy” magical girl series for similar reasons. Since this intro episode hits both of those targets there’s good reason to be a little wary of its intentions.

Of course, those intentions aren’t really on full display in the first episode, which is instead a rightfully disorienting introduction to the world of the story. One of the nightmares I’ve had in my life that’s stuck with me the longest is one in which I was at a hotel pool swimming with some friends. While swimming, I looked away for a moment out the large glass windows into the dark nighttime. Turning back to the pool, all my friends were now gone and I could feel that there was something “wrong” with the world, as if it had changed in some imperceptible manner. Mangetsu’s experience during this episode, as the world she knows changes into some alternate, broken version of itself, really plays off of that specific, albeit unrealistic fear I have of ending up out-of-phase with reality, shifted against my will into some other strange dimension. This is obviously something very specific to myself and so I doubt most viewers will be as deeply affected by it, but it definitely caught me off guard and kept my attention.

The character dynamics are a bit more standard, which I think is mostly due to the fact that the episode dumps the protagonist right into the center of the action without breathing a lot of life into her beforehand. Mangetsu and Ernesta, who I assume constitute the central relationship of the series, have a very “Madoka and Homura” vibe from the outset, which is a product of both their character designs and their attitudes. Mangetsu is good-natured and naive in comparison to Ernesta’s experience (she also appears to be something of a pariah), which definitely echoes that sort of relationship.

The first episode doesn’t have a lot of time to explore this relationship, since the majority of the second half is focused on a big action set-piece during which Mangetsu awakens to her innate magical abilities (the reason she was able to see and experience the alternate world in the first place). Mecha isn’t my top anime genre by a long shot, but one sub-genre I’ve come to like is one focused more on “magical” mecha. These types of series seem less focused on duplicating the real world’s style of military combat in mecha form, and instead choose to inject a heavy dose of the fantastic in order to utilize mecha designs that are flashy and much less likely to ever exist in reality. There is a definite “cool” factor in the way that the young women wield their magical control over their vehicles, pulling at nearly-invisible strings as if controlling marionettes and conjuring magic circles to produce giant weaponry. I can forgive a little shallowness when the action and style is so distinct.

Since this is an anime-original production, I’m personally biased to believe that this series has a storytelling advantage over some of its script-adapted peers. While conceptually the series takes its cues from various established tropes, I feel like it has a better chance to tell its story well within the time it’s been given, simply because it’s been created for the format in which it’s being produced. Certainly there are examples otherwise, but I think this alone is a good reason to keep an eye on this series at the very least.

And keep an eye on it I shall. Like I said, this season is packed with highly-anticipated adaptations and it’s really difficult to predict whether I’ll have much time for series that have potential but are otherwise an unknown quantity. At the very least, though, it’s heartening whenever a really interesting anime series bursts onto the scene that I wasn’t already anticipation months ago.

Pros: Sort of an interesting take on alternate-world and magical girl stories. Some wow-worthy aesthetic choices. Anime-original storytelling.

Cons: The characters and their relationships get short shrift. There’s some potential for “edgy” storytelling, considering the tropes at play.

Content Warning: Some standard-level mecha violence.

Grade: B-