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ruteekatreya · 5 years

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Granbelm Aftermath!

This show is so good. I’ve reblogged enough Machikado Mazoku stuff that I’m sure it’s obvious I’ve liked where it’s going, but Granbelm I haven’t seen many posts on, so! I really loved the show at pretty much every step. A magical mecha BR with a cast solely comprised of gals? Where the mecha are Ryu Knight-styled chibis? Sure thing! Where Minion A (voiced by YAoi) has a mecha that’s even shaped like a Demon Lord’s wizard minion? The show knows where it’s at!

There’s a lot of minor stuff throughout that I’ve loved - such as Nene-nee having her NEET tendencies come out in a perfect sniper mech (That’s also a mobile armor because honestly she’s a cheating jerk, I love it), or the way that even Rosa’s dorky open shirt pilot outfit has cute hood-ears and feels like something someone would actually wear (I see you there, Shinichirou Otsuka. Even if I wouldn’t have realized the relevance without my friends who comment on the backend, doing so) The fights are also, quite frankly, the best mecha fights I’ve ever seen. Period. And I’ve been in on The Mecha for a long, long time, even if I fell out of it like 8 years ago! Seriously, it’s great shit. I’m glad me and wifey started watching it, since it suffered the most being streamed with friends. (Probably, I haven’t gone back to check on Fire Force, and won’t now because lolno, nor do I have Amazon to watch Vinland Saga myself.)

But at its core, I was super interested because it put together a pair of female leads who were probably going to be lovers into a situation with a lot of drama, and dang did it deliver on that. The stakes always feel pretty high, and pretty personal! And I was pleasantly surprised by how they handled it all around, when Nene-nee made it clear to Shingetsu and Mangetsu that some folks are here for imminently personal reasons, rather than Anna having an inferiority complex to her ex- and a pair of minions who do what she wants. Nene-nee was probably the antagonist they needed to beat there, since she and her sisters are adults and can handle losing out on the easy solution to getting their mother back. From there, Suishou coming out as a villain in her own right who’s been playing Anna (And exacerbating all the toxic shit Anna beats herself with) works well, culminating in the honestly heart breaking scenes where she forgives Shingetsu, then stabs her mother so she can try to prove her own superiority to ERNESTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA anyway (Yoko Hikasa did a superb job torturing those syllables.)

Thematically, I think, once the theme first came out more explicitly, I got a bit eye-rolly at first. But on reflection, I’m fairly sure “There are no quick fixes, and the dream for the quick or sweeping fix can be toxic” is not one that really comes up a lot anymore, so I guess it’s fine, it just feels more common than it is. And they certainly never actually betray the theme unintentionally. The most useful thing Magic lets people do in the text is grow flowers or do parlor tricks for real. We can guess that Nene-nee, Nana, and Mimi were subsisting off it (Presumably by either Jedi Mind Tricking everyone or selling shady immortality), but they do that just as well off of whatever they’re doing in the epilogue (Nene-nee is evidently a teacher, f’rex). Yes, Magic can heal the curse on Shisui, but the curse on Shisui is itself a form of magic, so it’s hardly uniquely helpful (And Shisui ends up healing her curse herself before the time shenanigans means she never got cursed.) Equally, Granbelm doesn’t fall into the other failure state of this theme, of “Trying for the quick fix is thoroughly Bad, especially if you’re in a bad situation.” The show’s never cruel to Nene-nee and her family for trying to get their mother back, for instance. Is it the most useful theme? Nah, but it’s done well - the scenes with Mangetsu coming to terms with it (After having spent a bit more than half of the series glowing about how awesome her mecha is) are a favorite. I do think the series could have stood to just not even engage in some of that ‘is she human’ stuff that Japanese media generally tends to spend more time on (Even tho it does come down quite emphatically on ‘ye she is’ at least). I also liked that Mangetsu got to respond to “You’re just here for your friends, your family, and your lover” with “yeah, so what? So what if I don’t have a Grand Thesis on How To Save The World?”

The ending was also well done. I think I’d rather a longer epilogue, to be honest - Whether the show could have done more with more slice of life elements is debatable, maybe, but the ending definitely could have. And while I get that we can infer that yes, Anna and Kuon get to live too, rather than having to stay dead while Mangetsu comes back... I still want to actually see Anna get the hugs she needs (in particular.) I like her! ( I liked all the gals, the characters are really all quite good.) And we were tragically robbed of seeing more of Shisui, the super-cool amazing big sis... who’s actually kind of a space case derp, her younger sister just dotes on her. A slower paced epilogue would be very nice. But it does work as is, and with Mangetsu coming back... makes it clear that the others do as well. And indeed, the girls are all going to get the lives they wanted; Nene-nee and her family presumably never lost their mother (As whatever Magical bullshit she got into that altered her mind never happened,) Shisui and Kuon are presumably living together, and Anna... will get to actually live a normal life (And because she was superb at basically everything but magic, she’ll presumably excel now, though she’s lost any memory of her ex-). The only one who kinda gets left high and dry is Suishou... and Suishou probably didn’t want a happy life at all. ...also, Shingetsu’s regular moon-bunny ninja princess outfit is far superior to her stealing Mangetsu’s clothes and hastily stitching them onto her own in the scene at Magiaconatus. That was a little silly as a design. :V

So many of the details are superbly done as well. YAoi handles Suishou amazingly and gets to flex her muscles as an actress with a shitload of range, convincingly pulling off that range with just one bastard of a gal. And similarly, Suishou’s look in the OP, and the way her mecha is so thoroughly a Minion’s mecha... until it turns out, she’s the villain (...sorta! She gets kind of a raw deal too!) , and her mecha correspondingly switches to be more Demon Lord-looking. The spirits were a nice touch I’d like to have seen more of. The animation is just so fucking top notch. And while you can be annoyed Mangetsu’s a mech, the way they actually did the protagonist switch is pretty good.

My only real complaint is pretty moderate. I *really* liked a lot of the mid-game where it becomes clear Shingetsu and Mangetsu have The Depression, that depression manifests in different ways for them, and both are dealing with it as best they can. That gets handled well while it has the camera on it, but ends up falling out of focus with the reveal that Mangetsu’s depression is more directly magical, since she’s a magical construct. The show could probably have worked with that a lot longer and been different, and fairly interesting; and while it’s on screen, it’s legitimately very good. Probably something I’d like better, personally. But where it ends up going was still quite good, so hey. The other thing I really didn’t like was people’s tendency to jump to Madoka as their point of comparison. It’s... it’s just not. Really at all. If I were going to compare it to something recent (Though Madoka’s more quasi-recent by now) it’d be Revue Starlight (Though it’s not oriented on queer issues, which is pretty damn important to Starlight itself, so that comparison’s more superficial too, tbf. But it’s also a damn sight more accurate.)

#Granbelm #Spoilers under the cut #More original works please

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