Forum - View topicGranbelm (TV).
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Stark700
 Posts: 11762 Location: Earth |
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Granbelm Genres: Magic, Fantasy, Mecha Plot Summary
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15596 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 1
Felt a little bit over the top. I am all up for it, these magical girl like shows that can make the combat get real (without getting too dark), but I will have to see how it handles itself in the downtime. |
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Nom De Plume De Fanboy
Exempt from Grammar Rules
Posts: 641 Location: inland US west, pretty rural |
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Ep 1 and 2
Ok, we have the person who accidently is a "magic snowflake", who can be part of something special. We have quite a spectacular show- I hope they didn't blow the whole animation budget in these first two eps. We have both mechs and magical girls, both running on the burning passion of their hearts. But the mechs must have gone through a super deformed design mistake or something, 'cause they look a bit silly, like that Gundam SD show that no one likes to remember. 
I do think the staff really has a good grip on how to do both these kinds of shows. The feel of the second ep was really well done, the music, the staging of the shots, the timing. I am not normally a fan of either mech or magical girl shows, or these duel for the prize-type shows, but I think I'm on board for this one. And besides, if it was me and just the minor magic means a teenager can stay out all night and come waltzing in after 9 in the morning and say "Honest, I was up all night with a sick friend- that I met last night", and Zap- Mom & family would buy it, no problem- dammmn, damn right I'd want to keep that. 
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15596 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 6
That took a sudden and crazy turn, granted things were not exactly peachy. The character acting as the big strong villain, Anna, has lost her lackies, no lack of her throwing them out after she thinks that they are worthless, but also last one saying that she is done, now seeing Anna as weak and not worth respect. After retreating to the basement in trying to get stronger, because her mum is not letting her use the family secret stone because she too think that Anna is not strong enough, she pulls an axe on Shingetsu, trying to murder the girl she thinks took everything. This is before Shingetsu reveals the truth, that no fault of her own, Anna was just not born prodigy, and Shingetsu's role was always supposed to be to take Anna's place for the family in the magic department. It was maybe impressive that Anna got as far as she did, but things like her favourite magic accomplishment were actually thanks to Shingetsu. Her life was a lie, but through tears Anna wished Shingetsu luck. The big thing though, was what made me think that my Xbox died in the middle of the ED, where it was completely normal before totally cutting out. Incredibly sudden, but after a second or so of a black screen we see a jagged broken glass vase, Anna's mother covered in blood in bed, and Anna with the stone she was explicitly told could destroy her as someone without enough proper magic. What is unsure is if Anna indeed killed her mother over this, leaving herself and sister as orphans. Anna completely went over the deep end, and seemingly finding out that her life is a lie, the very things she was proud of and she berated others about. It feels like at this point, it has really broken into the dark magical girl element. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15596 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 9
Mangetsu is a.... a what?! I was wondering what could possibly be such a bad truth about Mangetsu that Shingetsu would not tell her, having her hold back, even as Shingetsu was earlier saying to trust in herself. But learning that spoiler[Mangetsu is apparently not even a real person, but some kind of doll, the after credits showing that her hands have doll joints], causing her to freak the hell out. It does explain some weird foreshadowing earlier in the episode, where Shingetsu was holding a doll for some reason, while training Mangetsu. Do wonder what this means about her family, whether they are real too, whether she is a stranger, or one of them created her. Also means that Shingetsu's wish of removing magic might as well be a death wish. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15596 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 13 (finale)
Well, that is certainly a bittersweet ending. All magic is gone, everyone who was killed is gone and forgotten forever, and Shingetsu herself has an unstable existence, where kind of like people cannot see her. Feel like I need to confess that I feel like I wasted my earlier viewing, that I kind of excused the show as nothing real big, all it was that magic battles that used mecha, and such battles were not too bad consequence since they would just lose their magic or something if losing. I must have missed the signs that it was going well down the dark magical girl show routes where entire existences were being erased, things would get dark, and the main character would turn out to be something like an imaginary friend placed into a doll body, and her existence would disappear on its own. Mangetsu was like the main character, the kind hearted who just wants to get along, just like Madoka from the series of the same name, so kind of baffling to have gone from expecting her be the one to win at the end and spread love and wanting to be something. In the end she is explained as kind of a tool that gives her a huge existential crisis in learning her entire existence is a lie, that she just has to accept, and at best made as the wishes of the lonely secondary main character. Shingetsu as the main character, who learns her new best friend is kind of a cruel distressing existence born from her, and has her old best friend have a total meltdown from going full evil over magic, and disappearing from her family's memories. It feels kind of difficult to explain this away as fun, especially when magic is concluded as definitively not good, so pretty much everything within was not good. At best just a keeping conviction of unnatural/bad things are bad, and should be stopped regardless of the cost, or what good things could come. Perhaps that being too simple, there is probably something about the importance of family and friends, like the ones we see that were broken by magic along the way. I am sure that it looked and sounded good, no real complaints about general quality, and some creative use was made with things like foreshadowing and stuff. The battles probably even looked good. That leaves me wondering why my attention was not grabbed as much as it should have, maybe I am comparing to how Symphogear, which 5th season has been released during the run of Granbelm, felt like it had more impact to everything. Maybe what Granbelm did in general would be fine, and did have some high impact parts, but did not come early enough for me or I missed them. And I might fall back on the later, because many people seem to have been really into it over what I have, being the only one surprised when episode 6 turned out like it did. For my own experience with it, I rate it as Good (7/10), with the proviso that it is probably better not to tune out in the beginning, or you will probably miss the bus on its tone. |
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Probablytomorrow
Posts: 171 |
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My interpretation of Granbelm:
I believe Magiaconatus was the show’s villain and that it wanted to unseal magic and return it to the whole world, regardless of the wars it would restart and the countless deaths it would create. To do this it needed someone to break the seal with a wish, as long as that wish wasn’t “Destroy magic forever,” so it created Granbelm in order to find someone strong enough to do it. However, as Suishou said in the final episode, it turned out that only selfless people were strong enough to reach the end of Granbelm. So, since no selfless people could be trusted to make a selfish wish, for a thousand years no one was allowed to win. Finally, Magiaconatus changed its strategy. It chose Shingetsu to be the future winner of Granbelm, gave her power and turned her friend Anna against her so that she would be motivated to enter Granbelm, and then it did everything in its power to manipulate Shingetsu into changing her selfless wish into a selfish one. It killed Anna so that Shingetsu would not be happy with merely ending magic. It gave her a new friend who would not be able to survive without magic. It warned her that destroying all magic would trap her in an eternal state of limbo. It gave her every reason to lose her resolve. Even a moment of faltering at the end, out of fear, or guilt, or regret, would have been enough to change her wish. It nearly did work. But thanks to Mangetsu’s sacrifice, Shingetsu was able to find the courage to make the same sacrifice, and she chose the greater good over her own happiness. Mangetsu’s sacrifice was not part of Magiaconatus’s plan. It merely wanted her to be the ideal, loyal friend so that Shingetsu would be unable to part with her. As their ideals came to match, though, their bond turned into something beyond Magiaconatus’s control, something more than the magic Magiaconatus made her out of, and a part of the natural order of the world. Something that belonged in the world. I think that that part of Mangetsu survived the end of all magic. Shingetsu believed all along that Mangetsu mattered, and I think that in the epilogue she got to see it proven true. |
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