Hai to Gensou no Grimgar Episode 1: [Whisper, Chant, Prayer, Awaken] [First Impressions]

∼”It’s not easy, huh…”

Gosh

I was really looking forward to this one

The pitch is a bit “déjà vu” But MEH, I LIKE IT

As long as the treatment is different from the previous shows that I saw on this theme, that’s fine with me

∼

The episode starts in a forest where our heroes are fighting a gobelin, 6 against one, and are loosing. Furthermore, it appears that gobelins are the weakest creature in the world of Grimgar, making our crew, a bunch of fucking losers.

That’s right

This show is about a bunch of regular guys, thrown into a fantasy world  where they will have to survive, all by themselves

tchtchtchtchtch

I stop you right now with your SAO comparaison, I’ll talk about that later.

Meet our colorful bunch of suckers, composed by:

Haruhiro/old cat/ lazy-eyes: the main character who’s a thief, known for having sleepy eyes, even though he was born with them. Quite interested in girls if you ask me.

Then there is Manato: the only one that does not sucks entirely. He’s priest and leader of the “looser party”.

Moguzo : The big teddy-bear guy who’s a warrior. He likes to cook and I’m almost sure he likes to sew.

Yume : the red hair girl, even though she sucks at pretty much everything, she’s a Hunter.

Shihoru: The quiet/crying/big boobs magician. Honestly, I don’t like her. Maybe her background story can justify the fact that she’s a pussy but for now on she’s pissing me off. COME ON OKAY SHE HAS BIG BOOBS but honestly, she’s annoying. And I prefer Abs by the way.

Ranta: The hot blooded one who’s dark knight. I don’t really care about him. I initially thought he would annoy the hell out of me but he’s actually okay. He’s more a comic relief than anything else.

They have no freaking idea where they come from or who they actually are. Like Haruhiro, the main character told us, they all woke up at the same place at the same time, clueless as ever. When I say that they don’t remember anything, they really don’t remember anything. They forgot everything about their past and even the meaning of some words such as “phone” or “game”. There were initially 10 of them, waking up in a dark room in a strange white tower.They all met with Brittany, the chief of the Red moon Office of the volunteer squad for Ortana’s borderland Brigade. Yeah that’s a long title. We don’t really learn much about Brittany nor about the rest of the newcomers. Expect from the Silver Hair guy named Renji, who’s hot, badass and ready to fight.

They are somehow forced to join the volunteer soldier squad if they want money to live. Their job is now to kill monsters and sell the loot to earn money and survive. Of course they need the money to buy food, a place to rest, clothes and equipement.  Another goal is to buy the Official bordeland badges that gives some advantages but for now on , they don’t have the money too. Apparently, the Reijii guy formed a party with the persons that I guess he thought the strongest. They’ve already brought their official badges from Brittany which means that they are quite strong compared to the “looser team” that haven’t killed a single monster since they’ve arrived.

They had to chose a role among different classes, Haruhiro chose to be a thief and that guy is a lucky fellow. His master, Barbara, has probably the hottest body of the whole Grimgar world.  Of course Haruhiro is aware of that, and refused to be trained by another person.

AHAHA, U dirty little brat, I like you already Haruhito.

They all decide to try again and to go to the forest to kill a gobelin. They suck so bad that hey can’t fight two gobelins at the same time so they’ll have to find a loner if they want to have a chance to win. But they lack of luck and can’t find any. Their pockets are emptier than ever and they start to feel  the hunger.

On their way to the forest they have a discussion about boobs.  Ranta likes Shihoru boobs because they are big. There is also a scene that reminds me of a bad Yuri Hentai, not that I watch that type of things, but in my imagination, that’s what it would looks like. So there’s nothing much in this conversation, really. Oh yes, maybe the fact that Shihoru doesn’t have any self confidence at all. She finds herself fat and she’s convinced that she is. She also starts crying because of that… Fuuuu, I don’t care, I swear, I’m not saying anything about how useless she is… God dammit I said too much

Charibo’s thoughts:

“That was nice”

Plot:  The thing that strikes me first with the plot is the fact that they don’t explain anything , not even to the characters. We are thrown with them into a whole new world, a new fantastic point of view, but we know nothing about it. They woke up in Ortana’s town and I guess there’s a few more towns around, but that’s it. No words about the World in which they evolve. So that’s nice, I like that, everything seems kind of real. This is true survival I’d say. Not like another show that I won’t mention because I somehow care about my life.

“But Charibo, you already told us the name of this show at the begging of your review, there is no point in hiding the fact that you are a filthy hater anymore…”

“Shut up Jean-Kévin, I’m not paying you for blowing up my cover, now go back watching Naruto for me” 

Ahem, so, What was I saying… Oh yes!

It’s not like ANOTHER SHOW THAT I WON’T MENTION, where the bad guy goes all ” FUFUFU I’M THE ONE BEHIND EVERYTHING, TO ESCAPE YOU NEED TO DO THAT AND THAT”. Yeah sure, tell them how to escape you idiot . In my opinion, telling nothing, and leaving people in their own ignorance and doubts is the true evil.

As for the survival side, it’s present but not really marked, many characters talked about dying without any dramatic tone. They aren’t really scared of death. When they have no money left, they care more about their stomachs like “oh I’m hungry” rather than about their life. There’s also a difference between being good in a game and being good in real life. Thank you anime, thank you. If they all suck that might be because they’ve never touched a sword, bow or staff before. We don’t know where they come from but giving the fact that they were wearing modern clothes I’ll say it’s around our century. So yeah, there’s some high chances that none of those guys ever touched a weapon before. Maybe they’ve played MMORPG before, but that can’t possibly make them gifted hunter, warrior or whatever the hell they want to be, just like that.

Everything feels so natural about this show and that’s what I like about it. Their conversations are not the most interesting thing in the universe but at least it’s not generic shounen’s dialogues. Expect for the weird Yuri part, come on, you can do better anime. I was expecting the slow pacing so I wasn’t surprised by the small amount of things happening in the episode. I can’t say that I like boring shows buuut… I tend to prefer shows with more talking than fighting. Because when a fight arrives, you’ll enjoy it more.

Art: I want to make babies with the background. It’s BEAUTIFUL. I started being interested in checking out this show because of the Art. I love it, I really love it.  The shades and lights on the characters are amazing and the water-color backgrounds are breathtaking. I have nothing more to say. I’m in love.

OST: So far, so good.  The music during the first battle against the gobelins was catchy. I didn’t paid much attention to the music during the rest of the episode but it seemed great to me.

Characters: 

Haruhiro: that guy isn’t gay. That’s my conclusion after seeing this episode. He seems like the average guy, but actually, you know what ? HE HIS ! YUP, he truly sucks, and that’s great. I don’t know his age, he looks like he just hit puberty and that could explain a lot of things. But like we all know, age in anime is tricky. But I like him,he has great abs. However, the seyuu’s choice is a bit weird, Haruhiro’s voice is a bit too mature for him. But eh, at least, that’s not another Eren Jeager’s voice.

I like Manato and his “big brother attitude”. Which reminds me of Makoto from Free and that’s a good thing.  I would wave my “Best guy” flag right now if I wasn’t a bit apprehensive towards this guy. I mean, he’s too nice, he’s wayyyyyyy too nice. I just watched too many episodes of Scooby-doo to ignore the fact that at the end, it’s always the nice gardener the culprit.

As for the girls…. MEEEEH… Yeah, Yume is fun but weird. I promised I won’t bitch about the big boobs girl so I won’t say anything. And for the Teddy bear guy, well, he’s nice but quite forgettable. I hope he gets some scenes to show how badass he truly is.

Charibo’s MEH point :

The only “MEH”point of this show, if I can say it like this, is the Fanservice. There was only a few boobies in the PV so I wasn’t really on my guard for this show. But yeah, there’s actually a rather decent amount of Fan service. The thing is, I don’t care about boobs or asses at all. And because of that I don’t usually enjoy seeing them in Anime. And if the way there’re shown isn’t natural at all I tend to be pissed off. However, from what I saw in this episode, it’s okay. I wonder if there’s going to be some sort of quota,  I hope so. I want the same amount of Boobs and Abs please. Especially that Rejii guy’s abs. He’s hot. I don’t mind Makoto , Manato’s too, but he doesn’t seems like the type of character to undress on the first episode. We will have to be patient then.

Also, I don’t mind the obvious sexual attraction between the characters, and I would say that I prefer that. That gives a sort of justification to the Fan service. I prefer seeing a guy blushing and being sexually attracted to the big boobs’s girl rather than ignoring her like the MC of a harem Anime.

So yeah,that was nice. Not the type of show that I usually watch but I really want to try this one

Possibility of watching: Sure

Possibility of Blogging: I really want to