Anne and Grea
Mysteria Academy is a Wizarding School where the races of Men, Gods and Demons, who are normally at war with each other, come to learn magic in peace without discrimination. Among its students are Anne, a human princess and honor student, and Grea, a half-dragon girl. Together, they spend their days learning about magic, and more about each other.Mysteria Friends is a short format anime adaptation loosely based on the popular "Mysteria Academy" event in Cygames' Rage of Bahamut social game (and which has also featured in Granblue Fantasy) which aired during the 2019 anime season, consisting of ten fifteen-minute episodes. Production is handled by Cygames' anime studio CygamesPictures and directed by Hideki Onamoto. Although it takes place in the same world as Rage of Bahamut: Genesis, they are completely separate stories.
This anime is famed for its Troubled Production: originally announced in 2015 under the title Rage of Bahamut: Manaria Friendsnote , in 2016 it was delayed indefinitely and all of its staff were moved to other projects for unknown reasons, leaving its future uncertain. In October 2018 it was re-announced with its current title and staff for release in January 2019, with its first episode being screened at Cygames Fes 2018 on December 15, 2018.
The anime is licensed by Sentai Filmworks and is available for streaming at Crunchyroll.
This anime series provides examples of:
- All for Nothing: In Episode 2, Anne and Owen go on an epic quest to find a cure for Grea's illness, but before Anne can finish making a medicine the incident resolves itself when Grea finishes molting. Anne notes that she ended up not being able to do anything for Grea, but only regrets that she hadn't been by her side while she was suffering.
- Another Dimension: The forbidden section of the library has a Portal Door to another dimension housing ancient texts and monoliths. One section features Anne and Owen in a Gravity Screw of bookshelves floating in the sky.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Anne's magic may be gorgeously animated, wickedly awesome, and easily defeat demons and monsters, but it also has the side effect of severely destroying buildings and cathedrals.
- Bait-and-Switch: Episode 5 opens on the Academy being attacked by monsters that the student body can barely handle enough to escape. Meanwhile Anne has been evacuated and no one allows her to go back implying its because she's the princess. Grea on the other hand is desperately fighting off the monsters all on her own. Eventually Anne escapes the evacuation area and finds Grea just in time to rescue her by destroying a giant golem, which topples over and destroys a building. It is at this point that it's revealed everything was just a drill to test the student bodies emergency response. Anne was specifically asked not to join because they were afraid the students would rely on her too much and because of her inability to hold back.
- Beach Episode: "Floating at Sea". Grea helps Anne get over her fear of the ocean by teaching her how to swim; meanwhile, the rest of the female characters are engaged in an epic volleyball match at the beach.
- Bodyguarding a Badass: Anne is an extremely skilled magician, but Owen is devoted to protecting her from harm nonetheless.
- The Chew Toy: Lou is frequently at the butt-end of many predicaments in the show's world.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Anne tends to be very clingy toward Grea, best shown in "Test Time" where going a few days without hanging out with her (since she had to study for an exam) practically causes Anne to have a nervous breakdown.
- Cute Clumsy Girl: Lou, who is usually tripping over herself whenever she's on-screen.
- Cute Monster Girl: Grea, who has horns, wings and a tail but otherwise looks human.
- Destructive Savior: Anne has incredibly powerful magic but no sense of restraint, and whenever she uses her magic to solve a problem she tends to destroy half of the academy in the process. For this reason she was ordered to simply observe during the combat drill in "Academy Down", but got involved anyway. Sure enough, she ended up destroying one of the academy's buildings.
- Do Not Try This at Home: In episode 6, a shot of Lou trying to run away as one of her "friends" launches fireworks at her is given the disclaimer "DO NOT ATTEMPT".
- Everybody Cries: Hanna’s determined speech to bring Anna and Grea back together that she gives her team of students causes streams of tears to come from all of their eyes.
- Everyone Can See It: Most of the student body seems aware of Anne and Grea's Pseudo-Romantic Friendship, to the point where the other students (and even the teachers) are visibly on edge when Anne and Grea have a relationship spat.
- Genre Shift: While the previous Rage of Bahamut anime was a fantasy-action series, this one is more of a slice-of-life iyashikei, though not without its own moments of action.
- Go-to-Sleep Ending: The second part of episode 4 ends with Anne going to bed.
- Innocently Insensitive: Anne is sweet and very supportive of Grea, but is prone to accidentally making her embarrassed or self-conscious.
- Letting the Air out of the Band: Happens when Hanna and her team of students set out to save the world by getting Anne and Grea to make up, only to find the two of them happily having tea and snacks together.
- Lonely at the Top: Anne suffers from this due to not only her being the princess but her incredible skills often separate her from her peers.
- Lonely Piano Piece: Most of the soundtrack is comprised of a happy variant of this, lending to the series' quiet and peaceful atmosphere.
- Love Potion: Anne finds a bottle of love potion in a book of relationship advice. The bonus of that episode then features Anne trying to get Grea to drink tea with an "extra special" ingredient that will "help the two of them become even closer", although whether or not Anne actually spiked the tea with it or was just teasing Grea isn't revealed.
- Luminescent Blush: Grea does this a whole lot, especially around Anne.
- Male Gaze: There are a lot of shots that linger over Grea's legs, back and butt. Considering how often Anne comments on Grea's chest size, it could also be an example of Female Gaze.
- The Matchmaker: Hanna is determined to play this in order to get Anne and Grea back together in Episode 9, because she's worried that their fight could, through an escalating chain of events, lead to war between Mysteria and the dragons. By the time she sets out on her mission, though, the two princesses have already made up.
- Musical Episode: Much of Episode 8's runtime is dedicated to a musical performance by Hanna (played by Nana Mizuki).
- Mythology Gag: The whole episode of Grea molting and her tail getting thicker is actually one that a lot of more casual viewers might miss - between Rage of Bahamut and Granblue Fantasy, Grea's tail has been noted as growing in thickness over time, resulting in a lot of jokes from fans and some wondering just how her anatomy works. Episode 2 gives us a partial explanation, at least, for what's going on (though still doesn't quite answer some questions about her post-molting hip structure).
- Not What It Looks Like: In "A Slice of Life" Anne gets angry at Grea when she sees Hanna coming out of her room, since Grea hasn't let Anne into her room yet. Anne later learns that it was because Grea needed to put in a work order for repairs (and Hanna is the student council president), but this leads to her feeling too guilty over her outburst in order to patch things up.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Anne's idea of disguising herself during a town outing is to wear a different outfit and some glasses. Needless to say, she gets recognized by the townspeople instantly.
- Perverted Sniffing: Anne takes a deep whiff of Grea's shed skin in the bonus of Episode 10.
- Rebellious Princess: Anne has some shades of this. She has no patience for the various rules and duties that her father sets for her as a princess and actually sneaks out of the castle in Episode 10 rather than hear about more royal duties. However, she fully intends on eventually becoming Queen and feels like her time at Mysteria Academy is for the sake of becoming a good ruler.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Anne is the princess of the kingdom of Mysteria, and she's determined to use her powers to help people wherever possible.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: "Agony of Grea" sees Grea coming down with an incurable fever that Anne and Owen then go on a journey to try and cure, specifically to find the forbidden section of the academy's library that the cure might be in. As it turns out, Grea was merely in the painful stages of molting. Also, the big portal Owen and Anne go through to find the forbidden section turns out to be just a different way to the normal library.Owen: Looks like we found a shortcut without us even realizing, Princess.
- Sick Episode: Episode 2, titled Agony of Grea, features Grea being bedridden with a mysterious fever that neither medicine nor healing magic can cure. It's revealed to be caused by Grea molting her scales.
- Ship Tease: As in other Cygames properties featuring them, Anne and Grea are subject to metric boatloads of this. Grea is constantly blushing and bashful whenever Anne shows her affection, and Anne is constantly talking about how beautiful Grea is (especially when it comes to the size of Grea's chest). Perhaps the strongest example takes place on a literal ship (a rowboat, to be precise), when Anne accidentally falls on top of Grea and afterward the two can only blush while sharing awkward glances.
- Third-Party Peacekeeper: Attempted by the rest of the school when Anne and Grea are having a squabble. Ultimately subverted, as the pair make up before the efforts can truly begin.
- Two Shorts: Sort of. After the credits, the show's episodes have a second half that acts like an epilogue to the story prior.
- The 'Verse: The show has a somewhat unique relationship with the overall Cygames meta-verse that their games sort-of-kind-of share; while the show was originally announced and pitched as specifically a Rage of Bahamut tie-in ala Rage of Bahamut: Genesis or Virgin Soul (and would presumably take place after VS), the version that went to print had the RoB supertitle removed and is not explicitly set in the Rage universe; if anything, the idea appears to be that the show and its stories can be considered more or less canon to any setting Anne & Grea appear in (e.g., it's their history before Mysteria gets involved in the RoB Divine Wars, or it can be stories of them before and between the Grandcypher's visits to the Sky Realm's Mysterianote , the events will be outright canon in Princess Connect Re:Dive (since their appearance in Priconne is specifically billed as a Mysteria Friends crossover)note , it could be plugged in to a future appearance in something like Dragalia Lost without too much trouble, et cetera).
- Weight Woe: The bonus of Episode 2 features Grea fretting over her tail growing thicker. She tries exercising it, rubbing it with oil and even going on a diet, all to no avail.
- Wham Episode: "Academy Down", where a series of goblins and golems attack the Mysteria Academy buildings and leave it in ruins. While they are defeated, Anne's powerful magic has the side effect of accidentally damaging the last building. It's implied in the next episode that the buildings have been repaired, however.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: In Episode 3, a flustered Anne reveals to Grea that she's afraid of water because she can't swim. This puts the previous episode, where Anne jumped into a lake without a second thought while looking for a cure for Grea's sickness, into new perspective.
- Wingdinglish: Text in-universe is in English but uses a font based on mirror-imaging some seriffed capital letters.
