Granbelm

Nene needs to stop having flashbacks if she wants to make it through the next episode

Becoming increasingly obvious that Suisho is manipulating Anna

's interesting how Mangetsu doesn't have answers to a lot of questions. That's unusual for her archetype, and makes me hopeful for getting a decent arc out of her

Fun fact: "Mangetsu" and "Shingetsu" literally mean "Full Moon" and "New Moon," respectively. (Which is why Mangetsu pointed out in ep. 1 that their names both have "moon" in them; probably meant the kanji.)

Still not really sure where the show is going with all these plot threads, but I guess that's what keeps it interesting.

Edited by Kotomikun on Jul 27th 2019 at 1:20:08 AM

episode 4:

Kuon sets up an alliance with Mangetsu and Shingetsu, while Nene reveals herself as a rival mage. Suishou seems like the most dangerous one. i'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop and i have a feeling it will happen in episode 6

The way Suishou stopped Anna's slap by just smiling was kinda scary. And it makes me pity Anna in a way; she doesn't even have authority over her own servant (or whatever status Suishou's supposed to have). That's gotta hurt.

On another note, Nene's quickly becoming my favorite character. Hope she'll stick around in some way even if she's taken out.

Yeah, I had noticed that… They are very unusual names nonetheless (as are "Kibou" or "Suishou" for that matter).

Edited by Lyendith on Jul 27th 2019 at 3:05:40 PM

Episode 4:

I still dont get why Anna has a huge hatred towards Shingetsu... Oh well. In the meantime, seems that Shingetsu created a new ally for Granbelm fight

I'm pretty sure it's because she thinks Shingetsu is trying to hijack her family for the survival of her own bloodline, or something like that.

There seems to be something more, though… None of what we've seen so far seems to justify a rage of this magnitude. It doesn't seem like Anna's family is broken or anything, and she isn't neglected either…

Yeah, I have the same impression because of it

maybe Suishou has been pulling the strings in the background to get Anna to hate Shingetsu

Remember that Anna and Shingetsu are both their family's designated contestants for godlike magical power in a winner-takes-all tournament. It's what their entire lives have been built around. Anna ended up with an adopted sister who could make her nothing, and her family loved her. It's why Shingetsu wants to destroy the system - she knows that ordinary, healthy human relationships can't survive Granbelm.

There's probably some incident or another that we don't know about yet that kind of explains things, but I'll be pretty surprised if it doesn't turn out that Suishou is manipulating Anna as well

I'll third the suspicion of Suishou as well.

Come to think of it...Yea, the white haired girl seems creepy and up to no good

Just putting it out there, I think Mangetsu was picked by the system as a ringer, because the other competitors are taking too long to do the thing.

Kind of like in Fate/Apocrypha, where the system didn't like that a family filled all the slots for the murder-death-kill ritual so it double the number of participants and called in a judge to keep everybody in line. Except instead of playing it fair, Granbelm picked up the most obvious main character it could find and juiced her up with incredible cosmic power.

5. Nene doesn't feel in this to win. Beyond giving away possible advantages several times due to some misguided honor she also made a big tactical error in forcing everyone to focus on her due to her big flashy display. She's lucky Anna is too obsessed on Shiengetsu for too many people to concentrate on her. Suishou probably doesn't think Anna has long, so she's moving onto her next pawn. She's clearly got some deeper background in all this. Mangetsu got crazy eyes twice, and the second time she bs'd her way through what should've been a death blow. She lacks any more personal motivation in all this beyond wanting to be special, so for her to be this invested in all this makes her look more disturbing more than anything else. Which might be intentional. Not sure whether to be more scared of Mangetsu or Suishou. Oh, and the fights were still top notch.

So Nene's basically Gilgamesh? Theoretically an AoE ranged specialist, but also has all kinds of other bullshit and can take on melee specialists in melee. She was barely even trying and still only lost because her opponent pulled a super-mode out of her ass

So. Mangetsu. I don't think she's just some random mage candidate, but instead connected to... What's the Grail equivalent called here? Her freakout is a bit too evil-looking and too strong to be the result of something inherent to her. And the colour scheme reminds of Dark Sakura. Her obvious Saber-ness is a decoy for her actually being Avenger

I like the part where Anna said ERNESTAAAAAAAA

I wouldn't be surprised if that was her ringtone at this point.

So… White Lily isn't as pure as it looked, eh… I was a bit confused when Mangetsu charged headfirst into the massive deathray and it seemed like she was the one screaming "Mom, I did everything you told me!" Either she has her own mommy issues, or she was somehow connected to Nene's emotions and forgot herself at that moment − as the next scene seemed to confirm.

You know, I'm kinda glad no one actually dies in Granbelm (yet). You could say it makes the stakes lower, but on the other hand it puts the focus on the more simple human tragedies rather than on plain survival, so I'm all for it. Plus, killing off those characters would be such a waste.

…But geez, for a mecha that's supposedly not good at close range, Ji Guan Long sure can hold its own (although to be fair Mangetsu is still basically a novice).

Edited by Lyendith on Aug 5th 2019 at 2:30:09 PM

Episode 5:

Can you please tell me what happened? The only thing that standing out to me is that Suishou girl being suspicious again and knows something about the curse that happened with the white girl's sister/mother and someone has a mother issues

Episode 6! A rage so intense that it cuts off the ending song. Now that's meta.

Me at the end of the episode: Oh… she's taking it surprisingly well. Good to know she had some common sense left in h−oooookay she didn't.

Wonder what Suishou's gonna do now. Try to steal the Fugo stone from Anna? Start clinging to Shingetsu?

You know, change a few things here or there and this could be set in the Nasuverse. We even get a succession crisis in a family of magi.

Then again, by magi standards that mother is pretty much a saint.

6. Joke character confirmed to have always been a joke character, and everyone pretended she wasn't in an effort to be nice to her. Getting someone's hopes up like that really isn't smart. Impressive credit fake out I'll admit. Meanwhile everyone just completely ignores the actual threat who is barely trying to hide how bad she is. I guess Suishou and that other girl were also brought in as Anna replacements, but now mom doesn't seem to even care about them.

Another episode that really, really wishes it could use Nasuverse concepts. It just doesn't make much sense for there to be a mage culture worth speaking of in this world, and trying to use magic stones as crest stand-ins is awkward

That said, the drama was pretty decent, though I question some of the pacing choices

I know, right?

Anna = Shinji Matou (Only she is actually qualified for the Holy Grail War (Oops, sorry), Granbelm, without the need to steal someone else's spot to do so.)

(Also...way more crazy than he ever was.)

Edited by TitanJump on Aug 10th 2019 at 10:20:58 AM

Eh, the character parallels aren't too strong. There's a few similarities (Mangetsu has a touch of Shirou about her and Nene is probably inspired by Ilya), but nothing too terribly striking

What I take issue with is that the story makes far more sense if we completely ignore the worldbuilding we're given and treat it as being set in the Nasuverse:

• Granbelm has been going on for a year but most of the characters just now appeared in town -> The Holy Grail War started maybe a day or two before the first episode
• The fights are separated by a month but the characters sure don't act like it -> Fights are daily
• Nene stopped aging early because something about magic? -> Nene didn't really grow because she's a homonculus and that's how they work
• Magic can't be used outside of Granbelm but magnetic field manipulation can sure act like magic. Or maybe magic is just really weak normally? -> Magic works like you'd expect, the grail just provides a bunch of extra mana to allow for the war's gimmick
• Mage families are really worried about succession because... there's fierce competition between the powerless mages? And the head of the family really matters for some reason? -> Mage families are really worried about succession because only one person can inherit the magic crest and the families are defined by the magic they practice more than bloodline
• And so on

I'm fairly certain the story was pretty far in development before it was decided that it'd be an original IP

Edited by Hylarn on Aug 10th 2019 at 3:00:30 AM