Name: Grand Blue Anime Review
Item: Grand Blue Dreaming
Author: @adamada

It was by accident that I came across this anime while venturing into sports genre. It had a comedy label to it while the plot explicitly mentions “diving”. I’m gonna give you a heads up that there are going to be spoilers on this review. But I have to ascertain what plot points I will be spoiling since the show doesn’t have any.

Summary of the Post:

The Plot Characters Execution of the Story Overall Impression Sourced Images Footer

The Plot:

Iori Kitahara comes back to town after 10 years to start a new life as a freshman at Izu University while living under his uncle’s roof. His uncle happens to own a diving shop as a family business. Upon entering the establishment for the first time, he meets the local diving club during their regular club meetings (a.k.a. drinking party) and gets himself forcefully drawn into their shenanigans. From there, the show begins to show his journey in exploring the wonders of seeing the ocean.

I actually found it hard to further expound the plot beyond that one paragraph.

Characters:

I wouldn’t talk about each character in detail for two specific reasons. One, they behave like your standard archetypes in anime so there is no need to second guess their motives or their perspectives in the show. Two, I have trouble finding deciding whether there are even characters worthy to be mentioned by this distinction or not.

The main character follows your regular observer drawn into the flow of events by accident or forced into the plot. Iori Kitahara participates in the diving club’s activities and his interaction with other characters in the show have something to do with the club’s endeavors. But that’s all there is to it. There’s not much to go on from this protagonist because his motivations for doing things are too simple and congruent to where the episode’s plot is supposed to be heading.

When I evaluate how important a character is to the show, I would review how much impact their presence or loss in the show would be if they decide to go the other way. The audience is shown in the beginning of the MC’s unwillingness to join the diving club and yet we are shown absurd circumstances where the MC just obeys the flow in the end. If there was resistance to this change, it only took a light nudge to get the MC to get into diving for the show to be on track.

The story could still exist without the MC. It’s not the MC has little impact on the outcome of the show but it’s how the supporting characters can carry the show without the MC. Each character can be moved by other characters into the main direction and the story could still go on. The plot was mentions Iori being introduced into diving and developing that love for exploring the ocean.

Did I mention that the supporting characters of the show just behave like your standard anime archetypes? This show will not disappoint you when you expected that.It has your standard tsundere, otaku, and straight man archetypes to interact with the MC.

Execution of the Story:

The show isn’t as bad as how I painted it to be on the character section. I often forget that I am watching a “comedy” genre (not a genre I’m used to). So it can’t be helped if I’m a bit hard on how the show carries itself. Grand Blue lives up to it’s genre as a comedy anime. Even if it mentioned teaching the MC how to dive, the show does a good job not taking it seriously.

You start each episode with a good mood and end it with a good mood. It’s the type of show you can just watch to pass the time and each episode offers no cliff hangers. No mystery, no tragic backstory for any character, or any moments where you have to take it seriously. It was near the 10th episode when I noticed they started to take the diving lesson into consideration for the audience.

But you can expect that any serious lesson given will be followed up with a slapstick comedy scene to remind the audience that the show is still a comedy anime that happens to have diving an extra element to the plot.

Beer Drinking > Random Slice of Life Moments > Diving

You can expect this show to be full of facial expressions referenced from other shows like Attack on Titan.

Overall Impression:

The show could end in less than 6 episodes or less if it were focused on learning how to dive. The bulk of the show are filler scenes before the real ocean diving adventure takes place. You know what? It doesn’t matter, it’s comedy and you’re supposed to enjoy the lack of adherence to the plot and let events unfold on their own.

There are moments in the show where you just couldn’t predict the punchline and you end up appreciating the novelty behind the execution. I could say it’s not a total waste of time to watch if you want something light on the feels.

It’s something I’d still recommend watching for anyone exploring the comedy genre.

Sourced Images: 1 2 3 4 5 6

art and flair courtesy of @PegasusPhysics

You must NOT like comedy like at all... I mean, Grand blue is damn HILARIOUS, I do agree that like almost all comedy anime there isn't a plot that forces you to watch the next episode or glues you to the screen. It was at the top of my list of anime to watch this season in a tie with Asobi asobase and some people ranked it even higher than Asobi asobase due to superior drawing and animations.

I agree on being hard to expand the plot when there isn't anything major or that makes up twists, but then again, what comedy anime does that? They're always built around the experience of someone or a group of persons.

I'm going to come clean and say I didn't like the review, not because it's poorly written, but because you're projecting the idea that it's a show just on average and a filler when it's actually one of the best that aired this time, it's just that it's not a battle manga or any of the other archetypes.

As for the diving part, you took a wrong turn, it's NOT about diving, it's about SUMMER and the experiences associated to it typically speaking. In fact in the opening song they say at one part: "Leave it to the summer" as if solidifying the idea that this isn't a sports anime but instead one about relaxing in summer with friends. Try to judge it like that instead of focusing on the diving, because the show itself doesn't focus much on the diving either. For the classical sports anime Hanebado! does a much better job.

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