Opening Songs
OP 1 - Knew Day ([K]NoW_NAME)
Ending Songs
ED 1 - Harvest ([K]NoW_NAME)
Genre: Adventure, Drama, Fantasy
Episodes: 12
The anime world has been blessed with its fair share of alternate world/reality shows for the recent years, and it doesn't look like its stopping anytime soon. "Grimgar Of Fantasy And Ash", or "Grimgar" for short, joins that collection as one its stronger contenders. Honestly, it may not look amazing at first glance, but after watching so many of these alternate world shows, "Grimgar" is probably the only one that strikes such a dark and serious undertone that really outshines the other ones. It may not be as cheesy as "SAO", it may not be as mind f**king as "No Game No Game", it may not be as insane as "Re-Zero", but when it comes to understanding the value of human life, I'm sure "Grimgar" takes the cake. It feels as though the characters go through REAL shit in this one, and that is what makes "Grimgar" feels quite authentic. It stands among its popular peers as a great alternate world type anime that still has even more potential within it.
 |
| Even in our alternate worlds there are no shortage of cute girls. |
Both theme songs are performed by [K]NoW_NAME (which is a god awful name to type out), and both are pretty good. The opening theme is "Knew Day", which sounds intriguing and badass enough for an opening theme. It also showcases the main characters really nicely and stylishly. The ending theme is "Harvest", which has a pretty catchy start, but starts to trail of into something generic. Its still quite good as ending theme, I'll give it that.
Rating: 8.0/10
I very much enjoyed "Grimgar" as a show. As I mentioned earlier, its feels like there's actually the risk of getting screwed out there. Our heroes are a ragtag group of rejects that simply can't catch a break. They're scared to leave the town to kill the weakest monsters, goblins, simply because they can't commit to murdering another life form, and of course, the goblins will hurt them as well. They DO have weapons on them. The characters coming into conflict with one another and struggling to figure out their ideals makes the whole show feel real. Also, the expression of pain, holy shit, you really get to see our heroes getting dragged around a lot. The show treats its characters differently, and since its very easy to get attached to the main cast due to some smart writing, every outing feels like it may be someone's last. The way "Grimgar" sets up its world is fantastic, and while I'll admit that the action scenes are average at best, its the world, writing and characters that ultimately set it up to be an enjoyable, bittersweet experience.
 |
| Ah, only in Grimgar. You need an entire party to take out a single f**king goblin. |
Haruhiko is a young man that lives in the fantasy world of Grimgar, where everyone is an adventurer with a class, skills and weapons of their own. Thing is, Haruhiko has no idea how he got whisked away to this world, or where he was originally from, similarly to all the others that were brought to Grimgar along with him. The group of people eventually split themselves after arriving at Grimgar, with a majority of them following a strong leader figure, Renji, who only picked the strong looking ones for himself, leaving the rest to rot. Haruhiko was among this group, and together they banded together to form a party. Haruhiko the Thief, Ranta the Dark Knight, Yume the Archer, Shihoru the mage, Moguzo the warrior and Manato the priest, the 6 started life together as a washed up party of sorts. They struggle each day to earn their daily keep as they are unable to efficiently kill goblins, the weakest monsters on Grimgar, because of their moral issues. And thus begins the rough life of our 6 heroes as they work hard towards becoming a party that can survive the cruel world of Grimgar.
With the way the show ended, there was quite a lot that was left unexplored. The show itself is great, and it certainly ended well. Hopefully there's more "Grimgar" to come, because I'm interested to see how far our heroes can go. It'll probably be a rocky road, but I'm sure its going to be one worth following.
