Note: This review only covers the first season of Granblue Fantasy The Animation.

The old days of pen & paper RPG were fantastic. So fantastic it comes back from time to time in the west. At times it grows into a new generation with a new edition of the classic Dungeons & Dragons, at some other moments it takes form of board game hybrids, but more commonly it gets some air of renewal with videogames, MMOs, and online tools to bring a group of people together to feel a fantastic world under the alias of a mighty hero ready to fight off evil (or become it).

Japan has a different take on fantasy though. The influence of Dungeons & Dragons boomed in the eastern country far too long ago, when it gave birth to a multitude of majestic videogames such as Final Fantasy, Zelda, and many others. The japanese were pioneers in turning the pen & paper game into an adventure through a virtual world of incredible quality, an art form that many of us still hold as the epitome of digital entertainment. Anyway, why I am telling you this? This is about Granblue Fantasy, right?

Exactly. And Granblue Fantasy is the perfect example of the fatigue of repeating the same formula over and over for nearly three decades, barely trying to make things new, barely trying to break the barrier and embrace a “new edition”. In resume, Granblue Fantasy is an adaptation of a mobile game with a lot of lore about a high-fantasy world that never really delivers anything you haven’t seen already. Its story starts as Lyria, a mysterious girl, escapes the clutches of the Erste empire and ends up being helped by your everyday village hero named Gran. Protecting Lyria, however, ends up as a great a adventure across the world, running from empire goons and recruiting a group of exotic heroes.

It got style

Granblue Fantasy mainly came into my knowledge through its promotional artwork. The mobile game has dozens of amazing characters, each with an exquisite design that succeeds in mixing modern day cuteness with an old-school Final Fantasy archetypes. The world is colorful, there are multiple races going from loli-dwarves to sexy cat-girls (because of course) and the machinery and equipment are detailed and varied. The animation itself suffers a bit from a low-resolution problem, which is an attempt at making things more “artistic”, yet the overall impression is a solid work…

…until everything else kicks in

Yeah. Sadly, behind the eye-appeasing presentation is an overly generic, overused, and boring tale of a regular boy protecting a mysterious girl during his adventure. Gran, our protagonist, is a perfect example of how the attempt to make a “relatable point-of-view” to the audience makes even an interesting fantasy setting feel not that much different from your high-school comedy. Gran is so neutral his major asset is being a boring bloke with some sword skills. It doesn’t help when Lyria is a default damsel in distress incapable of moving two inches without the help of Gran or her aide Katalina.

The reminder of the cast varies from interesting comical relief to bland generic cutie. In a way, watching Granblue Fantasy really feels like making a trip back to a 90’s RPG, but one that you would play only because the mechanics provided something interesting and not for likeable characters or cunning plot. As it happens though, this is a TV show, so you won’t get any mechanics to play with.

The setting could be better used

Despite the lame adventure tale, you can see from these small number of episodes that there is a much larger and more interesting background to everything else. Flying kingdoms, ancient creatures, summons, villains, organizations, and much more are glimpsed as Gran and his crew protect Lyria in their journey. Sadly though, nothing of interest is decently explored by now, so we are left only with small teases of grandeur.

It could be fun, yet it ends up being yet another boring medieval fantasy tale. This time it seems the cuteness and light approach are not the major turn down, but the neutrality and lack of creativity in the cast and tale. Gran as the head of this show is the picture of every other medieval fantasy shows, a guy so bland and “correct” he never gets a personality of his own and never seems like a guy living in a world like the one we are presented. The farm-boy turned hero was fun back in the day and can still be when you play a tabletop RPG or videogame, but by now the formula not only got dated, but so overly repeated through the years that reviving it without any twist feels like a torture of the worst kind.

As someone who is an enthusiast of pen & paper RPG and a long-time fan of everything related to medieval fantasy, Granblue Fantasy can be just your average, yet boring, experience as most products released in Japan in this century. You can give it a chance, but sadly it can never surprise you or either deliver the expected with a decent impact.