Review of Record of Grancrest War

I went into this looking for another Record of Lodoss War. But this is not another Record of Lodoss War, and it should not have been advertised as such since it is bound to be compared to it due to that advertisement and those are some pretty big boots to fill. At first, however, I was pleased enough. I enjoyed the first couple of episodes. While not as good, by any means, as Record of Lodoss War, it was enjoyable enough. I was prepared for a fun little adventure. I didn't get my adventure. What I got, instead, was politics and military battles that reminded me toomuch of battle simulator phone games. And more politics. And more phone game military battles. Then in episode nine I was treated to something that felt really out of place and uncalled for, and it didn't seem to flow with the rest of the anime. It reminded me too much of Hollywood movies where they stick in random scenes just for shock value to get people to watch. Storywise, plotwise, it was fine. It's just that it seems as though the creators took it too far for no real reason, and it made me uncomfortable. The scene should definitely have been handled with more respect. That alone, nearly put me off watching the rest of the anime, but I decided to finish it just for the sake of finishing it. (There were no more uncomfortable, Hollywoodish scenes, thankfully.)

The animation wasn't terrible, but it wasn't very good either. Episode nineteen, though, for some reason, had noticeably worse animation than the rest of the series. There were points in that episode that were unbelievably bad...like "Sailor Moon remake" levels of bad. The rest of the series was fine. I don't know what they were doing for episode nineteen, but it should have been polished up at least to the same level as the rest of the series.

All in all, I thought it was pretty generic, with lots of drawn out battle scenes to fill it up, and I won't be watching it a second time. It's missing a lot of what I love about Record of Lodoss War, and it didn't really have anything that set it apart from any of the other bad fantasy anime I've seen.