Review of Record of Grancrest War

Real world politics are tedious enough, but Record of Grancrest War takes things to a new level, yet this is the main point of failure for the series. While these politics in fact might work in a game, they don’t translate well for story, yet these politics become an overly bearing factor on everything – the plot, the characters, the setting and drag everything down. Frankly, the politics don’t make sense. A prime example shows up in the first episode and is the reason for all the conflict. What is known as the Great Hall Tragedy involves a political move of uniting two households and theheads of the household’s attempt working together in hopes of taking down a chaos creature which appears at the wedding of their two children who are very much in love with each other. In turn they die together. For some reason their deaths provided reason for the conflict to still continue rather than providing the resolution for continuing the ending of conflict. Time after time people do the most illogical thing. Even hunger for power doesn’t explain blatant stupidity on the part of every character.

As for the characters, they’re all driven by the politics. What and who they are doesn’t go much beyond this. All of their motivations for their lives comes down to political motivations. There are no likes or dislikes beyond this, yet even the romances involve some form of political motivations. None of the characters have any real flaws either. The only other trait beyond the politics are the special powers and abilities these characters have, yet these special characters and abilities don’t a character make. Instead, what they create is an archetype or a cliché which doesn’t add much narrative value.

Of course, the series is rather pretty to look at, yet the art style is only one part of what makes a series good. One might say without the other elements one might have simply a pretty face, yet outside of this the almost perfect art does have some flaws. The female characters have better designs than the males, with the female characters ending up eye candy. The scenery and everything else come across as bland, yet the one major achievement for the art style is the fight scenes, yet these feel wasted due to the lack of interest in the given characters beyond being a pretty face.