Review of Record of Grancrest War
Grancrest Senki is just not a very good show at all. About the only thing it has when it starts is decent animation and the premise isn't an overly complicated mess like virtually every other modern-ish series. However it spirals wildly out of control the longer it goes on in multiple ways, which is something that some of these aspects couldn't afford in the first place. Story 3/10: As stated the story is simple at the start. Basically everything past the starting premises is a complete mess of wannabe politics and laughably poor attempts at portraying combat/war. The MC also has his generic Main-Character™ cheesiness, andhis love-interest is apparently the most powerful mage in the setting... of course. It should also be noted that the "goodguys" frequently sperg about their noble intentions and the sacrifices they've made to accomplish them. However they make far less "sacrifices" than the supposed badguys because they are layered in plot-armour.
The ending was also just plain terrible. You know those shows that build everything up only to poorly resolve it, but you notice a few episodes are left? Well it decided to try and do some "meta" stuff that only made me hate the MC and his waifu even more than I already did.
Art 5/10: It starts out decent, but partway through the action scenes suddenly become a wannabe knockoff of Devilman-Crybaby, probably because it was popular and the generally potato artstyle was cheap to produce. CGI is also infrequently used and can be very distracting from how bad it can be.
Sound 5/10: Very average, maybe even bad at times.
Characters 3/10: Everyone is a flat character with one defining personality trait and nothing else to them. This can make some side-characters good from limited screentime, but what makes them "good" can(and is) ruined with any effort to expand upon them. Literally everyone is just a stepping stone for the main "duo".
Enjoyment 4/10: Didn't especially enjoy any of this show other than a handful of characters. One of which died anti-climatically to the MC. One of which should have died twice, and they decided to try and "expand" upon their character thus ruining them. The last character literally just vanished altogether.
Overall 4/10: Would not recommend this unless you've watched basically everything else. Everything this show tried to have fell flat or outright failed.