A Record of Grancrest War Ep6 I’m Not Sure That’s How You’re Supposed to Dance (Winter Games 2018)

• Genre : Fantasy, Adventure, action, political
• Studio: A-1 Pictures

You know, there was a scene that could really count as a magic lesson with the castle mages and we most definitely did see the onscreen return of Lassic. He even had a line. I had forgotten what a great voice this guy has. Could I actually have nailed last week’s predictions for Grancrest? That would certainly be a first and most likely last in these Winter Games. Maybe I’m starting to think like the Grancrest writers. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

By now we should really know the drill. All the characters will plainly state their intentions and spell out their personalities for us in the simplest way possible then a huge amount of stuff will happen quickly. Some of it will seem pointless…

We return to what I still hope could turn out to be a slightly less shallow character, Villar’s mansion for a bot of palace intrigue as we celebrate Grell Margaret’s 25th birthday (and therefore departure from the count’s side) with a weird and way too drawn out ballroom scene. This was striking is how ridiculously bad the dance animation was and how plainly clumsily the entire thing played out. It was just short of amusingly bad. And I honestly still fail to understand what purpose it served other than some fanservice(?). They should have cut the entire thing out. The only note of interest is that Siluca’s ball gown seems to be the most modest outfit she owns.

And then the angry guy from the previous episode and Theo had a play fight. That’s just it. They met up during the ball, angry guy said I don’t like you, Theo said whass good bro, and fighting on some dramatic rooftop-balcony they were. In traditional anime fashion they are buddies now, I think… Angry guy did give this entire speech about how many men died under Theo’s command which seemed to be very difficult for Theo. It was difficult for me too since I couldn’t remember a single onscreen death and when we later see pretty much every single character we’ve met so far in quick vignettes, I was even more baffled.

We got a bit of appropriately melodramatic Villar backstory complete with very timely insta tears (just like last week’s death on cue). Despite my unkind descriptions here, and the scene was cheesy, it’s still a rare effort to actually develop a character so I have to applaud that.

We then quickly moved on to spouting out grand conquest plans and sending out our new no1 frenemy, angry guy Mirza KOOCHES (I’ll level with you all, I had to look his name up and now I just want to call him Koochie) as the world’s worst and yet most expedient diplomat. A bunch of people got introduced then killed in the span of 5 minutes again. The one kid left alive to “tell other’s what happened here” was really very chill about the entire situation. I’ve come to notice that “good” or at least “protagonist” characters are rather easy to spot. That one survivor guy was the only bishie in a room of dirty old men types. Previous bad guys have all similarly been considerably less traditionally attractive. I’m not saying the show is obvious.. Ok I’ve said it every week so far.

You know, I’ve been trying to figure out whether the core problem is bad writing or bad directing. The basic premise isn’t exactly earth shattering but there’s nothing particularity wrong with it either and you could have build a very solid plot on it. Similarly the characters are very shallow but they aren’t salvageable. The narrative is spastic with new major plot points getting introduced and dropped at breakneck speed. Do we still care about crests? How about chaos creatures? That’s probably writing. But then again, part of the problem is that everything is presented as important which makes it that much more frustrating when it gets completely swept aside for no apparent reason and that’s directing. Dialogue is unrefined (writing) and delivered in the most boring straightforward way possible (directing). Characters are pathetically underdeveloped (writing) but there’s really no time in which to develop the ones we have and we keep introducing new ones (writing). Do you remember the twin loli werewolf maids from last week? No one in the show does…

It’s not like this episode was that particularly bad in the grand scheme of things. It’s pretty much in line with the show but I was really hoping issues of pacing and development would start improving by now. Maybe next week?

Predictions

Plot: Theo will hear something that will make him doubt Villar

Character: Another returning character will get to speak (and I will wonder why they don’t just concentrate on them instead of bringing in more new people?)

If you read all our reviews last week, you will probably have noticed that I was the grumpy naysayer, thinking the episode was generally weak and unfocused while Astral, Leap and TPAB all seemed to have enjoyed it quite a bit. Going by that, I’m guessing they really liked this week’s as well so I’m going to go right over there and see why. You should too.