Skip to main content

Click "Archive" or "Labels" in the sidebar to browse reviews, or use the search bar to look for a specific title.


Review: Grand Blue Dreaming, Vol. 1

Grand Blue Dreaming, Vol. 1 Grand Blue Dreaming, Vol. 1 by Kenji Inoue
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Banner
(The following text has been taken and adapted from a review I wrote for my Comics university class)

I was indirectly recommended this by the folks over at /r/manga, with promises of funny comedy and faces. I was further intrigued by the fact that it’s labeled as a “sport” manga, and because I am extremely obsessed with the ocean. So I was hoping for lots of diving action and lots of sea imagery. Guess what? There was none. Almost.

Grand Blue is about Iori, a first year university student who chooses to go to a university in a beach town far from his home. He’s going to be staying with his two cousins and his uncle who owns a diving shop. Not knowing how to swim, he is out of his element but is excited by the new adventures that await him in this new town.

As so eloquently said by one of the members of /r/manga, this is more of a drinking manga with diving, rather than a diving manga with drinking. Drinking is literally all they do. The second paragraph would more accurately read:
This series is about Iori, a first year university student who chooses to go to a university in a beach town far from his home. He proceeds to get drop dead wasted everyday for three days straight. Diving? Who mentioned anything about diving? No diving here folks, move along. Oh, unless you count that little bit of diving practice they do in a pool in the last chapter.
As of the writing of this review I have started reading the second volume so I know that they eventually DO go diving in the ocean, but still. The Drinking:Diving ratio is way off.

Aquarium View
(They at least had the sense to show us some aquarium shots, which was very nice. I love the whale shark.)

This volume definitely did give me some chuckles, and there was an extreme abundance of weird faces… So much so that it actually became somewhat off putting. Like, the characters make weird faces more than they just have their normal faces. That’s just… Weird… And I’m someone who loves a good funny face, okay? But I guess this is like one of the reasons ecchi series are so annoying. Too much of a good thing ruins the magic and causes it to lose its lustre. I actually ended up using this series as a how to do funny faces the wrong way over on my review of the Juliet of Boarding School One-shot. Here's an excerpt of that:
What Grand Blue did wrong in my opinion was that their funny faces were basically just the characters contorting their faces and looking extremely ugly all the time, which was fun at first, but got old really quick.
It looked like the artist just googled "ugly faces" and drew those, because he completely rearranged the characters' faces and made them unrecognizable, further contributing to their offputtingness. If you want to know more about funny faces done right, click on the link above to read my other review.

Iori ugly face
(All that being said, this was my favourite face //shot)

Speaking of ecchi, it’s kind of funny (in a not funny way) that this is like a reverse ecchi. I saw this described as ecchi, and was not impressed, but tried it anyway. But, instead of naked women everywhere, there are naked men everywhere (onset by the previously mentioned drinking that happens 24/7)! Kinda weird, honestly, but whatever. (Censored, by the way.)

The people who enjoy this series enjoy it because they like the comedy, and the bromances between the characters resonate with them. In this way I feel like I may have been out of the target demographic. This is such a “bro” series. I think you’ll probably enjoy it more than me if you’re a man. (Don’t get scared by the naked men, it’s all in good bro fun.) This series just ended up being totally not for me, but that doesn't mean it won't be for you. I've heard that if you enjoyed Prison School you'll enjoy this, and from what I've seen of Prison School I agree with that. I also did not enjoy Prison School, so there's that.

I left this volume still feeling inclined to keep reading and see where all this drinking will lead to, so join me in my review of the next volume to see how well that went: Click here.

View all my reviews
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Review: 寄宿学校のジュリエット（３）

寄宿学校のジュリエット（３） by 金田陽介 My rating: 5 of 5 stars Brb, crying. Not actually, though. Like, I didn’t shed any actual tears or even get close to it, it’s just that this series… is so good . The romance between Romeo and Juliet is still weirdly innocent, but the actual story is so engrossing and entertaining. It also seems like almost literally every single character is complex and interesting and multi-layered. (Only the background characters like Maru’s lackeys are undeveloped, but honestly they really don’t need any development anyway.) The relationships between characters keep getting more and more complex, and the situations that the characters have to deal with are also super juicy. This is such an addicting series. My initial problem with Romeo and Juliet’s relationship was that it seemed pretty unhealthy and one-sided to me. Later, I found it very weird how sexually immature they both are, and how un-intimate their relationship is. What is interest...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Bitter Witness: Otto Dix and the Great War

Bitter Witness: Otto Dix and the Great War by Linda F. McGreevy My rating: 0 of 5 stars This is a very unique and interesting academic text. There are no other examinations of the German artist Otto Dix, his war experience, and his war-related art that are quite as in-depth as this one, while also covering a wide range of different aspects and angles of not only the artist's story, but also the Great War's. I used this as a source for a University research essay I wrote on the effects of Dix's war experience on the creation and effects of his painting Skat Players (1920). I was very late in starting my research so I unfortunately had to stick to only reading the information I could use for my own examination, rather than being able to devour this book in its entirety. However, the library requires this book be returned at the end of January of next year, so I have some time now to actually finish this book since the semester has finished...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Spells & Sleeping Bags

Spells & Sleeping Bags by Sarah Mlynowski My rating: 3 of 5 stars This book was infuriating. Miri was super annoying during book 2, but she started this book off with some funny burns toward Rachel which made me think maybe she would be better in this book. Ha. No. She wasn’t. Miri. Oh Miri Miri Miri. So dumb. And it was annoying how it seemed like she didn’t even learn anything from the last book. She’s still all about saving the world and whatnot and being a dumbass. And she talked about poofing up money to help her help people, which is extremely illogical because she knows that poofing up money means she’s stealing money from somewhere else. Way to “help” out the world you fucking idiot. For the majority of this book I reckon she was under some kind of “emotion amplifying” spell but honestly that’s no excuse since she’s still her dumbass self. (view spoiler) [Her figuring out that Fake Rachel wasn’t real Rachel was nice and all but felt a bit...
Post a Comment
Read more