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: Lulu Is a Rhinoceros

Lulu Is a Rhinoceros by Jason Flom My rating: 3 of 5 stars The second I saw the cover of this book and read the synopsis I immediately thought that this was going to be a book that uses animals to create an allegory about transsexuality, as another installment in the growing genre of kid’s LGBTQA+ books. The whole "that's what she sees when she looks in the mirror" business felt really on the nose, and I feel like the authors purposefully used this wording in order to generate buzz around this book. In actuality, this felt like any other normal kids book. You have a character who feels misunderstood by their peers, and so they go on a "journey" to find and/or prove themselves and eventually end up finding peace with who they are and/or a group who accepts them. To me, the story was told in a way that presented Lulu like any other silly character in a children's book that had a silly problem stemming from their silly misco...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Bossypants

Bossypants by Tina Fey My rating: 3 of 5 stars Let me set the scene: Last week I was in Phys Ed class playing the ol' badminton. Our school only has one gym, and my class 60 kids. So you can imagine how cramped it was. Each team had 3 people on the court at a time, and yes, it was a mess. And then one of my partners slammed me in the right eyeball with their racquet. My glasses broke into three pieces as they tumbled to the hardwood gym floor. This was the second time my face had been assaulted resulting in broken frames, so you could say I was a broken-glasses veteran. With my experience I didn't freak out, just was slightly annoyed. Nothin' some good old super glue can't fix, right? So I tried to continue playing but I quickly realized that I could no longer keep my eye open. It felt extremely irritated and even if I shut just the one and kept the other open, it still hurt. When I closed both of them, then it was a little better. Re...
Post a Comment
Read more