Spoiler-free review

You ever just watch Madoka Magica and think, "man, if this anime had mechs in it and had them fight in a battle royale, it would be perfect"?

And then said anime comes out and not only does it live up to your expectations, it also sets itself apart as something wholly unique and special?

That's Granbelm. In 2019, Masaharu Watanabe, just finishing up the then-most recent season of critically acclaimed fantasy isekai anime Re:Zero, teamed up with a couple of other notable figures in the Japanese animation industry (original character designer Shinichirou Ootsuka, script writer and series composer Jukki Hanada, among others) to bring us what I unironically think is one of the best entries to ever come out of the magical girl genre.

Yes, it's derivative; on first glance, it's yet another edgy and dark magical girl show that does yet another take on the subgenre that Madoka popularized. Here's the thing, though: while other dark magical girl shows stumbled and fell, Granbelm more than exceeds.

Take one of the largest pitfalls of said genre, for instance: the tone. Dark magical girl shows tend to take the wrong lesson from Madoka episode 3 (cough cough magical girl raising project cough cough mahou shoujo site cough cough) and dump an excessively dark and edgy tone on their viewers from the beginning. While that's not inherently a wrong approach, it will very much alienate a good portion of viewers who view said "edginess" as weakness in storytelling. Why do those same viewers like Madoka so much then? Moderation in use of said tone. Madoka didn't dump despair and death on its viewers from the beginning: it eased them into it, even with sudden jumps like episode 3. It knew when to use tone to its greatest narrative advantage and it's a lesson that similar successful dark mahou shoujo shows, like Yuuki Yuuna, and now Granbelm, learnt and used well. There's time for levity, and time for overbearing seriousness, and Granbelm manages both well.

The characters are also top-tier. One of the main characters, Mangetsu, simply has a manic, hyper energy about her that simply makes her interactions with the other characters, in particular the other main character, Shingetsu, fun to watch. Shingetsu, quite frankly, is the typical dark mahou shoujo protagonist archetype that Homura from Madoka popularized: an emotional stone wall that's "cool" and "stoic". The creative minds behind Granbelm knew that having yet another Homura-like would not guarantee success, and they ingeniously decided to pair her up with a manic character type like Mangetsu to wring out the emotions. I personally believed it works: as a result, the dynamic between the two main characters never gets stale or boring, and investment in how these two characters' stories turn out becomes quite easy. The other participants in the battle royale are surprisingly quite decent in the character-building front as well; even the characters like token Chinese girl Nene and stereotypical shrine maiden Kuon get much more development than they needed. The standouts are obviously Anna and (best girl) Suishou; Anna is very much unlike any villainous character type seen in any magical girl show, and her story in Granbelm is compelling in how it unfolds and clashes with the main pair's paths. Suishou is best girl. There is no argument, there is no bias whatsoever.

The plot and themes, however, are what made Granbelm go from just another seasonal show for me to a personal favorite that I can't help but think about every other day. Granbelm didn't have to make a deep plot; its fellow members of the dark mahou shoujo subgenre, like Yuuki Yuuna, settled for "SUFFERING IS THE BEST PLOT" and found great success. However, evidently the Re:Zero director had enough of that with his primary work, so he decided to actually have Granbelm's characters suffer for a purpose and a distinct theme. And he over-performs. Identity is the connecting word of Granbelm, and the core of every single character's struggles as they battle each other. The plot greatly benefits from it, making the emotional beats and fights more impactful than they would've been with a normal genre plot. Even the typical twists and "edgy" moments that you'd expected from a dark magical girl show factor back to this theme, and it makes those moments so much more powerful. The staff of Granbelm clearly had a vision for what they wanted to say with the show, and it very much works in its favor.

The one "weak" point, although this may be up to your mileage, is the animation. The animation, performed by Studio Nexus, is more than up to the task for the characters and plot: the characters are very animated and fun to watch, and the animation helped supplement the engaging plot for the entirety of the show. However, Studio Nexus decided to animate the entire show with hand 2d animation, rather than relying on any CG as the majority of mech shows do that are not named Sunrise. In my opinion, this animation style is good, even rising to exceptional as needed. However, as a 2019 anime, in an era where Sunrise has set the standard of mecha fights in Gundam and related works, the 2d animated style used by Nexus may not be enough depending on your tastes. For me, it worked; for others, it may not, and that's totally fair.

If you liked Madoka Magica and the subgenre it created, or hell, even think that any aspect of this show sounds interesting, I implore you to give it a try. I sure as hell am glad I did; I nearly dropped this show on episode 1, as did justifiably many others when the show first came out, but something kept me coming back each week, and I'm so glad I kept with the show. This show is the entire reason why I keep trucking through seasonal anime looking for those hidden nuggets of quality, and is a big part of my faith that small anime studios still can create compelling stories outside of the 999th generic isekai or the 450th CGCDT adaptation.

As a certain redhead once said: "There's no rule saying that an imitation cannot defeat the original."