Grand Blue

Iori Kitahara moves to the coastal town of Izu for his freshman year at its university, taking residence above Grand Blue, his uncle's scuba diving shop. Iori has high hopes and dreams about having the ideal college experience, but when he enters the shop he is sucked into the alcoholic activities of the carefree members of the Diving Club who frequent the place. Persuaded by upperclassmen Shinji Tokita and Ryuujirou Kotobuki, Iori reluctantly joins their bizarre party. His cousin Chisa Kotegawa later walks in and catches him in the act, earning Iori her utter disdain.

Based on Kenji Inoue and Kimitake Yoshioka's popular comedy manga, Grand Blue follows Iori's misadventures with his eccentric new friends as he strives to realize his ideal college dream, while also learning how to scuba dive.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kitahara, Iori Main

Uchida, Yuuma Japanese

Kotegawa, Chisa Main

Anzai, Chika Japanese

Imamura, Kouhei Main

Kimura, Ryouhei Japanese

Yoshiwara, Aina Main

Asumi, Kana Japanese

Hamaoka, Azusa Supporting

Yukinari, Toa Japanese

Tokita, Shinji Supporting

Yasumoto, Hiroki Japanese

Kotegawa, Nanaka Supporting

Uchida, Maaya Japanese

Kotobuki, Ryuujirou Supporting

Konishi, Katsuyuki Japanese

Oohashi, Rie Supporting

Yamakita, Saki Japanese

Mitarai, Yuu Supporting

Hanae, Natsuki Japanese

Maeda, Toshihiro Producer

Furukawa, Shin Producer

Takahashi, Kazuaki Producer

Suzuki, Toshihiro Producer

Reviews

Jan 5, 2025

iKool

Recommended

Holy cow, Grand Blue is an absolute riot! This "diving" anime (yeah right, more like a drinking anime with occasional diving scenes 😂) had me crying with laughter even on my third rewatch. The way it portrays college life is hilariously over-the-top - from the spontaneous stripping contests to the increasingly ridiculous drinking games. Every episode is packed with perfect comedic timing and facial expressions that just kill me.

Whether you're into college comedies or just need a good laugh, Grand Blue delivers. Just don't expect actual diving lessons... unless your diving instructor is a half-naked dude trying to make you drink "water" that's definitely not ... water!

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Oct 8, 2024

yadnusbrekker

Mixed Feelings

Is the peak of comedy in praise of a masculinity that is years behind the times?

Ignoring the tendentiousness of my introductory question, I had some expectations with this series, seeing that it is no less than number ELEVEN in the manga charts here (to give you an idea, it is above series like Kingdom, Punpun, Houseki No Kuni, 20th Century Boys and Nana) and also that a couple of acquaintances had recommended it to me. So I said, well, I'm not in the mood for dense and dramatic stuff, and it's 12 chapters long, so if I like it, I'll pick up the manga. Why ... not give it a chance?

You can see that the people I know aren't immune to adoring things that outside the weeb spectrum wouldn't get half as much praise as they do. And mind you, not every seinen has to be a drama about the human existence and suffering, we need stuff that's easy to digest in the art we consume. The point is that my relationship with this series expresses something very obvious: comedy is subjective, and making it is very difficult.

Although I don't think it's fair to detract from that aspect of the series, because in some moments it's the only thing that saves it from being nothingness itself. It generated this strange thing that only Japanese comedy can generate in me: at times there were well-executed jokes that made me laugh out loud and at other times the degrading sex jokes employed made me think that it's not that hard to realize why Japan has had a declining birth rate for years.

I guess if I can sum up the comedy of this show in two words, it would be: bro humor. I don't know if that term exists but I'm going to coin it. In and of itself the fact that they go for hyper masculine rhetoric behind several of the gags presented in this series is not a problem (shit, JoJo knew how to do it very well). But the fact that a large percentage of the ridiculous and excessive debacle that this series handles is entirely between groups of men, excluding a lot of the female characters from the comedy, doesn't do it for me. And if that wasn't enough, let's sexualize the girls without their consent, because that's hilarious without a doubt! It also doesn't help the constant screaming that is this series, and although that's not something that usually bothers me in anime, here there is an excess of testosterone being expelled so intensely that I'm sure my estrogens formed new antibodies to the point that my ovaries were about to pop out of my body, pierce the screen and hit some of the male protagonists.

This gives me the perfect excuse to talk about the characters, because with the null plot that this has, I don't even think it's worth to talk about it. They're not the worst characters I've ever seen, but they lack... something, I don't know, I feel that none of them have a strong enough personality to impose themselves in a strong way in front of the whole sequence of intense situations that happen to them. Neither of them have much depth and in general their way of being is reduced to a specific gag, and if there is conflict, it only matters on a micro level in a certain situation. There are a couple of funny interactions (Azusa believing that Iori is bi for example, or the two muscular boys which in general I found to be nice enough, although except for the hair color they are the same character twice) but not much more than that. The reduction of characters to a specific gag gets particularly awful with Nanaka (because this isn't going to be the peak of Japanese comedy without gratuitous incest!), Iori and Kohei's classmates (I suffered through their segments a lot) and especially between Chisa and Iori's interactions.

Chisa especially is a character that frustrates me, because she's another eminence of female characters being victims of reductionist male writing. Usually she would be the character that stupid girls like me would have to identify with, and I suppose if it were another type of series she would work for me. But the only thing I can conclude about her is that there's no reason for her to surround herself with those people, being that she's constantly exasperated, and that she's was concieved as a character to have a shy girl that even though she CLEARLY doesn't want to be in compromising situations, the story puts her in them anyway because it's hilarious to see girls in sexual scenes, especially if they don't want to do it! Not to mention the fact that she and Iori are cousins and for half of this season there are jokes about them being a couple, sorry people but nothing in the way they interact says “cousins” (how are you going to make comments about your cousin's ass?) even if this is an attempt to appeal to that fetish, they are failing miserably in the process. Something that even struck me about Chisa, is that more than once they use other characters to tell us how she feels. Weird af if you ask me. At least Asuza is cool and Aina has a bit more range in terms of her personality and for some reason the fact that they called her “Hekabo” always made me laugh, I don't know if it's because I imagined her with that bizarre makeup or what the hell.

Considering what I just said, this series made me conclude something interesting about comedy anime set in our world. Even though it takes place in a realistic setting, with characters that you could run into in real life, doing things that the average Japanese person would do, the situations portrayed at times are so absurd that they border on the far-fetched. And as much as you can tell me “it's a comedy, you can not take it so seriously” yes, that's true, but there are limits to how far I can let humor go to modify the ways of human interaction in such an extreme way. Especially if I feel that the characters don't do enough to make the lack of realism employed at least enjoyable to watch (I mean, GOD, WHAT PERSON WITH A MINIMUM OF RESPECT FOR THEMSELVES LETS HIS FRIENDS INTERRUPT A SEXUAL ENCOUNTER AND STILL BE FRIENDS WITH THOSE PEOPLE? not to mention that they claim not to have a partner and then live crying, anyway, I insist, then they wonder why their birth rates are declining).

You can see that the escapist and ludic theme reigns supreme in this anime, even if there's a lot of humiliation and extreme interactions involved, since at the end of the day it's an “ode to youth” and living a dream. In any case what I see here is a fourth-rate wet dream that would probably come from the mind of someone whose only contact with the world and with art is comedy anime, because (although maybe I'm giving people too much credit) I find it hard to think that someone who is not used to anime could conceive of this as “peak comedy”. Maybe I didn't turn my brain off enough and I overestimate too much what I consume, but clearly my brain isn't going to turn off if I watch humor that degrades women!

Maybe I'm asking too much of anime, who knows. Maybe a little more diving would have made this more digestible for me, at least I expected that when it started. Maybe less sexualization would make me a little nicer to what I see, but then again maybe my western brain likes to talk and complain about the things weebs like. If the manga is anything like this, I don't think I'll read it, and its position on the charts will continue to baffle me, though if I decide to leave my dignity behind for a while maybe I'll watch season 2.

Anyway, I think I got a crueler review than I thought, despite my complaints it's not the most offensive or degrading comedy I've seen and if you're better at turning off your brain than I am, there's a chance you'll enjoy it. The animation delivers and despite everything, it's funny at times even for pretentious sourpusses like me. But I think I'm better off watching Nozaki-kun, at least there the gender roles are not so strongly delimited.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Oct 21, 2024

ajw215799

Not Recommended

Funny

I’ve never once thought of an anime as vile filth before, and I have watched some bad anime but none were as repulsive to watch as this. This series is just a high schoolers juvenile imagination about what University life is like. This is just a bunch of frat guys getting drunk and naked and there is rarely a laughable gag in sight. This was outdated in 2018 before the world went all PC and it’s even more outdated now. Multiple counts of the same two felonies are committed repeatedly throughout the series and is treated for laughs. Well I’m not laughing. In fact, any ... attempt at actual serious development is instantly ruined by the fact that it wants to do a gag in the middle of a serious scene. This is supposedly very popular but I have no idea why, it’s just trash.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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