Grand Blue
Grand Blue Dreaming

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There are a total of four things that I absolutely love in pieces that I read when well done. The first is realistic suffering, see characters pass throught bad things, and be successful(or the opposite of it) is amazing. The second is relationships, I love to see how characters interact with each other, and develop throught that. The third is worldbuilding, a good and nice world can transmit a sense of wonder that enhances the experience to new levels. An fourth is simply put, the funnies, how much a manga makes me laugh or smirk is heavily correlated with my enjoyement. But comedy is very ... particular, and varies very much from individual to individual, and because of that is a genre very hard to recommend. When it hits, whoever, oh, does it hit hard.
And Grand Blue hit the hardest. Grand blue scores a big fat zero in 2 of the categories(suffering and worldbuilding). However, when it comes to the funnies, this piece has the highest score of any other. If I had to rank in that alone, it would be first no doubt. Everything in this manga revolves around the comedy, even the relationships between character is used as a step stone for bring something funny to reality.
You will not see profound relationships, development of characters, or a rich world, but for this one, that doesn't matter. The enjoyement comes throught slapstick comedy, reocurring gags and character behaviour. From "The Boys(TM)" being absolute pieces of shit, to using a lighter to see if it really is water, to "this is a diving club", everything is worked up with the purpose of laughs. And the author is a master at this. He knows how to perfectly use a gag in the right moment to extract most laughs, he knows when to go hard, and when to stop abruptly, he simply knows.
But of course, this manga wouldn't be so funny if it wasn't for the artist. The art is used in excelence to bring extreme reactions and make the slapstick moments works wonderfully. It was actually what I missed most in the anime, since the art in the manga is used very much as a sudden punchline, which was lost in translation.
If you don't like the style of comedy don't bother, this manga lives and dies in that genre. But if you enjoy it,if you even remotely like, then dive in, and enjoy. This is one of the best

Has a lot of ups and downs.. It started out strong but thinned out the pacing too much, I would give the first 30 chapters an 8. The focus probably should have been tighter around the club where they could develop the upperclassmen more, given how those characters have been there since the beginning it feels odd not to have learned much about them. There were way too many chapters about "The boys" since it's the same joke every time. Given the frustrating pace I ended up skimming the last third pretty aggressively

That sums up what I thought about the manga but apparently there's a ... soft floor for word count

tldr; story is about how crimes are actually hilarious, with some diving thrown in.

I tried to read as much as I could, I really did, but this manga is just too strange for me and I have to take a break after every joke. I'm in disbelief that this is a Seinen and not a Shonen.

I don't tolerate second hand embarrassment well and that's this story's bread and butter. We have characters repeatedly forcing/tricking other characters into intoxication, and it's played off as a joke and they're not villainized at all. The MC wants to get a girl drunk so she can't say no to ... his proposal, and it's played off as a joke and not incredibly sinister. We have characters naked half the time and it's played off as a joke. We have a character being portrayed as a creepy stalker, and you guessed it, it's just played off as a joke without kicking his ass to the curb.

This story doesn't want to be taken seriously, and in that way it's just too "anime" for me. I can't get past the cringe from the jokes nor get invested in this kind of story. I think it would've been a lot more bearable if the author eased me into their humor, instead of immediately hitting me with the naked men harem and forced intoxication - as if that was meant to be charming. Either the jokes land for you or you can't get past the fact that the jokes are just crimes, and I'm in the latter category.