Granblue Fantasy Relink: Should You Watch The Granblue Anime First?
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Granblue Fantasy is a franchise that has been rising in popularity over the last few years. Starting as a browser-based gacha game, the franchise has bled into other mediums and genres, serving fans of all types of media be it anime, manga, or even fighting games along with a new action RPG on the way. The new game, Granblue Fantasy: Relink, tells a new story but wraps it in a modern package containing standard console RPG mechanics. But with so much Granblue media out there, what’s the best way to get into it? Enter Granblue Fantasy: The Animation.
Granblue developer Cygames has released the first seven episodes of the anime for free on its YouTube channel, which is the first half of the first season. The anime is primarily meant to introduce the world and characters to newcomers, and it does a decent job at it. Having watched all seven 20-minute episodes, I think I’m ready to play Granblue Fantasy: Relink without being confused about the state of its plot, characters or canon.
Cygames
Granblue Fantasy: The Animation follows the adventures of a young aspiring skyfarer, the eponymous Gran. The show begins with Gran and his lizard-like companion Vyrn living a simple life on the floating island of Zinkenstill. Gran is an ambitious boy who can’t wait to sail across the skies in hopes of finding his estranged father, who has sent him a letter inviting him to the island of the Astrals, Estalucia. His peaceful life is thrown into disarray when he meets Lyria, a mysterious girl with amnesia and the power to connect with the primal beasts of the land. Lyria, accompanied by her bodyguard Lady Katalina, are escaping from the clutches of the evil empire, as one does in standard fantasy stories.
After agreeing to help Lyria and Katalina, Gran is mortally wounded in a fight against the empire. Lyria uses her power to bind her soul to Gran, granting him new powers that turn the tide of the battle. What follows is a grand adventure across the skies that sees more characters joining Gran’s party as they travel to new islands across the world.
The anime follows conventional fantasy tropes with very little personality of its own, or at least that’s the impression I got from watching these episodes. Each episode sees the gang travel to new locations and meet new people with connections to the empire. It’s clear that the Final Fantasy franchise heavily influences the GBF franchise, and it tries to evoke a similar emotional response. But what the series lacks in originality, it makes up for with its charm. There’s a certain “comfort food” mentality that kicks in when watching the show, as you don’t have to pay too much attention to its plot because it is derivative.
The episodes on YouTube include Japanese voices with English subtitles, but the slower pace of the story makes it easy to follow even if you put it on in the background. There are signature anime tropes along with some summon action that will be familiar to any Final Fantasy fan. It has this feel-good vibe with a story that is painfully inoffensive, which makes the whole thing bleed into the background, not offering anything of substance to think or discuss.
Related: You Can Watch (Most Of) The Granblue Anime For Free On YouTube Now
It may sound like I’m hating the show, but in reality, I’ve just found it to be fine, which might just be worse than actually being bad. We are drawn to stories that elicit a strong emotional response, but the GBF anime is happy coasting by on tried and tested storytelling methods. The inconsistent power scaling doesn’t help matters — why are the characters worried about fighting a knight in mildly strong armour when just a few episodes prior they defeated a hydra and a literal goddess by summoning Bahamut? It operates on video game logic but doesn’t care to explain some of its choices.
As for the characters themselves, there are some interesting ones here that have direct ties to the lore and power dynamics of the Sky Realm. Katalina’s past with the empire and the ongoing mystery of Lyria’s powers are intriguing, but not enough to fuel the show. Most of the dialogue between characters boils down to explaining situations and pointing out the obvious course of action that the viewer would already know about. Characters are constantly surprised by small events, leading to dialogue that neither deepens their relationships nor progresses the plot.
What’s interesting here though is the world and its backstory, but you don’t get much of it in the seven episodes available for free. The relationship between island inhabitants and the primal beings that govern their lands could make for some interesting parallels and commentary on real-world issues, but the show doesn’t dive into it in any significant way.
GBF: Relink will not retell the same story, instead being presented as a side-adventure featuring many characters from the anime and previous games. Relink is set in a different location of the world and will tell a new story. Would watching the anime help get you acclimated to the world? Sure, but only on a surface level. Fans of the original games would suggest playing through or reading a summary of the original JRPG, while GBF Versus: Rising, itself telling an alternate story, would be a better option for showcasing the personalities of various characters.
What’s frustrating is that the episodes available on YouTube don’t offer nearly enough story or lore information to get me excited to put dozens of hours into the game. However, keeping the characters aside, the good thing about the upcoming game is that it’s fun to play. You can already get a taste of the action with a free demo, which lets you experience a small part of the story.
Watching the anime will get you up to speed on what each character’s motivations are, along with providing a glimpse into the relationship dynamics between them. That’s a good starting point, as jumping into the game might overwhelm new players with its dozens of characters and new locations. So yes, you should watch the Granblue Fantasy anime before playing Relink, but it’s not necessary. If watching the anime has taught me anything, it’s that Granblue Fantasy has a simple story with fairly generic, but charming characters. It does not need the number of spinoffs it has, but if the gameplay shown in Relink’s marketing does strike a chord with you, then there’s plenty of Granblue media you can get invested in before playing the new game.
In case you're up for it, the rest of Granblue Fantasy: The Animation is streaming on Crunchyroll.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink releases on February 1, 2024, on PC, PS4 and PS5 consoles.
