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Grand Blue Dreaming (TV).




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Stark700



Joined: 30 Jan 2012
Posts: 11762
Location: Earth
PostPosted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 9:52 am Reply with quote


Grand Blue Dreaming (TV)

Genres: comedy, slice of life

Plot Summary: Iori Kitahara is a college student living along in a coastal city who meets scuba-diving and fun-loving upperclassmen.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15457
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Fri Jul 27, 2018 8:28 pm Reply with quote
Episode 3

I have been trying to stay positive, because it got some generally positive reviews at the start, people saying it is funny, I have continued to find it troubling, and I must bring it up now. This show is filled with excess drinking, mostly shown as destructive, which is fine, but I fear that more and more it is being made comedy for someone to being so destructive with drinking. Seniors forcing those bellow them into destructive situations, this episode had the seniors deciding for them that they would enter beauty contests, against their will, and practically used it as blackmail to try and coerce their female peer into entering one. The boys decided to try and get her drunk to get her more agreeable, and it is not given the weight that it should, just funny.

The main character woke up drunk, naked and sleeping next to a woman, thinking that something happened. The way this was treated felt quite insidious, that the taking advantage of one under the influence of alcohol, of either gender, is funny, and not that getting people doing things they don't want and nudity, is really not okay behaviour. This show could pretty much be hard hitting drama from people in college doing horrible destructive things, but treats it as a comedy like it is not so serious. I probably will continue, but I am finding parts pretty uncomfortable.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15457
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sat Sep 29, 2018 5:40 am Reply with quote
Episode 12 (finale)

Well this series is over, and I do think it is wroth mentioning that I have seen a number saying that this was one of the funniest shows of the season. My opinion, has not shifted much. I find a great deal of Grand Blue as not funny. The show can all it wants somewhat of an aside say that it is not encourage unhealthy drinking, but I think that has no effect at all in how it shows it in action.

Maybe I should explain my own opinions on drinking. Really, I rarely ever drink, with the last year I had tried drinking a stein at last Octoberfest, bought a six pack of rum and coke cans, and did a social on my school reunion that was at a club which had some social drinking. I strongly disagree with the idea of drinking to the point you personality can change, like pretty much happens every time in the show where all the guys strip. There pretty much is no proper social drinking in this show, instead it is always to excess, that it can create jokes like stripping, and not remembering what happened previously, in actions that are no doubt impacting their studies.

But it does not just end at alcohol, this alcohol leads to stripping, which in turns lead to full on sexual harassment towards women, which is never acknowledged for how awful it is. I imagine that it would be deeply troubling for some of the girls to have to be forced to see men wave their junk around, after they may have already said how it makes them feel uncomfortable. I already mentioned in my other post a case in the show where guys deliberately tried to get a woman drunk so that they could manipulate her into doing something she would not agree to otherwise. But I had not yet gotten into the case with the character that would be known as Cakey, so named after her misguidedly wearing heavy makeup when she is first introduced, where the men in the show treat her like she is a leper, like disgust is the correct response. The way they reacted to her came across as disgusting, and incredibly shallow.

Especially uncomfortable was how she was used in a story where the main character coerced her into getting her friends to a mixer with a couple really lecherous guys, that simply put wanted to sleep with any girl, and believed the manipulative nature of a mixer would help. As sort of revenge, she got all her friends to wear heavy makeup, which again really should mean nothing for a guy that actually respects a women, but again treated like the plague that some of the guys feel willing to have to live with to try and seduce them, or a single target, anyway. From the point of the female characters, I think it was a nice having fun at the expense of some perverts, but I fear if it wanted us to sympathise with the awful guys in it, that maybe paint them as the victim of girls just using them. To say nothing of another segment where these guys decide to ruin the time of one of their friends relationships with a childhood friend, because they don't want him having an adult relationship, which was downright harassment. Funny finish joke where he asks his childhood friend to introduce him to other girls, because ha ha, guys rare perverts that don't care about feelings.

Which I want to turn around to another problem, that it was not just a problem of male to female sexism in this show, I would say thee are problems the other way around too, where his cousin is rather unfair to him in return. Although she did often have reason. But it is totally a problem where it is a joke that the guys get no say about not drinking, even when they have firmly said they don't want to, because really it comes across that guys have to drink to keep up with the other guys, while the girls can choose not to. But that really might have been a part of an undercurrent of girls can't hold their drinks as well which makes them an exception. This last episode had one girl quickly getting drunk and I guess then committing what could practically be described as sexual assault on the male characters, as a joke. Because sexual assault against guys is apparently funny.

Maybe this all could have worked out if everything in this show was pointing at what the characters was doing was wrong, and irredeemable, but it doesn't. It tries to say they are likable as they harass each other in supposedly funny ways. And tries to do a serious shot of displaying the diving activities as a beautiful experience, of the treasures of life. It makes a number of the situations totally normal and kind, that I could see people maybe equating being good friends, like physically forcing people to drink. This episode having them mixing all sorts of random drinks into one container, a lot of 90% alcohol, which I imagine should be super dangerous. Any emulation in real life, would be really irresponsible, which asks the question of why even make things like the diving as beautiful.

Probably would have been a better part earlier to mention it, but there is a part where the main character needs to practice something, and does not want them making fun of him, so his idea was to pretty much poison them. There is not hint for a mentality that he should not even care what they think, just like there is no mention that he could just say no to being forced to drink. It makes the whole relationships of these characters look like something really troubling, that regardless of how he might be friendly at times to characters like Cakey, in ways that seems out of character to the others. These relationships are not healthy examples. I heard that the author. I heard that the mangaka behind this was the one for Baka to Test, which I remember liking, but has me think that the shifting the similar character interaction to older characters in a more realistic situation, totally changes it for me.

I give this a rating of Not really good (4/10), that I don't think it is a total waste, it maybe coming more to personal preference, but I find a lot that I really have problems with.
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