Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Granbelm
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Yuvelir
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I guess in the end the show really struggled in HOW it wanted to depict Magiaconatus. The way it interfered with Shingetsu and the losers' lives and how it created Suishou are all very dark and iffy, but when getting closer they try to depict it as benign a d that does not work very well...
I'm pretty sure that it was said several times that magic was sealed away, not that they attempted to remove it. But whether the mages intentionally left that ball of magic or the spontaneous ball of magic took on a will of its own, trying to eliminate it after the fact brought more harm than good. Afterall every instance thay we know of where magic brought harm to anyone was in direct relation to Granbelm, as the current use of magic was so weak that it was quite harmless (unless it is Shingetsu). |
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claymade
Posts: 7 |
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Looking at it from the outside, Magiaconatus is a horrible entity, no question. I (personally) agree wholeheartedly. But one of the many, many things that pissed me off about the show was how the narrative... doesn't seem to treat it as being a horrible entity. Like... right up until the very end of the last episode, Shingetsu is having warm thoughts about Magiaconatus whispering truths about Mangetsu's true nature to her. And even when the main characters talk about its tests, this awful murder-system and all the evil things it did to perpetuate its twisted games, there's just... not really anything in the way of repobation in their attitudes for what it did. (Much less the furious denunciation and ruining of its actual plans in a cathartic final boss fight against it that I'd been hoping for.) Rather, if anything, the show seems to treat Magiaconatus' actions as though it were actually in the right, as though it were justified for all it did. Like, sure, maybe it ruined countless lives, but (in the show's twisted logic) that was necessary in order to prove how awful magic was and find/create/test the person who could destroy it. Even the main characters in the final fight, when talking about those tests, seem to be speaking about them positively. But it really grinds my gears how the main characters just seem to... buy into it. Especially with the revelation that Suishou gives in Episode 10 about how Magiaconatus actually used its power to specifically drive Anna off the deep end. Think about how utterly fucked up that is. Magiaconatus took the sweet little girl we saw in the flashbacks, reached into her brain and twisted her very being, against her will, into angry, hurting, uncontrollable rage against her beloved adoptive sister... and then when it was through with her it just erased her from existence and the minds of her family entirely. And yet in the end, Shingetsu doesn't even really show any particular signs of animosity toward the monster. Indeed, Magiaconatus gets everything it wants, exactly as it planned, with Shingetsu playing along just as it was leading her. And while she might have a grudge against magic, as far as I can see the problem wasn't magic, the problem was Magiaconatus. IMHO, that particular personality expression was what Shingetsu ought to have been trying to erase, not the raw ability for humans to do anything whatsoever with magic in the abstract. But, well... I suppose this gets back to what I was saying a couple posts upthread, about the philosophical points the show seems to be trying to be making about humans trying to achieve power to better their ability to shape their surrounding reality. If that's the point they're trying to make, then of course they need to put the blame there somehow. But--my underlying disagreement with the base message aside--I also think they shoot their message in the foot when the problems we see don't tend to be so much "the essential problems of humans having access to power" so much as actually being "the essential problems of having a magic system that's been hijacked by an eldritch abomination that's yandere for the main character." The latter is, I would argue, a rather less generally applicable theme. |
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Probablytomorrow
Posts: 164 |
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I have a soft spot for villains that never betray their benign facades, so I kinda disagree.
I'd imagine that's how Magiaconatus was able to survive for a thousand years with none the wiser of how close the world was to being engulfed in magical war again.
I think it's a strength of Shingetsu's that she's able to resist raging at a being that isn't human and can't know the tyranny and wrongness of its actions. I think Magiaconatus wanted it both ways. It wanted a Princeps who would "selflessly" release magic and endanger humanity. I think that thing definitely wanted an altruistic person like Shingetsu to break and choose to make no wish at all, becoming yet another contestant who cries out for peace and mercy and gets cut down by Suishou. In fact, she almost did falter, until Mangetsu returned and encouraged her to move forward. |
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Doodleboy
Posts: 296 |
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For Granbelm, it has a lot of parts of a decent show but the problem is that a lot of it feels half-baked. It's trying to say something, but it's a bunch of stray ideas that don't tie together.
spoiler[There's a story of Magionautus being a malevolent force but once it's confronted it goes "Oh welp, guess I'll die". Magionautus actual motivations just remain a cypher in the end, you can argue a lot about what it wants because there's ultimately not enough information in the text to make a conclusion either way. There's themes of that you don't really need magic, that there's plenty of joy to have in the real world. It feels like a metaphor for escapist fantasy, you don't have to be magical to have a purpose in life. But that's mixed into a story where a character needs magic to actually survive, which kind of cuts into it. The whole "I can accept non-existence because there's something I'll leave behind" theme doesn't really work for me too. It's a bleak silver lining to a teenager being killed, especially a teenager being killed and forgotten by all who loved her. The fact that the story tries to treat it as something bittersweet rather than just tragic doesn't work for me. Mangetsu is super-happy that Kuon left a mark on the world, but it doesn't change the fact that her fate is worst than death. There are missing pieces to every arc. We never find out how Magionautus will reunite Nene with her mother. Kuon's arc generally annoyed me and ended in an meaningless death and anti-climax. The world-building is great at implying stuff in the actual magic-battles. But outside the magic battles, when we want to see the consequences of magic in these characters lives or how the institution of Granbelm works, it's shaky. And for Shingetsu's motivation to end magic is also not enough. Magic ruined Shingetsu's friendship with Anna but other than that her arguments against not having magic in the world doesn't really work. Like when she said "Magic is bad because it changes the natural destiny of things" I wanted to say "and the negative consequences of that are what?". Is it worth killing your best friend over this? The show felt like it needed a second rewrite to bring it's ideas together. And honestly not a whole lot will need to be changed. I think it's ideas of magic can work, the idea of not needing magic to face the real-world is a strong one but it just needs to be weaved further into the story to make it work. ] |
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claymade
Posts: 7 |
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I'm afraid I just can't see it. The way she and Mangetsu end up talking both to Magiaconatus and about Magiaconatus to others doesn't in any way suggest to me that she's struggling to "resist raging". And if the writers wanted to convey that idea... well, IMHO they failed miserably. Certainly by the end when the whole picture is revealed, it feels like they really do see Magiaconatus as being in the right with respect to the tests it put Shingetsu through. There are plenty of scenes where their emotions seem positive, and I can't recall any scene where they express any direct opposition to Magiaconatus' approach, either to it or to each other, that the entity shouldn't be doing what it's doing, or that they should try to circumvent it somehow.
I can't really see this either. Its actions and reaction to Shingetsu finally passing the last of its tests don't make any sense at all unless what it really, actually wanted was to find someone who could pass its tests and do exactly what Shingetsu did--the exact reaction it had been guiding her toward since childhood with the events it caused in her life. As horrible as I think Magiaconatus was, I can't for the life of me see how it could be said to fill the "villain" story-role as far as the story's setup is concerned. Its end goal is absolutely identical to the end goal of the heroine, and Shingetsu makes no attempt whatsoever to oppose it in any way, at any point in the entire story. And in the end? Magiaconatus wins. Absolute, 100% victory. It gets exactly what it wanted, all the manipulations and murder and mind-rape of innocents works out perfectly and goes exactly how it planned it. Shingetsu obediently does exactly what it was manipulating her to do, from the very first moment it started twisting Anna's mind to move Shingetsu along the path which it had set out for her. |
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Yuvelir
Posts: 1558 |
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They wanted to write a very personal story about an individual's values, but the way the world and the story was written for 2/3 of its run just couldn't accomodate it.
Mystery and distrust were built in form early on but it didn't really pay off. And everything since Anna's mind finally broke was extremely dark and dreadful, proof that something evil and wrong is going on, but the last three episodes go like "nah, bro" and try to spin and twist it into something good and bittersweet that just doesn't work. It didn't even need that much of a rewrite? You could even keep the same ideals and events (even though a lot of loose ends and wasted themes would remain) by making Anna and Kuon return (and assumedly the god-knows-how-many girls that were deleted throughout a millenium) and in turn it would also make Mangetsu's disappearence meaningful as it allows for a greater good - a world where magic never existed and the corruption of absolute power (and Magiaconatus' ill will) never destroyed the lives of dozens of hundreds. Of course, that means the final resolution of Mangetsu (and Shingetsu) would need to shift a little, since as it is now it finds meaning on being purely idealistic and non-pragmatic, Anna holding Clare's hand and finding a new path in life would certainly undermine it. But hey, the statement that Shingetsu's wish would remove magic from THE PAST is a very powerful detail to latch onto that wasn't really used at all for that epilogue. Of course the ideal choice would be to rewrite the entire show (maybe coming up with a worse one) to better fit the message they wanted to deliver, bu that would be harder than rewriting a few parts of the ending. |
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Probablytomorrow
Posts: 164 |
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Why would Magiaconatus set up any tests at all if not to change or crush Shingetsu's wish? Why would it erase Anna, Kuon and Mangetsu, but leave Shingetsu able to remember them, if not to give her a reason to change her wish? Shingetsu began the show as the chosen one, with the resolve to end all magic. If Magiaconatus and Suishou had stayed out of it and let the tournament play out fair and square, it would have ended with the same results. If Magiaconatus had wanted to erase all magic it wouldn't have needed anyone to prove they were worthy of wielding all magic.
It still looks to me that Magiaconatus's actions, fixing the battles, turning Anna against her, creating Mangetsu and then taking her away, killing Anna and Kuon, warning her that her wish would mess up history and turn her into a non-entity, only make sense if they were to tempt/guilt/scare her into changing her wish or faltering in her resolve. |
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claymade
Posts: 7 |
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To discover whether or not she would hold to her wish, even under pressure. That's what it means to "test" someone. She might want to destroy magic now, but what will she do once she actually has the full power right there in her very hands, and she's faced with that temptation? Magiaconatus tested her over and over again to make sure that her will to do what it wanted her to do was absolutely unshakable by anything, before it finally letting her have the power to do it. You're quite right that all the tests are designed to put pressure on her to change her wish. That was, indeed, exactly the point, and yet another indicator of what Magiaconatus actually wants. The question then becomes, if what Magiaconatus did to her and her friends was a series of "tests" of whether she would change her wish when faced with pressure... then what constitutes "failing" those tests? If "pressure to abandon her wish" is the subject of the tests, and "sticking to her wish despite the pressure" results in passing the test (which we clearly see to be the case) and so (by contrast) "not sticking to her wish despite the pressure" is evidently failing the test... then it shows us that Magiaconatus is indeed only looking to give the power to someone who will destroy magic, since that's exactly what it considers "worthy", thus forming the basis of its tests. By the very nature of the tests Magiaconatus employed to determine whether or not someone is truly worthy of wielding all magic, we can see that Magiaconatus' idea of what "worthy of wielding all magic" means is precisely "determined enough to erase all magic". Magiaconatus just needed to confirm for absolute certain that Shingetsu really did "fit the bill" no matter how much pressure she came under. If Magiaconatus didn't want Shingetsu to succeed in erasing magic, there were any number of ways it could have let her fail with trivial ease. Its continued favoritism and actions in support of her specifically, rigging the game on Shingetsu's behalf--despite Shingetsu's avowed intention to destroy magic--feeding her the power she needs to defeat Suishou even though it hadn't broken her resolve as it was (supposedly) trying to do, etc, only make sense when looked at in terms of wanting to destroy magic, setting up countless inhumane tests in order to find/create someone with the willpower to give it what it wants, and succeeding in getting what it desires over the bodies of the innocent. Shingetsu was, in the end, a pawn that Magiaconatus carefully molded and guided to its desired conclusion to achieve its goals, a pawn that never once stepped off the path that Magiaconatus had carefully prepared for her and manipulated her into. And in the end, we're left with the "consolation" of "well, sure, a bunch of innocent girls got mind-raped and murdered... but hey, at least the entity responsible for their murder and mind-rape got what it wanted out of their deaths, so it's not all bad!" |
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Zeino
Posts: 1098 |
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So what did Magiaconatus want in the end? Test humanity's ability to learn from its mistakes?
Otherwise, the ending was more or less what I expectedspoiler[. Indeed, it's nice that the series commits to its developments and the dead actually stay dead forever. Though I expected Nene to be made retroactively taller rather than grow up overnight as seems to be implied here (unless I'm misinterpreting that "-san doesn't feel right with you" line). I also like that the last shot refrains from showing us who the transfer student is… if that's Mangetsu, maybe it was a last parting gift from Magia?] Anyway, I really enjoyed the show overall. Entertaining characters, great direction, and even a few genuinely touching moments − that "bye bye" scene especially. Plus Aoi Yuuki bringing her A+ game as Suishou. It did feel like the story lost itself in it's not very well thought-out philosophical musings at the end, but I've seen much worse. *cough*FateUnlimitedBladeWorks*cough* |
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Probablytomorrow
Posts: 164 |
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@claymade
Are we about done here? I'm about done with this point. If the goal of Granbelm was to prove Shingetsu's willpower was perfect, there would be no logic to ever stopping the tests. If Magiaconatus needed to safeguard against the unworthy, then it had no reason to ever let anybody become Princeps, since erasing magic and making it unreachable is the same thing. If the goal was to make someone slip up, though, then Magiaconatus had every reason to give Shingetsu the chance to. When the story started Shingetsu had a desire to rid the world of magic and a reason to not change that desire. She'd be preventing the next magical war and she'd be getting her friendship with Anna back, a win/win. If she had faltered and made any other wish, she'd have earned Anna's everlasting resentment. Magiaconatus took the chance for reconciliation away from them. It killed Anna, Kuon, and Mangetsu. You're telling me she wasn't tempted to wish for them back, right up to the very end? Magiaconatus alone was the one who fed her that wish. She wouldn't have had a reason to wish for anything other than the end of magic if Magiaconatus hadn't fed her one. Magiaconatus had no reason to make erasing magic harder for Shingetsu if she already wanted to do it and it wanted that too. Therefore, it wanted to hurt her. It wanted her to change her wish or fall to pieces. |
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Kicksville
 Posts: 1175 |
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Gundam reference time!
-Suishou's next to last scene pretty blatantly references the end of Zeta Gundam, to the point of following a very specific frame (spoilers of course): spoiler[That is, the death of Paptimus Scirocco - this is the one in particular, and a bit afterwards too.] -Nobuo Tobita, the voice of Zeta Gundam's main character Kamille Bidan, is the next episode preview narrator. -The show has those "color change sometimes with slow down/freeze for emphasis" scenes (used quite a lot towards the end), which are very much like the kind seen in Yoshiyuki Tomino directed Gundam shows. Recent examples I remembered off the top of my head like this and this. -The flying beam emitters are of course like Bits from Gundam, although those are something of a commonly reused element compared to everything else. -Shingetsu gets her Twin Buster Rifle moment. -In fact I wonder if "Granbelm" itself is derived from "Gundam". |
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Iron Maw
Posts: 490 |
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It think some people here have wrong idea about Magiaconatus and also running with some the assumption the characters have made about it at face value. Magiaconatus only has one purpose, to select the Pricept in however way it chooses. It has no real will or even physical appearance of it's own and you can't even communicate with it so getting into a shouting match with it is. It has no reason to fight stop Shingetsu after passes all of it/s test nor does Shingetsu have a reason to refuse it's power she earned. Complaining it getting want it is pointless because what it want is what Shingetsu wants. So there no longer reason for any conflict when altar appears.
Magiaconatus ultimately not just autonomous string puller as people thought it was it merely exist as seal with nether good or nor evil intentions becasue it lacks an ego to have one. |
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Yuvelir
Posts: 1558 |
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Rationalize it how you want, but the way the writing and direction in previous episodes framed it, Magiaconatus was something sinister and its consequences dreadful.
It os only right at the very end when they tried to turn it around... in the most forced and unnatural way. Whether they framed the magicball incorrectly at the beginning or they did it purely for the atmosphere, they failed at writing it in a sensible way. |
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metalcoola
Posts: 27 |
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I might be wrong, ut reason for Anna downfall wasn't Magiaconatus actions, but what her mom and Shingetsu did, Anna was born in family of powerful mages, so no wonder she wants to be so powerful, as it was probably expected of her, and both mom and Shingetsu lied to her and make her believe she really is prodigy, no wonder she was angry and bitter that her mom didn't aknowledged her as worthy magician.
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claymade
Posts: 7 |
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That is, indeed, how it was presented at first... but then Suishou revealed in Episode 10 (the scene where they're talking on the rooftop in the rain) that Anna's insanity was actually the result of Magiaconatus influencing her. And also that Magiaconatus was responsible for the deaths of Shingetsu's biological parents as well, all of it to set up Shingetsu on her trajectory. It really makes Anna's story even more sickeningly tragic. Even after going through everything you describe above, all that in and of itself wouldn't have actually been enough to turn her against Shingetsu the way we see happen in the show. Magiaconatus had to add its own influence to the picture in order to drive her to that extent.
That seems a bit contradictory. How can it "select the Pricept in however way it chooses" if it "has no real will" with which to do that choosing? It obviously has preferences; it considers some contenders worthy and some not according to its standards. Shingetsu does communicate directly with it in the final episode, including reminiscing fondly about what she herself describes as the last thing Magiaconatus told her. And it's a recurring theme over and over again that Magiaconatus loves Shingetsu specifically. Planning, communication, standards, love. How is that not an intelligent being with an ego?
Actually, I don't think it actually is the same thing, as even with magic sealed, humans seem to be at least able to do some things, even ones not competing directly with Granbelm. Take, for example, the way Nene's sisters stabalize Mangetsu with their own powers while she's fading from existence. Whatever the seal does, it doesn't seem to be 100% perfect in the same way that completely destroying magic was.
There's a couple things that lead me to disagree, one of them being the cost to erasing magic. The only way Shingetsu could possibly have gotten Anna's friendship back would be to make a wish that didn't involve her becoming a ghost that's unable to interact with anything and wandering around unable to die, even out past the heat death of the universe. Sure, Shingetsu wanted to destroy magic from the get-go. But what happens if Magiaconatus turns over all the power to Shingetsu, letting her become--as the show describes it--literally God, and only then is she able to see (as God) what the actual costs will be of giving it all away? What if she decides it's more than she signed up for? What if she decides to just settle for rewriting reality to some version where magic still exists, and Anna has a decent amount of it and doesn't even remember that Shingetsu is secretly the Princeps Mage? It's too late at that point. In point of fact, it's the exact reverse of what you described above. Someone motivated to destroy all magic in order to salvage her friendship with Anna is utterly useless to Magiaconatus. It needed to confirm that Shingetsu was so determined to destroy magic that she'd do it even at the cost of losing everyone and everything, and being alone forever and ever. Hence the tests. Bring her as close to that state of losing everything as you can, and watch to see if it causes her to give up her wish. If it does, she's not worthy, and you can still cut her off at the last second rather than risk giving the power to someone who isn't committed enough to lose everything. It's a repeated refrain that is hammered home again and again throughout the show that Magiaconatus is testing people to see if they're "worthy" of having the power. If it didn't think that wanting to destroying magic was a "worthy" motive, why wouldn't it just fail her? And if it thought wanting to destroy magic was a "worthy" motive, then how can we say that it didn't agree that magic ought to be destroyed? |
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