Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash is based upon the light novel series and is 12 episodes long. They story begins with a group of six fighting against some goblins in a forest. Goblins are supposedly the weakest monsters around and yet the group was struggling. After they retreat, we're given a flashback to show how the group got there. It follows Haruhiro, who is of the Thief class. We're told that he just woke up around twenty days ago with no memory of before, wearing strange clothes (i.e. normal "reality" clothes). Along with numerous other characters, they do not know why they are here and end up becoming Trainee Volunteer Soldiers in order to earn money and survive.
One half of the group, comprised of the stronger characters, forms a party with the remainder forming another. Haruhiro is in the latter and while the group each spent some time becoming different classes in order to complement each other such as Priest, Thief, Dark Knight and Hunter, they are weak and lack teamwork. However, Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash has a brilliant scene early on when the party ambushes a lone goblin and kill it in order to finally earn money for food. During it, the brutality and horror of what they are doing is shown very clearly to everyone. We see that the goblin isn't just some mindless monster, it doesn't want to die either, and in its desperate struggle in its final moments, it feels so cruel. This affects the characters as well.
Unfortunately, the pacing is slow and for every good scene there are countless other predictable ones. The anime seems to rely heavily on well established tropes such as peeping bath scenes, shallow romances with the shy girl and an extremely annoying side character in the form of Ranta. Thanks to Ranta's brashness and huge inflated ego, you'll more than likely develop an immediately dislike for the character and wish that someone will just slap him to his senses. The worst part is how he is exceedingly arrogant despite the battles being a team effort.
Ranta also becomes the main instigator for the teamwork issue in the party, making him even more unlikable towards the later half. It's predictable and the series stays too safe in its conflicts and resolutions. There are times where there is a tendency for Haruhiro to painfully explain the new skills that each team member learnt. Instead of naturally displaying it to the viewer their effects during skirmishes, they just went the lazy route of speaking about it during a short battle scene where they successively show it off too quickly and then promptly forgotten.
In the first half, the plot tries to blindside the viewer with something shocking. Sadly, we haven't warmed up to the characters yet by that point so it doesn't have quite the impact it was supposed to have. It then devolves into another cliched subplot of truly understanding each other and using this to help improve their teamwork. However, it evokes some deeper thought into the implications of loss and how to cope with it in this harsh world. The content does get better as the episodes go on, focusing more on the team's feelings and adaptability. They end up deciding upon a goal and that really helps drive them and the viewer as there is no something to strive towards.
Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash has a unique art style with traditional designs for the character models but a picturesque background. The background sceneries are beautiful but the trade-off is that they are static and this can come off a big weird and sometimes clashes with the character models. This carries to the scenes, there are too many scenes where the characters are just standing still (actually, it feels like they just froze the scene to save on animation costs as nothing moves). It can be jarring especially when you are expecting them to say something but there is a two second delay before it happens.
Despite its flaws, the ending was satisfying and is a good stopping point, even though it kind of brushes over the characters' origins before they got to this world. Overall, Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash has a fantastic art direction which is let down by an all to familiar plot. Despite that, it doesn't get to the point of being bad, and Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash is quite serviceable.
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