Hai to Gensou no Grar Grar of Fantasy and Ash is a fascinating morbid take on the issekai genre. The show strays from issekai almost as if it is meant to poke fun at standards commonly associated with issekai shows. Grimar starts in the middle of a group of adventurers journey after they have already formed and speeds through their formation as a flashback so the viewer can concentrate on the important part of the story: the story itself. This was something I really appreciated because its very irritating to sit through the characters in the show learning how their world works and meeting other people in it and other world building. Grars speeding through of this mundane part of issekai was greatly appreciated and this new strategy of characters having a decent amount of knowledge about their world before the story starts can be seen in shows today most notably The Rising of the Shield Hero which aspects of this show can clearly be seen in. Instead of delusions of grandeur and insanely overpowered main characters with amazing special abilities able to take on any villan they face Grar has a group of adventurers fighting just to survive daily initially struggling to kill the even the most basic mob a goblin. The show deviates from other issekai shows further in this scene in which the main character realizes that the goblin is also struggling for its life desperate to survive and his group and the goblins survival are in immediate conflict. As expected their journey is not an easy one morally or physically. As a group they experience heavy loss and grief. The characters are also incredibly real with each character having their own faults and weaknesses due to their personalities which we get to see because the group members all get their own character development and are properly fleshed out which is very rare to see in an issekai anime. The characters are all different and this difference leads to a very unique relationship between the characters with some having difficulty communicating with certain characters occasionally leading to discord within the group that the characters struggle to resolve. However when push comes to shove the characters show their dependence on one another and camaraderie. Their reactions to one another after events occur in the story is also very realistic with each character dealing with it in his or her own way. The show is a possibly satirical masterpiece plotwise and was unlike any other show in its genre when it was released but shows similar have started to rise and have been met with praise a pun on my example. I do not consider myself an artistic person but the artwork for Grar was incredible. As I said I am not a very artistic person so I cannot quite describe it or identify why I feel this way but the artwork for Grar is truly unlike anything Ive ever seen before in any other show and the scenery simply looks magnificent. Sadly however likely due to it being such an unconventional and unfamiliar use of the issekai genre not many people know about it and likely as a result it never got a second season. Grar of Fantasy and Ash is an incredible show that not many people watched a shame because they missed out on something really great. Thanks for taking the time to read my review I hope you enjoyed it I really hope you consider watching Grar because its really just a great show that I cant recommend enough and its one of my favorite anime because of how it subverts most common issekai tropes and still makes itself into a exemplary anime.