Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash is another offering from A-1 Pictures, the animation studio behind this winter anime season’s excellent Erased ( Boku Dake Ga Inai Machi ). Based on a light novel series adapted into a manga in 2015, Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash centers around a group of hapless rookie adventurers in a fantasy world. However, there’s every indication that these novices are in fact transplants from the modern world whose memories have been wiped clean. Knowing nothing about their past or present, this squad of newbies must make a living at being adventurers.

The video game world concept is more than a little beaten to death at this point. A-1 Pictures is, after all, the studio behind hit anime Sword Art Online , a show all about the mingling of real life and virtual reality. No Game No Life is just as gamified as anything on a console, and last season’s Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? was almost disappointingly straightforward about its RPG elements. Still, the premise of Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash has some juice to it, and the art is so lush and so beautiful that I watched this anime with great expectation.

So should you watch Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash ? No, actually. Here’s why Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash ruined its first impression with me.

Characters are weak to non-existent to offensive to terrible.

This is probably the worst and most grating thing about Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash. What’s a beautiful world (and again, I must emphasize the gentle beauty of the art on this show) when it’s filled with assholes and cardboard cut-outs?

Out of a dozen supporting characters, the only ones who approach being tolerable or sympathetic are the Priest-class character (Manato) and the Knight-class character (Mogzo). The girls are ranged classes, another cliche decision. Mage-class girl (Shihoru) is clearly going to have some kind of plot about her crippling sense of inferiority, which I don’t welcome. Spare me from watching more blushing, stammering girls with no self-worth wander the paces of this tired-ass storyline. The Hunter-class girl (Yume) kind of reminds me of Shinoa Hiragi from Seraph of the End , because she’s meant to be the same type of cloying, sarcastically cute character, but a bizarre and off-key bit of lesbian fanservice towards the end of the episode just left me with my hands thrown up (not to mention she lacks all of Shinoa’s competence).

Our protagonist, Thief-class Hiroharu, isn’t terrible, but he suffers greatly from Bland Protagonist Syndrome. Dark Knight-class Ranta is intolerable, which I’ll get to later. And then there’s Brittany, the threatening effete. Let’s get over the feminine homosexual villain trope, please. Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash is not the first otherwise-promising show this season to deploy this musty old trope. What is it, ‘83?

Granted it’s the first episode, and the cast is too big to get to know everyone beyond a shallow first impression in just one episode’s runtime. Even with that taken into consideration, it’s just not looking good.

That scene near the end of Episode 1 is so bad it put me off ‘Grimgar’ entirely.

Ranta deserves a paragraph of his own for forcing me to sit through the most uncomfortable, tasteless, unwelcome scene I have endured this anime season. Now, it’s one thing to have an obnoxious loudmouth character. That character type often undergoes the most growth and shows the highest nobility in the entire show.

But for way too long I was forced to watch this rude, abrasive little prat harass and browbeat a horribly anxious, uncomfortable girl over her breast size, with no one stepping in to intervene. And it went on and on. It’s his special skill from God! He loves big titties! He can tell if they’re flattened, spread, or hidden! Then he starts going in about how girls who call themselves fat even when they’re not are the most hated by other girls (???). He saw everyone staring at Shihoru’s tits! Boooooooobs! Jesus Christ. Four interminable minutes later, Shihoru is finally provoked into tears.

But that’s not all. Yume protectively drapes herself over Shihoru, bow and arrow pointed at Ranta. All good and well, until she starts rubbing and sniffing all over the horrifically uncomfortable Shihoru. Hiroharu and Ranta stare in titillated bewilderment while Yume nyan-nyans provocatively. Ranta breathlessly pants for them to continue. What the fuck am I watching?

I like everything else about ‘Grimgar,’ making the points above sting even worse.

The art, the art, the art. The watercolor-styled backgrounds of this show are so pretty, so charming. The character designs themselves are varied and distinct: each character has a different silhouette and build, even a different walk. The animation is beautiful. The colors are bright and clear. I love the world concept: the idea of modern people thrown into a video game world without remembering who they are, forced to learn the skills of that world as they try to find out who they are and why they’re here, that’s all catnip to me.

But for all the strength of those aspects of Grimgar, you have the points above: weak and offensive characterization coupled with tastelessness so deep it ruins all that came before it.

I can cope with fanservice. Take the scene with Thief guild leader Barbara, which was ridiculous.

But at least it was over quick. The extended grotesquerie of Yume practically scent-marking Shihoru to the boys’ sweaty delight, of Ranta driving Shihoru to tears while crowing about her heaving bazongas to everyone in the party, is beyond my capacity to endure.

I can cope with one or two bad, weak, or boring characters. But Ranta is excruciating to watch, and there is nothing fun or new about Shihoru or Yume, Brittany is a painfully dated caricature, Barbara’s absurd. This cast has no pillar. The fact that I otherwise like the show very much makes these points even worse.

In short: should I watch ‘Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash’?

No. There is no payoff that’s worth enduring flat, shallow characters who are also offensive for no reason. But it is such a shame and such a pity to see so much talent and such an interesting premise thrown into the garbage by repellent and outdated tropes.

I really hope that this show manages to pick itself up. Maybe I’ll check in again mid-season and they’ll have redeemed Ranta, given Shihoru and Yume depth, and begun to unfold an extraordinary plot. Or… maybe not.

Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash is available to watch on Funimation here , with new simulcast episodes every Sunday at 11:30 AM EST.