Apr 15, 2017
As a fan of the original OVAs I really, really wanted to like this series. Unfortunately, every week brings another disappointment. I greatly enjoyed the first episode, the broom race episode and the episode centered around Sucy, but beyond those I struggled not to feel massively let down.
Story:
Every episode seems like a run-on sentence, with no finesse to speak of. In one episode, dragons steal the sorcerer's stone, they try to get it back, the dragons are robots being controlled by an actual dragon who's an investor that the academy owes money to, Diana shows up and is conveniently the only person who can
...
read dragon ruins and the contract is voided. what??
There are also a lot of completely irrelevant Chekhov's guns that go absolutely nowhere. For example, the episode Night Fall. The episode opens with a focus on Lotte talking to someone named BigBen on her crystal ball/computer, planning to meet up at the Night Fall event. She mentions BigBen a few other times in the episode, building our expectations for their encounter. However, once they meet, BigBen has absolutely zero relevance to the plot, and simply disappears. There are many other poorly planned and irrelevant inclusions like this throughout the series. Also, things that should have been included but weren't. Example: episode 14, the faeries who maintain the school go on strike. What faeries?? if they're so integral to the school's ability to function, maybe they should have been shown or mentioned at least once!
Art:
The art and animation is also very disappointing. I understand that a 25 episode series can't maintain the same level of quality as the OVAs, but the shots are just plain awful at every turn. Most scenes consist of the characters standing around talking with a bare-bones background. In an anime about a magic academy, world building is crucial. The environment should be magical in and of itself, or at least not completely barren and bland. There are also plenty of careless mistakes. In episode 14, Lotte and Akko are standing in a field. Two teachers show up. Suddenly, Sucy is there, as if she'd been there all along. It's a far cry from what I've come to expect from Studio Trigger.
Characters:
-Way too Akko-centric
-why are the teachers so incompetent
-why has Sucy been reduced to a background piece who spouts bad one-liners
-why is Diana so good at everything, where did her secret dorky side go
-if they spent the first 13 episodes on world-building and character development episodes, why aren't any of the characters developed and why isn't the world built
-a disappointing lack of cute character moments, like when Sucy turned Akko's hair into a plant
-why doesn't Sucy use her arms???
All in all, I had hoped this show would be cute, fun, and have a careful amount of detail put into developing these beloved characters. Instead, it's a completely disjointed slapped-together mess. It seems as if the writers are misunderstanding what makes a magic school such an enchanting premise. I wanted to like it so badly, but I can't pretend that I'm not incredibly disappointed.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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