Tree of life
(This review contains
spoilers!)
This week’s episode was less
action-oriented than last week’s madcap forest chase, instead sitting back and
focusing on the characters as Akko comes to grips with the witching world being
different than what she imagined. This week also saw the reintroduction of
Diana, Akko’s rival from the shorts and the most intelligent girl in the
school.
At this point, I’m pretty sure it’s been
decided that this anime is less a continuation of the original shorts and more
of a reimagining of them. For example, Akko is still using the Shiny Rod in
this episode, despite her finding it for the first time in Luna Nova’s treasury
in the first short. While I still love both the short and the Enchanted Parade movie, I do see that
Trigger is doing this to allow the new series to stand on its own without
having people need to watch through some required material.
But anyways, onto the episode. We
start on Akko’s first day of class, where much to her dismay witch training is
far less flashy and magical than she was hoping. As it turns out, her idol
Shiny Chariot is regarded as a hack in the professional witch community for wowing
people with cheap tricks. On the other hand you have Diana, a witch prodigy
student who looks down on Akko and her friends, who is more than happy to prove
them wrong.
It’s very slow and quiet compared to
last week, something we haven’t really seem out of Little Witch Academia before. While it’s not quite as fun as the
wild and magical adventures you can see elsewhere, this episode is great for
another reason: the characters. I mentioned last week that the characters are
the most lovable and memorable part of the show, and that extends to when they
aren’t surrounded by action as well. Akko continues to be delightfully determined
to prove everyone around her wrong and that she can be a witch. Similarly,
Diana is extremely self-confident and not afraid to show it. They’re both
wonderfully portrayed by their voice actresses, as are the rest of the cast. I
do wish Lotte and Sucy had been given more to do than just crack a few jokes
this week, however. While this episode was really focused more on Diana, I
think the showrunners could’ve found more for them to do.
The visuals are as unique and impressive
as ever, especially on the characters and their expressions. Each of them look
very unique, and their goofy looks whenever something unexpected happen really
add to the overall humorous feel of the episode. Plus, the design of the
backgrounds are just awesome, with loads of detail put into everything. It
really feels like a magical academy in the same vein as Hogwarts.
My one gripe with the episode is the
climax, in that it kind of comes out of nowhere. All of a sudden there’s a tree
that Diana needs to save from dying, and Akko shows up to help her. While it’s
a fun and satisfying resolution to the episode, I do wish the tree had been set
up more over the course of the episode. They mention that the tree was planted
in memorial for a witch named Jennifer, so why not go more into that instead of
just having it be an off-handed line? That would give us more reason to care
besides wanting to see Akko succeed, because this tree would matter to the
overall plot more.
Despite this, Little Witch Academia proved this week that not every episode needs
to have wild and crazy adventures and magical battles to succeed. The
characters are lovable enough and the animation is just so good that they can
even make studying for exams fun and interesting. While I do think the side
characters needed to be given more to do, especially since this is only our
second episode with them, and the finale did seem a bit rushed, again, this is
only the second episode of 25. There’s plenty of time left to set up stuff for
later and build more on the characters, and I can’t wait to see what’s next.
FINAL SCORE
8/10
Great
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