Ban Puncher
Member
What's this?
Friendship and a mosquito aka Episode 8.
What's this?
That was a good episode. Diana falling in love with her reflection was pretty funny.
I've been posting less than I should have.
I was a bit worried about the show a few episodes after the premiere, but it seems to have really found its footing now. All of the past three episodes have been a lot of fun.
I'm a mid 30s guy that absolutely hates like 90% of anime and so help me LWA is so goddamn charming I find myself trying to sell other people on it.
It defies most anime cliches and hearkens back to the age of late 90s and early 2000s cartoons. And while the TV series's animation isn't as good as the OVAs were, it's still animated way smoother than most anime. It's hard to watch anything else.
Theory time: The Nine Olde Witches sealed some very bad stuff but in the process also sealed off magic and remaining magic in the world is dwindling away. The Shining Rod is a key or tool to the seal or to magic as a whole. Shining Chariot could do amazing things with the Shining Rod but backed down as the wielder because she couldn't take the real responsibility or she failed.
Episode 11
Whoa, there were some sick revelaitons this time around. Most obviously we have confirmation that magic is really growing weaker over time, it's not just that technological development has made it obsolete.
Then there's the Grand Triskelion and the Seven Words. Is it related to the portal the bear was guarding? Why is Diana researching it? Could she be aware of magic's decline and seeking to break the seal to reverse it? How is it connected to Ursula's past, and why can't she tell Akko the truth if this quest is so important? (Bet it's a geas.)
And finally, the true identity of the Shiny Rod as Claíomh Solais. It's interesting that it's in this form now, instead of a sword. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the semiotic significance of swords and rods/staves are diametric opposites in both the physical/spiritual axis and the male/female axis. Could this be related to the sexism theme that came up previously? (I hope Akko takes good care of it, it served me well in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow.)
Man, this just got way more interesting. Really digging it.
My guess is the Grand Triskelion is sapping the world of magic and Chariot tried to do it but failed and became a teacher to find a suitable person who could.
Also...Rita Repulsa was one of the witches that started Luna Nova :3
You mean Maleficent, surely.
Diana somehow pulls the best duty/job in a game of pure chance? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? This is straight up insulting. It's completely goddamn random and she somehow tops out the fucking luck meter too? Oh and Diana you're head of the Festival despite being a freshman. Seniors what? Who?
Part of the issue with this cour as a whole is that so many of the scenarios are redundant. How many times do we need to see Akko in the loser position where she doesn't even progress? It's like the show is spinning its wheels. For example this episode Diana again gets the best position and Akko the worst. Why not try and mix it up to an extent and see how Diana handles being in a shitty position and Akko in a high level one? They sort of do that with the lame illusion spell, only from Akko's side, but they don't do much with it and it's so short that it feels like a waste of time.
Diana doesn't have a character at all besides being a Mary Sue and the writers seem to go out of their way to make Akko the most incompetent witch in all of history. The show tries its damnedest to trip over its own feet. Not to mention the show barely utilizes even a quarter of the cast. Lotte doesn't do shit and Sucy barely does anything now too.
This doesn't feel like Trigger gives a shit. I'm not just talking about the animation value but the level of energy in the work. It just comes across as a way of passing time for both the audience and staff. This is precisely why you need a good script at the core of any anime production. I really don't like writing posts like this but it's so infuriating because so much of this is self-inflicted from a character/narrative standpoint. It's as if the writer had no clue on how to expand the concept or write convincing characters.
Ya last episode was lame. Wasted a good potential concept with the mirror. This is one of the shows it seems where stretching it out for 25 episodes is dragging it on instead of helping with pacing.
Wow, it's 25? I though it was 13. It felt like the series was just about over because something was happening in the plot, and considering the energy of the show that means it'd be quickly resolved. Akko would have some kind of quest and have some role to play, and then that'd be the season. You're telling me there's another half of a season to go?
No wonder so many of these episodes have just been goofy slice of lifes set in a magical school. Maybe something will actually happen now.
So when's this coming out on the platform which paid for it to get made in the first place?
Since I guess Jexhius wanted me to talk about the episode, I'll do so. This was a pretty good ending to a weak cour. It serves to cap off Akko's growth up to this point (both emotionally and skillwise), establish faults with Diana, gives the side characters something to actually do, and sets up future strife with an unknown third party for the next cour. The scenes relating to Akko were especially great such as her having a near breakdown. Most importantly the stuff pertaining to the sad ghost actually felt 'magical' due the age of the ghost and the quick snapshots we get of her near the end. The story felt interesting for once and wasn't just some lazy body-change shit. That said, I don't feel the episode fixes a lot of the underlying issues with the show and I can easily see it slipping back into the same pattern. It's not a gamechanger in that sense. I'm essentially worried that this is all they have in the tank. The show at times displays this spark feels reminiscent of the OVA series but for whatever reason they can't maintain it. If this leads into a stronger second cour, I'll probably look back more fondly on the episode.
Little Witch Academia-12
Diana somehow pulls the best duty/job in a game of pure chance? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? This is straight up insulting. It's completely goddamn random and she somehow tops out the fucking luck meter too? Oh and Diana you're head of the Festival despite being a freshman. Seniors what? Who?
First off let me preface this by saying this was another really good episode. It sets up a series villain who is interesting on multiple levels, possibly changes some of the relationship dynamics, has a somewhat funny and entertaining premise, and there are a lot of good character moments. It also felt like the storyboarding was a bit sharper this week too. I'm starting to wonder if this was initially planned as a 13 episode series and Netflix money bumped up the episode count.
This episode was pretty good at portraying Akko in the sense that yes she's in trouble again but it shows that she did think things through and the reasoning for her actions comes from a good place. It's a nice change from previous episodes where her selfishness gets her into all these different disasters. Diana finally showed some emotions as well and got wrecked for once. What does the bourgeoisie know about the sufferings of the proletariat? Sucy had some solid background gags such as
You break strike, you get the works. No sympathy.
Croix is such a good addition to the show that I'm wondering why she wasn't introduced earlier. She plays well off Akko and just by existing, gives Akko an alternative to just blindly following Shiny Chariot. So now we might have a situation where Akko is emotionally torn between her two teachers. I really like the idea of Ursula being thrown to the waist-side, it's a damn shame though that the first cour didn't do a better job of fleshing out her relationship with Akko. Croix's form of magic is an evolution/advancement of Constanze so I imagine there should be a quite a few good scenes between those two. One of the major aspects in the show is that magic in their world is dying out and by her being some sort of technowitch, she represents a possible solution. And we haven't even gotten into the Croix/Ursula backstory yet either. She works so well that I think she should have been part of the cast to begin with. She also has swag and a cool costume. That's the most important detail of them all.
This is why you take STEM even in magic school.
My main problem isn't so much with this episode in particular but the general worldbuilding and just plain incompetence of the school. There's literally a form of magic engineering and nobody is teaching this?!?!? Not to mention the hybrid approach allows a witch to use magic in situations without a Sorcerer's Stone nearby as seen earlier with the dragon episode. Luna Nova is such an amateurish and unprofessional school that it's amazing that graduates don't choke on their own wands. The anime repeatedly goes out of its way to show how shitty this school is so my level of patience, for when Professor Finnelan opens her mouth about tradition, is so low you would have to dig a mile underground to find it. Someone presents a viable solution to their problem with supposedly zero additional costs and she doesn't shoot it down on feasibility but because Luna Nova is too old school to use computers. Oh my god. I will bash my fucking head into my screen if the lesson that the characters learn in this show is that technology is bad when Croix does whatever evil thing she has planned. I wonder if energy levels are tied to the general witch IQ values.