Wandering Witch #05 — Back to the Banal

October 30th, 2020

 

Why is it that she has all the time in the world for insecure teenagers NOT in mortal danger?

Impressions:

I guess we're back to an episode about kids wanting to learn magic, like the first two. And like the first two, "Magic is friendship" is about as deep as it wants to tread, which is quite the contrast to the previous two episodes where it was attempting to be all thought provoking and fell flat on its face. It still paints a pretty damning picture of the main character herself. Righting wrongs, standing up to injustice, saving people in danger (that you helped put them in), these are not important things. But there are privaleged teenagers who idolize and worship her? Yeah, she's got all the time in the world for that. An entire episode of it. Her helping feed a town to a hungry plant monster gets forwarded right past, but we can stick around for multiple montages about how much doofuses look up to her.

But even aside from the godawful writing beats, this episode served as a good example of how the production has fallen to crap. Compare the chase scene here to the first episode's fight. She flies down a corridor. Doesn't even make any special moves or anything like that, and then her persuers run into walls. This isn't played off as if they're the Keystone Kops, but that she is wowing them with her flying capabilities. Then it simply gives up entirely and turns to a bunch of stills. That's right, our big scene of her showing off how great and unreachable a level she is above all the rest is a montage of stills. Thrilling.

Posted in Elaina | 5 Comments »

5 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Anonymous says:
    October 31, 2020 at 12:28 am

    Why was this told as a flashback instead of being in real time?

    The time waste,man the time waste.member how a death of the whole town was a 5 minute b story were non of the characters got developed enough for you to care?

    Here she wants to go into an academy, instead of asking for permission she tries to break in and is caught. Instead of asking permission from proper channels she leaves because the groundskeeper told her “swiper no swiping”, so I guess she wants to visit real bad but not bad enough that she will do anything that takes effort. Then suddenly 2 students ask her to come with her in most shady way possible. Despite them having no chance against her she decides not to play along and so starts the chase. “chase” in which she seems to have no intent of escaping and is simply toying with everyone. This “conflict” out of nowhere/based on misunderstanding is as annoying as it is in superhero comics.

    I, What, why? https://tenka.seiha.org/images2020/ww5/20.jpg
    around here she lets go of her broom to escape those 2, how that would help I have no idea. Its like she is doing that “pull the brakes” move from chase scenes where “enemy” is going full speed and dont have time to stop giving hero opportunity to go into a new direction or crashing but the “cars” are in front of her and stationary.

    She is falling face first into the water about 20 meters away from the bridge, having sent her broom forward. suddenly she is teleported with editing beyond the bridge and then she catches the broom mid fall. its around 6:27 mark, I cant even explain the wtfery of it all. There was no indication that any kind of magic was used.

  • Frank says:
    October 31, 2020 at 5:25 am

    SHE HELPED OTHER PEOPLE THIS TIME, SO I’LL JUST NAG BECAUSE IT’S A FRUITLESS EPISODE THAT PROVIDES WORLD BUILDING HURR DURR

    I laughed out hard at your whinning about them being priviliged kids. The whole episode stablished that they are hardworking students that will eventually end up doing minial jobs like carrying passengers or load from place to place around the city, or become entertainers. They do it for the greater good of the masses.

    “They are kids that aren’t in mortal danger” So your reductive logic just boils down that she’s not allowed to have any human interaction and she’s supposed to be a devoted public servant, even when she’s not even summoned in any disaster zone? OH boy, you should be a comedian.

    And C2C is a small studio that have done mostly sol shows, they aren’t neither David Productions nor Bones studio to deliver high quality Sakuga. But then again, you’re grasping at straws looking for excuses to nag on a show you got nothing to actually complain.

    • Anonymous says:
      October 31, 2020 at 7:31 am

      is she your waifu, is that why you are so inflamed? Everyone I have talked to about this show agrees that witches in it seem to be missing few screws. yet here you are a one man defense squad, ignoring or twisting all points that dont serve you.

      Nothing is said about them being privileged being bad, just out of all the targets that might need help, she picked them. its not like they have no other teachers(unlike the girl from ep2),etc.They will end up doing menial jobs because apparently they want, not because for some reason their inherent max ability is lower or something like that, nope they just want to. will you deny that having the luxury to only work at jobs you want to without having to worry about food,etc is a privilege? Will you deny that there are many other countries in the setting they could go with their magic powers should they ever change their mind?

      If Im not mistaken you were also the one who argued that her non-interference policy made sense because ” Sometimes the best course of action is leaving things to more capable hands or simply, not doing anything that might bring bad consequences not only for her, but to whoever she is trying to “help”.” you are saying she has such consideration in her mind when she does nothing but what of now? What if the person she teaches to lift water goes on to drown people or does something bad and some unreasonable king decides to hunt her down as one of the teachers? Im being hyperbolic but you are quick to ascribe depth to shallow actions when it suits you but equally quick to mock and such considerations when the results dont paint the main character in a positive light.

      quality is quality. Thats like saying studio Queen Bee should get a pass because no one else is rushing to animate the works they pick. accounting for size of the studio is like accounting for time show airs on, interesting but ultimately irrelevant. Its not like the chase was critical to the plot so if you cant do it, restructure around it. Shows key flaws are in its scripts and time allocation, which are not heavily dependent on the budget nor are they from a skill set a SOL studio will be unfamiliar with. also also I got curious about what Sol they worked on and I would say at least 50% of their works seem not sol.

      M3: The Dark Metal
      Aquarion Logos
      WorldEnd (What Do You Do at the End of the World? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us?)
      Shachibato! President, It’s Time for Battle! (have not seen)

      all works that had elements of action and while also having their flaws I do not recall any of them having such basic structural issues.

    • ark noir says:
      November 4, 2020 at 8:01 am

      いい加減にして！一口、ダッキー、一口

  • Anonymous says:
    November 2, 2020 at 12:44 pm

    It’s painfully obvious that nike is elaina’s mom and her apprendice was fran. Why do they keep trying to make it all mysterious yet?