The Ancient Magus' Bride Season 2 Part 2

Incredibly slow and sluggish from start to finish... we have finally come to an end with this school arc. And thank goodness for that! This whole arc, from first to second cour, has been a difficult watch. In that I very much enjoyed the typicals that come with this series: The gorgeous art and animation, the music, Chise and Elias, the familiar magical elements... the OP is fun to see with every episode beginning! Beyond that however, our main characters are sitting around twiddling their thumbs playing second fiddle to Philomela. The true MC of what felt like the longest filler arc I've come to watch. Bythe time this season ended, I couldn't recall a single moment that particularly caught my interest. It was all situated around helping Philomela as she painstakingly hid everything from the cast up until the final moment. Impossible to talk to, impossible to get close to... we spend almost the entire time watching her suffer alone and refuse all aid. To the point you know what to expect in that it self-destructs on her sooner or later. To the point you can sum up both parts of season 2 into a few words: "Chise goes to sorcerer school and makes friends+helps them with their problems". That's it. What few moments you get to even see of Chise and Elias doing SOMETHING together, I was cheering for that little bit of familiarity before taking a back seat to everyone's problems once more. I guess the only thing that really came out of all this is Chise getting a little bolder and coming out of her own shell. She made friends. Elias made a friend. But nothing was exactly... learned or necessary in the grand scheme of things. Lots of foreshadowing on Chise's part from the tiny hints we've got here and there-- which looks promising in the final preview of a new arc we got at the end of the last episode. Something that looks actually story-driven! This is my hope that we can return to form in the next season. Because otherwise? You could entirely skip season 2 and just know that there are now Friends in the mix I guess. Though if we're lucky they'll all just go back to school and Chise will be done with her studying so we don't have to suffer anymore.

Once again the cast is stuck at school and the story moves extremely slowly in a lot of places. One of the nicer things about this season compared to the previous season was that there felt like there were more stakes to the story and it helped push things forward even when the narrative wanted to meander. That said, the ending paid out and it was worth the watch, though at times things were drawn so darkly that it was difficult to follow the action and understand what happened. But there were still things to like. I liked watching Chise grow and socialize. I likedwatching Elias learn to let Chise do things even though he's still (at times understandably) over-protective of her. I will gladly watch another season though I'm hoping that we can get closer to the pacing of the first season which was more dream-like and didn't feel lost in the woods. If you enjoyed the previous season, then you'll like this one too. If you also found the previous season sluggish then be prepared for a similar pace and tone but the ending is worth it.

This second part is surprisingly slow. Part one felt like a lot of setup but contrary to what you might expect this second part is even slower; though it does have a proper conclusion. The story continues where the first part left off but does so at a pretty slow pace. There's flashbacks that last entire episodes so you better understand some of the characters but this does destroy any momentum the anime has. The story is interesting but slightly confusing and doesn't make sense at times. A good thing is that lots of parts of the story reach their conclusion in this season soyou won't feel like you've watched nothing. The mystical feel of the anime is often absent in this season and spirits/fairies make relatively few appearances. The characters are mostly the same as in the first part and they receive quite a lot of attention, both in the form as flashbacks and conversations. The characters are quite good and get plenty of development, but this did probably contribute to how slowly the story seemed to progress. The animations is good overall. There's some cgi for things like cafetaria scenes like in the first part but most of the animation looks good with some more special scenes looking beautiful. Some of the scenes are a bit dark though so maybe turn up your monitor brightness or turn off the lights. The voice acting was good and the ost was great when it was present. Overall this is probably worth watching if you've already watched part 1, no reason to only watch the setup and not watch the conclusion after all. It's just that this season is slower and has more flashbacks than you might expect.

I quit Frieren: Beyond Journey's end because it failed to show me an interesting world of magic. It turned out to be surprisingly thoughtless and plain. So I thought, "Wait, wasn't there another show I liked with magic and deep relationships that has a new season?" What's so refreshing about this story is that you can tell Kore Yamazaki is interested in both how magic works and how people work. As a result, the characters grow naturally. In other stories, if a character suddenly starts behaving differently, their decisions may feel out of character, only for the purpose of propelling the plot. In this story, theentire cast is truly motivated by their histories and their relationships. They are unmistakably the same people from the previous season, but you can see how their circumstances have truly influenced them. Chise and Elias are constantly interrogating the story's initial premise (that one of them is the property of the other) as they talk to each other. Just as they think they know what role they fill in each other's lives, the other reveals some new desire or doubt. They are forced to renegotiate what their boundaries are again and again, but because they're each so understanding and inquisitive and patient, neither ever attempts to put the other in a box to contain and categorize them: they truly discover new things about their selves and each other. These new discoveries about what they can ask of each other makes them genuinely, literally stronger and are tied directly to how they are able to overcome the obstacles in their way. Despite not being explicitly romantic, despite not having a typical "marriage", despite their insanely disparate backgrounds, the relationship of Chise and Elias is both a model for a deep and healthy friendship as well as being one of the most unique I've ever seen in an anime. The cast is expanded at just the right time in this season. Because Chise has grown, she is able to relate to others in more complex ways. She is able to intuit who is open, who is instinctively guarded, who is fronting, who is wearing their pain on their sleeve. She learns herself what she'd been trying to teach Elias, that people must be met where they are. That there's no one best way to deal with the baggage you have, and that sometimes people just need permission to do the things they already know they want to do. I was not convinced I was going to like the new additions to the cast, and to be sure none of them have the immediately recognizable depth and mystery of Chise and Elias. Because the author is so interested in the grace and dignity inside of everyone, she is able to elevate even cliched stereotypes. At first you think, "Oh, here comes the shrinking violet that let's others do the talking for her," and "Oh, here comes the serious studious guy who thinks everyone else should serious and studious like him," and "Oh, here comes the hot-and-cold girl who think she has it worst and has no time for other people's insecurities." But after a few scenes of seeing them talk to each other and push against each of their weaknesses, each of them push back and say something that perfectly justifies why they are the way they are. We don't get to learn every detail about their lives, but we get the sense that the author knows those details and is using them to guide each person's behavior. Chise has a uniquely miserable childhood, but even amongst the wealthy and privileged, we discover the truth: everybody has to answer to somebody. Everybody has to learn about authority, power dynamics, and what role they'll take to stay safe. Everybody has to learn that the role you've been given isn't the one you have to remain in. Stunningly affecting and tender relationship dynamics aside, what I love about this show is that I do not know what's going to happen next. A family of stylish, talking cats? An huge, evil super-centaur? A huge, pregnant super-soldier? A child crying and yelling about "her spiders?" Watching a main character's head split in half from the inside? The myths of the British Isles are used with such clever cavalierness that I'm never confused, only delighted when a new magical creature or concept is introduced. The action is a good balance of threatening and playful. This isn't a show with a lot of flashy violence, but our main characters do have to deal with the indelible fallout of their actions on some level, often internally, but sometimes externally.