Rakudai Majo: Fuuka to Yami no Majo

Okay, I know you're looking at that rating and thinking to yourself "What's so bad about this children's movie that you feel the need to rate it so low? Maybe you shouldn't be watching kids stuff if you're just gonna hate it!" But here's the thing: I had no idea that The Klutzy Witch would be as bad as it turned out. If anything, I was looking forward to it! Also, there's a lot of kids stuff I watched that I legitimately enjoy, some I love to death, others not as much. I just watched the first Cardcaptor Sakura movie today, for the first time ... in years, and it didn't bring the house down, but I enjoyed my time with it. Some of my favorite shows and movies of all time are aimed at kids, and a lot of that is because the media by themselves respected their audience, not talking down to them and respecting their intelligence. The Klutzy Witch: Fuka and the Witch of Darkness is not only just a generic, juvenile children's movie, it actively goes out of its way to insult its audience's intelligence at every turn.

Based on the children's book series by Satoko Narita, the series focuses on Fuka, an energetic apprentice witch and the princess of the Silver Castle. She aspires to be just like her elegant mother, Leia the Silver Queen, but there are several problems with that: Not only does she absolutely suck at even the most basic of magic spells, she sucks at school in general and can't do anything right no matter how hard she tries. Even support from her friends Karin, the princess of the Green Castle, and Chitose, the youngest prince of the Blue Castle (Get used to all the color coded kingdom names, because they're present throughout), can't seem to cut it for her. One day, while she's lamenting both her latest blunder and the fact that she doesn't know who her father is, a little girl named Lilica demands Fuka take her to a sealed off room, browbeating her into doing so. When they get there, Lilica slaps a bracelet onto Fuka, and said bracelet awakens the evil Megaera, the Witch of Darkness, who transports Fuka and her friends to a spooky realm with plans to take over Fuka's body and defeat those who defeated her in years past. The trio must work together to defeat Megaera and save their realms from the forces of darkness.

Normally a simply story like this wouldn't be too bad. Stuff like The Worst Witch, Little Witch Academia, and Mahou Tsukai Pretty Cure have done stuff like this before with varying degrees of success. I'm not kidding you, The Klutzy Witch seems intent on doing everything that you shouldn't do when making a story like this. For one thing, this movie's writing is extremely juvenile and condescending in that the movie relays every single bit of important information via telling over showing. Rather than having the audience learn about the characters organically, the movie just info-dumps their personalities to us via voice-over narration, which would normally be fine if this was done once, like in the beginning, but the movie does this several times throughout, even right in the middle, going so far as to just...explain how these people know each other rather than letting the audience deduce that themselves! Seriously, every iteration of My Little Pony besides G3 was never this patronizing!

This even extends to the characters, who aren't so much characters as they are cliche plot devices that spout moralizing dialogue about the power of friendship and act according to what the plot demands. Fuka suffers the worst of this because all throughout the movie, she's literally nothing but a damsel in distress who not only never manages to do anything on her own, but every time she's in some danger, something or someone, usually a Deus Ex Machina that comes right the fuck out of nowhere, always has to rescue her or do everything for her. No, I'm not kidding, she gets in trouble and rescued by someone a grand total of six times in this! Six times, all in the span of the movie's one-hour run time! Yes, I counted! Mary Jane Watson in the Spider Man movies ain't got nothing on Fuka. And the few times she manages to do something don't even feel earned because she only gets good at magic because of random Deus Ex Machinas that fall into her lap that make her suddenly awesome at magic because hurr-durr power of friendship wins the day. There are some characters who flat-out appear out of nowhere such as Keith, and even one character, a green haired boy with a cat, who only appears in one scene and then never again! Why even put that kid in there if you're not even gonna use him for anything?! Even the villain's motivations are extremely weak and juvenile.

The movie can't even make its premise make any lick of sense. For one, the movie claims that Fuka is supposedly cursed because she can't use magic as well as everyone else, with Fuka herself even sympathizing with Megeara because she thinks they share similar circumstances. But this falls completely flat because the movie never shows Megaera being anything but evil until the last five minutes, and it can't even be bothered to show her backstory. Furthermore, Fuka isn't cursed, she just sucks at magic, and every person in this movie would much rather punish her and berate her for not knowing how to control her magic rather than, y'know, actually make an attempt to help her control it, which isn't the same as being cursed. Plus, Fuka has friends, so any claim Fuka makes that she was also shunned also falls flat. So not only does this movie not know how to handle its characters or premise, it just throws away plot beats as quickly as it introduces them. For example, when Keith meets up with the trio, Chitose acts like he doesn't want to be anywhere near the guy, implying he's probably racist towards those in the Black Castle (Gee, that totally doesn't have unfortunate connotations in any way whatsoever, now does it?), but this aspect of his character is never elaborated on nor explained. Finally, for as much as the movie makes a big deal about Fuka wanting to learn more about her dad, in the end, she doesn't learn anything about him and the whole thing is just...dropped with no real resolution whatsoever. Considering that this movie is only an hour long, The Klutzy Witch really could have benefited from another half hour just so it could actually expand on this stuff. The ending is also just a really cheesy, cliche, mealymouthed resolution that relies on the power of friendship to magically fix everything because we can't bother to have actual stakes, riiiight?

And honestly, the animation isn't much to write home about either. The characters all have the same face and the action scenes aren't all that impressive either. The movie's budget doesn't look much different from a TV show, which is weird because Production IG usually puts out pretty good animation for whatever they make. This is not one of them. Now, if all of this was all that was wrong with The Klutzy Witch, I would have rated it somewhere between 55-60 out of 100, and that's being generous. It would have just been another generic children's movie that doesn't have much substance, but I would have left it at just that...but then the movie had the gall to completely obliterate what little goodwill I had for it by shoehorning in a FUCKING PSEUDO-INCEST REVEAL IN THAT LILICA WANTS TO MARRY HER ADOPTED BROTHER!!!! THE FUCK?!? Why movie?! Why the fuck would you just throw in a completely unnecessary pseudo-incest moment like that?! Not only does it not add anything to the story, it only makes Lilica (when she's not possessed by Megaera) an even worse character and leaves a pretty big black stain on what should be an inoffensive children's movie!! God, whose bright idea was this? Because I want to deck them so hard.

Speaking of Lilica, now that I think about it, a lot of what happens in the movie isn't even Fuka's fault at all. The movie reveals that everything is Lilica's fault, because the only reason Megaera managed to possess her is because Lilica happened to be flying around Silver Castle (With dialogue implying that she left Black Castle without permission) and just happened to be Megaera's target. Lilica, while under Megaera's possession, pretty much pressures and browbeats Fuka into wearing the bracelet that kept Megaera sealed, literally shoving it on her wrist, and is Megaera's meat puppet throughout the entire movie. But even after she's freed from Megaera's control, she's not only revealed to be an annoying tsundere who hates Fuka because how dare her brother Keith be interested in a girl that's not Lilica, she doesn't even acknowledge her own part in all of this and flat-out escapes punishment, with Fuka taking the blame for everything! That's...really messed up, and a pretty bad message to put in a kid's movie: "It doesn't matter if you were forced to do something because someone pressured you and were victimized by someone else, the fact you did this bad thing at all is bad, so you need to be punished and face the consequences while the person actually responsible walks scot-free! La dee da!" Good lord...

Man, I really wish I didn't hate this movie. I wanted so badly to like this. But I really can't mince words here: This is one of the most patronizing, insulting, condescending, and downright juvenile children's movies I've ever seen, though it's nowhere near as bad as A Troll In Central Park in my opinion. If you want good media about clumsy kid witches, just watch The Worst Witch, Little Witch Academia, The Owl House, or even Mahou Tsukai Pretty Cure. All of those are far more worth your time and are way better than wasting an hour on The Klutzy Witch.