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This show is pretty darn awful. Spoilers... but nothing that important, as the show itself makes all too clear.

Determined girl devotes herself to the study of magic so she can become a witch and travel the world. Only, we don't get to see her train, or devote herself, or observe the trials she faces, except when her foreigner witch teachers beats her up out of nowhere to teach her humility.

But that's not what the show is about! It's about her travels afterwards! How she visits people across the world and touches their lives!

Only she doesn't. She's a passive observer to ... all kinds of things happening. Mainly people dying... and she does nothing about it. She doesn't help, or use her powers to change the outcomes of any situations, even though the show makes her out to be an extremely powerful mage. She teaches a kid who's pretending to be bad at magic how to ride a broom, except she already knows how... (still not sure what role Ellania actually played for her...) and she digs a hole. Also she fixes a teapot. None of these things actually help people or prevent tragedy.

But that's the point! The world isn't all roses and marshmallows! Ellania must learn this by zooming around and seeing sad things happen to other people!

So this is just Kino no Tabi on a broomstick? They took a slightly-better than average show concept, removed the titular talking motorcycle (also removing the main character's foil with whom she could have verbalized her thoughts on the events she witnesses), and slapped more comedically cliche tragic events on the line-up... gave the main character magical powers she could actually use to help people, and then have her still not help people.

At least in Kino no Tabi the main character usually had some kind of stake in what was going on, or got dragged into things forcibly. Ellania literally just waltzes in, puts her hands on her hips and goes 'huh.' Gives the one-off, episodic characters 'looks of judgement' as they do dumb stuff and then peaces out.

This pretentious show is almost unbearably stupid, and after the first episode had me a little hyped up, too! The art is really nice though, and the sound design of the magic is good.

So much potential wasted.

Ben-To has a very strong opening. The first three episodes did a great job world building, setting the tone, developing likeable characters, and delivering on high-octane corner-market warfare. And those 3 episodes are arguably the only ones worth watching.

I suppose up to episode six, the show at least performs tolerably, but past that, the production falls apart.

The simplest way to explain: In the second half of the show, about 5 out of the 6 fights that occur aren't shown. Yup. They just don't show them. Including the finale fight that the last few episodes build up to ... (I guess they show about a quarter of the final fight, but not the part that matters).

For the most part it's just: "Lets do this! Yeah!"
Insert freeze frame of people charging, fade to black, show aftermath.

This is what most of the fights amount to in the second half, except for one.


Aside from that, the fanservice is completely over the top, and not even in a fun way. Believe me, I'm not one to complain about fanservice. Some people hate it, I think it's just fine. But in this show, it's so gratuitous and poorly done that it actually was uncomfortable. I just wanted to watch people fight in grocery stores. I don't want to see one of the characters forcibly give another a bath for 3 minutes straight of screen time.

Honestly if I was going off of the first three episodes only, I'd give this show a 9/10. It was funny, exciting, well animated, and well written.

After that, I imagine the production lead was like: "Yo... what are you guys doing? This is actually good. You're supposed to be shooting for a 5/10 rating with this show. No more fight scenes. Stop focusing on the interesting characters. Jam the screen full of tits. Where are the filler episodes? I got a fever, and the only prescription, is more filler!"

Overall: 5/10

Watch the first three episodes, then drop it. That's my recommendation.

I gave this anime a chance for several reasons.

One is that the art style stood out to me. I liked the colors even just on the picture representing the anime. Actually I think the art is the best thing about this anime.

The second is that the premise seemed light and funny despite its ecchi-ness. I don't respect fanservice... and naturally the less of it an anime has, the more I respect that anime. Despite that, it doesn't turn me off to a show. I tolerate it and even sometimes enjoy it... like we all do. (There's two kinds of ... people who watch anime: people who occasionally enjoy fanservice and liars). [That's a half joke. Don't get all triggered on me].

ANYWAYS

This anime did something to me that I hate: A tonal shift immediately after the first episode.

I went into this anime with pretty much 0 expectations, thinking it to be a simple, silly, goofy anime that I could stop watching when I picked my next 'good' anime to watch. The first episode however, despite the comedy, was fairly dark. Combat was well animated (I think. Sometimes less is more if you ask me.) And there was more blood than I expected. Also more intimacy than I expected with, actually, a fairly decent meeting of lips as far as anime goes. Even the fanservice had some plot significance. It all came together and made me interested to see where the story went.

And then they did nothing with it. The story has not progressed in 8 episodes, and after teasing me with the tone of the first episode, it immediately became the silly goofy worthless kind of anime that I had expected it to be, each episode becoming harder to get through. And yes, I binged the 8 episodes (out at the time of this review) in 2 nights, hoping that the tone of the first episode was foreshadowing a darker second half. Now, seeing as I can't seem to find an intended episode count anywhere I suppose it could be longer... but my guess is that they're going for a 10-12 episode anime, which we are quite passed the halfway point of. That makes me sad.

I did know, however, that my hope for a dark twist was probably in vain. As much as the first episode had good interesting 'darker' moments, there was a lot of silliness there too. I probably would have enjoyed the what I've seen a little better if I hadn't raised my expectations. Emphasis on 'probably.'

Bottom line is, this anime isn't that good, and it's not meant to be, and they knew it wasn't meant to be when they made it, and a part of me respects that, but not enough to give it a good rating.