The premise is quite simple and interesting. Chise is a depressed young girl who is bought by an ancient magus. He declares her his bride and takes her as his apprentice. The magical atmosphere of the show is captivating; there’s so much to explore and every new side character brings along new fascinating information through their experiences. In my opinion, this is the series’ strongest aspect.
Unfortunately, I think the story does a spectacular job of creating potentially deep and interesting characters and then making you not give a shit about them. Why? Each character is given a unique past, which is usually sad and makes you sympathize with them. However, as soon as their main contribution is over, they are thrown aside or offered a very one-dimensional role that ultimately cancels out any depth they initially had. Chise becomes just a compassionate, self-sacrificial apprentice; Elias becomes a wise guardian who acts petulantly because of his lack of understanding human emotions; Silky assumes the singular role of a housekeeper. If you offer flashbacks and precious character development, then you should follow through instead of just putting the characters in the background and giving them the blandest role they could have possibly had. Ultimately, this flaw makes most emotional scenes flat and not as moving as they were intended.
Another main problem I had with MahoYome is the way the plot is handled. From the first cour, it is already quite obvious that the plot follows a very distinct and repetitive pattern. There’s trouble---> Chise acts against Elias’ wishes ---> Chise gets hurt [insert ep’s cliffhanger] ---> Chise is fine after all in a very anticlimactic way. I mean, if you want to keep the audience at the edge of their seats then you need to shake things up a bit! If you keep endangering the main heroine’s life then the audience will stop getting shocked or concerned. We literally see this pan out at least in 5 separate occasions.
All in all, I think the show had amazing things to work on; the dragons, the sorcery and generally a more thorough exploration of the setting. Not gonna lie, it is by all means an enjoyable show. But the clumsy way of handling character and plot development will make you lower your expectations significantly.
