When I began to watch The Ancient Magus' Bride I was really excited. I loved the concept, the initial world building, Elias as a character in particular and the lovely animation too. There were some nice, emotional moments near to the beginning that had me tearing up, so I was definitely open minded to give this show a chance to be something great.
Then...nothing really happened. As I'm typing this I actually can't remember what happened in the middle of this series arc and I JUST finished it. Each episode seemed to be about Chise being the best thing to walk the Earth and everyone falling madly in love with her for no convincing reason. Her only "flaws" were a) caring too much and b) not realizing how important she is. Yawwwn. This definitely felt like a shy girl's escapist dream where they have to do very little to appeal to others.
My favourite episodes were definitely the ones that focused more on Elias, which started to become few and far between towards the end in favour of highlighting lackluster Chise. I also want to mention his and Chise's dynamic, which for the most part is why I started to watch this show. How does a young woman end up being the bride to beast-skull-man-mage?! Instead of a intriguing progression of their relationship, where perhaps she would be fearful to begin with but then slowly fall for this being, it felt like a middle school love story of confusion, lots of glances, hand holding and ultimately no real substance. I wasn't expecting this to be some R-rated story, don't get me wrong, but their development as "man and wife" was just so arbitrary.
The music featured in the show was extremely cheesy, in my opinion, and made me cringe at times. The score was nice enough, nothing ground breaking, but not bad. Random note: *Spoiler* I dunno why when Chise would sing her sleep spell it would cut from her voice actress to a singer, it really took me out of the moment. *End spoiler*
What I did like about this show was the world, those character designs were fantastic, especially all the little creatures. I felt like this story had so much potential, there were rules in the world that were hinted at but never really explained. Everything just felt like it was touching the surface of what could've been a complex and rewarding story. Yet the world, the characters, the story - everything was shown at face value.
