Wistoria Wand and Sword is an okay spin on the magical school format which introduces some interesting and gorgeous animation but falls short of living up to it. Particularly the nature of how plot information is conveyed through constant repetition drags down the show a large amount. Depictions of women are unfortunate despite designs I would class as okay. For these reasons I would class it as a 6/10, above average but nothing special.
To start with probably the best thing about Wistoria the animation at play here is stellar. The spellcasting effectively uses really nice and complex shading to give a great feel as well as lots of time and attention being given to objects created. The Elven wood summoning and fire magic are particular standouts to me but smaller things like Julius’ ice flowers also came out great. On the physical side the fight choreography for Will’s movement is extremely dynamic and like the elusive samurai which is also airing this season immensely aids in selling his character. The one notable sour spot is the backgrounds, especially in the final arc where the messy flesh texture is in my opinion poorly done and distracting. However throughout the show there are various points where the contrast between the amazing character art and relatively cheap backgrounds becomes distracting.
The character design is simple with fire mages having red hair, ice mages having blue hair and so on. It is very effective in blocking out the characters. This is aided significantly by the fun design used for the caped uniforms which I enjoyed watching flap around with the aforementioned very good animation budget. Female designs in particular benefit a lot from this largely avoiding male gazey big breasted low cut tops with the exception of elfie whose facial design I quite like but the rest of which I find very unfortunate.
Continuing with female agency in the show is very poor with every major female character of will’s age group present ending up living a life defined in relation to Will. Colette is never seen spending her time thinking about anything else with the same true for “Ms Perfect” Lihanna” Even the all powerful Magia Vender Elfie is seen clutching a pillow of will in the ED and frequent cuts to her all consist of her thinking about him. To cut them some slack on this it appears to be a general writing fault as this broadly applies to every character in the series however I don’t think this makes it much better. It would’ve helped the world building a lot if we were exposed to someone who didn’t spend all their time thinking about Will after first interaction.
Continuing from the characters, I found the writing for most of them to be oversimplified and a bit uninteresting. Characters are classed into an archetype and with 1 notable rapid exception never evolve or deviate from that. Sion probably has the best written development but the way they play him still gets very grating when you can see exactly what’s going on.
Possibly contributing to this was the series inability to not step on it’s own toes by repeating information. Using an example from the character writing the elf wignall’s backstory is first implied in a way that conveyed all necessary information to the audience. However it was then felt necessary to repeat that information multiple times dragging out the scene and making it feel shallow. This is an issue that extends to pretty much everything be it showing someone attacking wings and dealing no damage, having them say that only to cut to will in his head saying “I read in a book those wings don’t take damage”. Another example is when an important person shows up in the final episode and the group’s reactions clearly convey their opinions on him; however it is once again felt necessary to give a narration of the information. Both of these massively slow down the scene and remove the interest giving to the audience by having to piece together the already pretty spoonfed shown information.
The world building is so:so, it’s not a complete copy of fantasy tropes but it still finds itself pretty simple. The credits system is interesting but finds itself in a weird position as it becomes clear that the author intends to use it as a power scaling system. The magic system is nothing special and finds itself in the common midpoint between a clicky and defined system and my personal preference for the vague and awe inspiring undefined nature of the cosmos. The use of dwarves is pretty simple but I found it to be an effective way to convey the unfair and cruel state of the dominant society
As I said in the opener though I am critical of it I don’t hate Wistoria wand and sword, if it was some disgusting slop I would’ve dropped it at episode 4. It’s something that is firmly okay and I’m sure someone who has watched far less than me might even find it very enjoyable. But as it stands it’s got enough problems to chip away and it’s foundations and bring it down to a 6.
