Welcome to the finale of Mahoutsukai no Yome, a rather lackluster end to a rollercoaster of a series. For the last time, lets jump in.
To put it simply, Mahoutsukai chose to end with a whimper rather than a bang. This may sound harsh, yet nothing in this ending really had much weight. Chise solves her Cartaphilus problem with the typical Shounen “I will hit you to fix our mutual problem” attitude. Ashen Eye is brought back in for a 2-minute meaningless combat scene, as if his involvement with Cartaphilus was some great hinted mystery. Chise gets stabbed through the chest, sings a song, and suddenly everything is A-OK. And of course what little emotional value the scenes had is immediately undercut by the great destroyer of Mahoutsukai, the Chibi. It all compacts to create an ending that just falls flat. The largest contributor to this ending however isn’t any of this specific episodes many failings, but rather the structure of Mahoutsukai as a whole.
You see, Mahoutsukai has no larger plot. Mahoutsukai has no larger story, it is just a series of smaller stories, smaller arcs, strung together. Each arc attempting to hit on a different kind of relationship so we can compare it to our leads. However this doesn’t lend itself to a meaningful ending. All of these arcs are just things happening to our leads, instead of our leads going off an accomplishing their own goals. Naruto wants to be Hokage, Luffy wants to find One Piece, Gon wanted to find his father, but what does Chise want? What did Elias want? They would have been content to sit in their house for the whole season if Cartaphilus and Ashen Eye didn’t keep dragging them out of it. A compelling story that does not make, which results in a lackluster ending.
Enough about the faults of the ending though, Mahoutsukai did do some things right. We finally got an example of Elias being this big and powerful mage which I have been looking for since the beginning. I also enjoy that Chise’s dragon curse was not actually cured. Instead of simply fixing it, Mahoutsukai instead chose to fight fire with fire. One deadly curse holding back another. I like that. This makes her a target, this means that if we get another season, Chise has suddenly come into possession of a two millenia old curse made by Jesus Christ. Its as if we just finished the prologue, we just finished The Sorcerers Stone, and we still have 6 more books left of story. That is not a good place to be when another season is unknown.
All in all, Mahoutsukai started well and ended low. The first cour knew what it was, it focused purely on the little arcs and tried for some sweet character moments. As the second cour rolled around however Mahoutsukai reached to high. It gunned for a larger story, a meta plot so to speak, but nothing was prepared for it. One day Mahoutsukai just decided that was where it should head. If I had to, I would say Episode 15 was the turning point for Mahoutsukai. The point where it stopped focusing on our leads. It was at this point that everything started to decline. A disappointing end to a series that started with promise.
Look forward to the final review in a few days. Mahoutsukai didn’t do everything wrong, there are plenty of strong points to it. Story is simply not one of them.
It’s not hard to understand, but practically Magus’ Bride is the story of Chise. How she enters a new world, meets new people / beings, learns things she did not know before, develops as a person and faces different adversities.
Unfortunately I feel that the essence of the manga and the characters was lost in this adaptation, so I recommend reading the manga (which follows and explains several things that the anime did not cover)