Review of The Ancient Magus' Bride

The art and worldbuilding alone were enough to draw me in. As a fan of fairytales, this show did a great job of capturing the mystery and wonder of a fey-touched world. Unfortunately, I did find the overall plot—especially in structure—to be subpar. The first three-quarters or so of the series is very slow. At first, this didn't bother me—it seemed to be setting up the pieces for a larger myth arc. The main characters would go on little quests that were quickly resolved, but that introduced us to meaningful new characters and occasionally developed Chise and Elias's relationship. As the show became increasingly episodic, however,it relied on misleading cliffhangers to maintain tension. (Cliffhangers aren't bad, but leading me to believe that a character had turned heel in the last few minutes of an episode and then dropping it at the start of the next degrades trust. And trust is hard to regain.)

While there was ultimately a climactic plotline attempting to tie it all together, the subplots and especially the characters that were pulled out from earlier in the series were only tangentially connected. What progression had been present was primarily relegated to how they ended up in the final situation, and not how they got out of it.

Ultimately, the main draw of the show besides the window-dressing is the relationship between Chise and Elias. Both are fundamentally flawed characters that rarely see eye to eye, but are deeply motivated to make their cohabitation work.