Review of The Ancient Magus' Bride

*Disclaimer* Just personal scratch. Advised, possible spoilers. Opinion & Informal Art: 6/10 It was fine. Nothing particularly special about the art or art-style. There were a few decent panoramas of nature and stuff. The background nature scenery was pretty good at times. Animation: 6/10 There were some pretty scenes with some nice mystical-sounding music but this show actually used a lot of cut-frames/shots for fast action or sudden movement scenes. For example, when Chise was glomped by Silky or when Chise was captured by a dragon, those scenes weren't actually animated. Those actions were animated by two or three shots pretty much. There weren't any great animation scenes tobring up other than the overused 'two page spread' scenes. This show unfortunately used too many 'two-page spread' scenes. Too many scenes where it's just some pretty scenery or pretty event with some pretty music. This show tried way too hard to be some sort of mystical fantasy with a beautiful story. There were some parts where it was sort of awkward because it would just abruptly go into a 'two-page spread scene' with pretty music at the most inappropriate or pointless times. The very few action scenes towards the end with Chise and Joseph were noticeably bad. The movements were, again, cut-shots. This show tried to make up with mediocre to standard-at-best animation with quick-to-get boring and overused bright and pretty lights. What this means is that the super simple magic or sorcery was always accompanied by some pretty and overwhelming bright lights. Traveling from one place to another was stupid sometimes too. The whole Chise-phoenix bit was sort of pointless. It was obviously just there to be pretty. Bright lights and pretty music gets boring quick when used in almost every episode and making the character wide-eyed every single time something like that happens doesn't make it believable or anymore meaningful. I feel like the overuse of two-page spreads with pretty music is what made this show suffer in the plot and character development department. If that high production value wasn't in this show, the stupidity of the development and direction the show was lead to would have become painfully obvious.

Characters: 4/10 The only character I liked was Silky but she didn't even get a whole episode to herself. Every other character in this show was either underdeveloped by the end of the 24 episode show or just so one-dimensional or unvisited that the show even forgot to include them in the conclusion. Elias, one of the supposed main characters was never fully explored. Elias was only touched upon very briefly by giving him some mysterious and vague background story but all of that was never explored further than some "story." Elias' character was never meaningfully developed in the entirety of the 24 episode show. There were very promising parts for Elias' and Chise's development when that bit on a Magic teacher and Human teacher happened. That too was pretty much ignored and never fully realized. The character development of this show was all over the place and a mess. What could have been wonderful opportunities for character direction and development ended up crashing into a wall because the show prioritized those meaningless two-page spreads and pretty music. There was this whole plot-point where Elias was trying to become a human but it just ended up being dropped. Elias pretty much stayed a bland and unemphatic bag of bones from start to finish. It sort of felt like Chise was growing. Sort of. Sort of. I feel like her growth and development as a character was short-lived with the amount of back tracking this show did just for the sake of having something emotional or edgy to use to get the audience sad or emotional. Chise's mother complex should have been solved much-much earlier in the show so that her development with Elias could have been explored much further. Because Chise only overcame her mother complex at the last episode, the whole proposal thing to Elias at the very end was uninspiring and sort of forced to get some form of half-assed resolution to the show. The side characters were unmemorable too. They were introduced and then forgotten until it was convenient for the story to bring them back. These side characters were never developed at all. The priest was just there to exist. The college and sorcerers were just there to exist. There should have been at least explanation on the history and rivalry between mages and sorcerers. Joseph and all that mumbo jumbo on curses was sort of just made to assume the audience understood everything when in fact there should have been a better way for or at least an explanation by Elias or something. The blondy apprentice got a really bare-bones development. It was just added to add a tiny bit of meat on her. Chise pretty much seems like she stopped growing from episode 8 and onward. She is very uninspiring by the end of the show. Her self-resolutions were sort of weak and unmeaningful.

Plot: 5/10 The plot was interesting at first, an apprentice and her master doing magic and getting to know each other. This show didn't do that. This show tried to change the dynamics between Chise and Elias' relationship multiple times throughout the show and failed to do it cleanly or appropriately every single time. At first it was a master-apprentice, then a mother-child, then a husband-wife or at least close companionship, then back to a master-apprentice. It was all stupid and very roughly cut. Because of all this restructuring the show never was able to make any single one of these relationships meaningful. Whenever it seemed like a change in relationship dynamics was actually a level-up in their relationship, the show just made the change a bland way to spice things up because the change in relationship dynamics was sort of just by word and never really backed up with the required individual character development that was supposed to stick around for the rest of the show. All of that was just never included or dropped by the next time their relationship dynamic changed. Thus, the plot was never actually realized or followed. The story ended up being a huge mess. It didn't exactly seem like a romance of two characters working to heal, solve, and grow from each other. It didn't feel like two characters going on magical adventures either. I feel like this show had a lot of trouble settling into an identity. By the end parts with the whole Joseph thing, I feel like this show was trying to be some sort of magical-fantasy action-thriller or something.

Development: 4/10 A lot of my gripes were mentioned above but pretty much this show did really poorly in developing any sort of straightforward plot. The characters were underdeveloped by the end of the 24 episode show and the main plot-points were just dropped or forgotten. The show didn't have a clear direction it was trying to go with for Elias and Chise.

Music: 7/10 This is the only thing this show had going for it. The music is the only reason this show wasn't a complete train wreck. Even then, I'm pretty comfortable calling this show a waste of time.

Overall: 5/10 The resolution left many unanswered questions and many unresolved characters. This show uses way too many two-page spread scenes with pretty music to make up for its plainly obvious lack of substance or development. The characters were unlikable and unmemorable. The plot never really took off. The character dynamics were stupid and didn't find a place to settle into. The music was at least sorta good. This show was a waste of time. 5/10. The only reason I'm not giving it a 4 was because there were one or two moments that I truly felt inspired by. That is, the whole arc on the corruption, cats, and two lovers. That arc was cash money.