Dahlia in Bloom: Crafting a Fresh Start With Magical Tools

Episode 5

Now that Dahlia has severed all ties with Tobias and founded her own company, it's time for a new life as an independent artisan to take off…eventually. I assume. For this episode, however, it's more about Dahlia being fully introduced to totally-not-a-new-love-interest. The latter half of this episode eventually advances Dahlia's journey as a craftswoman. But first, we've gotta make time for some stuff straight out of an early-2000s Hugh Grant romantic comedy.

It's almost comical how tailor-made Wolf is as an idealized love interest, as if he was plucked straight out of a romance novel. He's tall, handsome, and hiding some nice muscles under that loosely-tied shirt. He's so devastatingly attractive that he has to hide under a cloak or go Clark Kent mode to keep random women in the street from hounding him – though he's embarrassed about this and holds not a shred of vanity. He comes from a noble family but is also humble and detached enough from that world to speak plainly and cordially with Dahlia. He only throws his family name around when it's necessary to embarrass Dahlia's loser ex. Dude is probably the most traditional boyfriend fantasy I've seen in an anime in years. All he's missing is a tragic backstory that requires healing via a beautiful yet selfless and independent woman's tender kindness.

That's not entirely bad, though it pushes Dahlia's story further into its own kind of power fantasy. Wolf dropping into our heroine's life out of nowhere, ready to all-but-literally sweep her off her feet, is just a little much, especially when the show is trying to build more of a grounded relationship between them before any romance starts. Unfortunately, the main way to do that is using dialogue to build chemistry, and this episode cannot properly deliver it. The substance of Dahlia and Wolf's conversations and shared meals is solid – they have an easy rapport that peppers some interesting bits of world-building, like noble etiquette requiring men to start with a compliment to talk to a woman – but the direction and character animation struggle to keep up. There's an art to editing lengthy dialogue scenes that isn't present here, and the result is that their conversations feel stiff and awkward no matter how emphatic the voice acting is. It makes it so you can understand on an intellectual level why these two characters would be into one another, but you can't feel that spark along with them.

The second half of this episode is a lot stronger, as we finally see Dahlia back in her element. We see her gush over the assorted high-level magical inventions in Oswald's shop. For one, it's cool to see that Dahlia isn't the only person capable of creating things that resemble our own technology. Whether they're harnessing magic or electricity, people will naturally want something to keep cool in the summer, so it only makes sense that somebody would come up with the idea, as they did in our history. For another, it's cool to see her applying her knowledge and ingenuity to these various inventions and ideas. It lets Dahlia be a character in her own right rather than a character to be praised and supported by everyone around her at all times.

Likewise, learning about her father from Oswald helps bring us back to the emotional core of Dahlia's character. I'm pretty sure this is the first time we've seen her full-on cry after Carlo's death, and that feels right. After multiple episodes and months of having to die with the fallout of her engagement, she's at last comfortable enough to let herself grieve. It makes for a lopsided episode still pulled down by its production but manages to deliver where it matters.

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Dahlia in Bloom: Crafting a Fresh Start With Magical Tools is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.