Dahlia in Bloom: Crafting a Fresh Start With Magical Tools

Episode 6

This is a vitally important episode for Dahlia in Bloom. Not only does it fully solidify Dahlia and Wolf's relationship but it also offers us our first substantive glimpse into the “magical” part of being a magical artificer. It sees Dahlia taking on a difficult and experimental attempt at creating a magical device to hide Wolf's enchanting eyes—hopefully letting him live a more normal life and develop dependable relationships. It reveals not only some surprisingly dark moments of both characters' pasts but dedicates nearly its whole runtime to building their connection through dialogue while navigating the complications of Noble propriety and their lingering hang-ups.

That all sounds pretty good, right? When you put it all in a list and just recite what occurs within this episode, it sounds pretty exciting! That's the magic of imagination; when you're given the abstract of a story, your brain can fill in the blanks and do the heavy lifting to invent a hypothetical version of this story that's memorable and endearing. Unfortunately, real life rarely lives up to one's imagination, and the actual reality of watching this episode is to be constantly underwhelmed by its lackluster delivery of interesting ideas.

Some of that is just due to the pacing of this story arc. Dahlia and Wolf have spent maybe a combined 18 hours together—and while they have solid chemistry, the move from “thank you brunch” to “let me invent magic glasses to free you from your most persistent personal turmoil” is jarring. Furthermore, there's just not much build-up to Wolf's revelation about his magically sexy eyes and all the interpersonal drama they've embroiled him in. It's nice that Dahlia takes the initiative in helping him but maybe this should have been like a Third Date kind of thing? Just to feel more natural? That said, I like that, thanks to their respective baggage with romance, they firmly set their relationship as a friendship. It feels like the kind of thing world-weary adults would do when they don't want anything making their lives more complicated while allowing room for these grand gestures.

My issues with this episode come down to the production. I know. I know. I understand that some folks do not care at all about the animation and will muscle through anything for the story, but I maintain that the audio and visual elements of an audio-visual medium are just as critical as the writing—otherwise, we'd just read the books this thing is based on. For a good example, look at the opening scene of this episode, where Atsushi Tamaru does everything he can to imbue his performance with a worried, awkward urgency yet the character art speaks with a permanently flat expression that communicates zero emotion. When there's such a drastic disconnect between the energy of the voice acting and the character animation, that's a problem that makes the story harder to connect with—even when that story is a one-off joke about nobles practicing polygamy. The result feels like a daytime TV drama filmed with amateur actors and later dubbed over by professionals forced to insert nuance through ADR where the physical performance couldn't.

That disconnect seeps into every aspect of this episode, where so much of the runtime is just Dahlia and Wolf talking, drinking, and talking while they drink. Slow and mundane material takes a careful eye for timing, editing, and character expression to work. Furthermore, our leads spend a lot of time talking about stuff that is, on the surface, not all that important. There are no big revelations or dramatic escalations—just some small snippets that tell us something about each character, letting them develop a better understanding of the other. These moments are nice enough but between the stilted character animation, flat direction, and near-total lack of memorable music, it lacks the atmosphere that can make these quiet, character-focused segments stick with you the way, say, the original Spice & Wolf anime did. The viewer is left to do the heavy lifting, extrapolating on vocal tics and intonations from the voice acting to imagine a version where these characters move and emote in a way at least evocative of humanity.

The only significant exception is the sequence of Dahlia creating fairy glass for Wolf's glasses, where the abstraction of her talking to metaphorical fairies to will her magical materials into the right shape and function provides some novel imagery. There are still problems like Dahlia's apparent exertion isn't at all visibly apparent through the endeavor—and there's a lot of quick cutting to avoid having to animate anything for too long. Yet on the whole it works as an introduction to the more magical aspects of Dahlia's craft, to complement the more industrial half we've seen in previous episodes. That it all culminates in an immediately impactful gift to her new friend is the cherry on top.

Unfortunately, the rest of the episode lacks that oomph and it becomes an exercise in extracting meaning and sentiment from the muddy ground. At best, it mostly feels like watching a rehearsal rather than a final performance. At worst it sucks the charm and humor out of our leading couple.

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