Wistoria: Wand and Sword

Episode 12

Unfortunately, Wistoria has concluded with the kind of limp season finale that a lot of action anime settle on after a big, exciting arc; it's one of those “everyone sits around in infirmary beds and spends time theorycrafting and expositing about stuff that won't even matter until the next season” types of endings. I'm still suffering from flashbacks to covering Demon Slayer's two worst seasons, so I wasn't exactly thrilled to realize that we'd be wasting most of Wistoria's final half-hour of the summer on all of the random plot details and world building clues that were never the show's strong suit to begin with. Ah, well. I suppose it could have been a lot worse.

Really, my main issue with the way this finale shook out is how the big revelations and weird mysteries don't actually entice me all that much, because Wistoria's world-building has been slipshod even at the best of times. Like, yeah, it's nice that the “king” of the Magia Vander showed up to Deus Ex Machina the monsters and saved Will and Co., but also… who the hell is this guy? I feel like I would have remembered if a guy literally named “Aaron Oldking” had been featured in any meaningful capacity up until now, so his sudden appearance just feels like the product of lazy writing instead of the show carefully sowing seeds for the future. Also, why is Finn from Is it Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? here, all of a sudden? I know that Fujino Ōmori wrote both that light novel series and the Wistoria manga, but this is the first indication I've seen that the series are meant to be connected, somehow. It's not like Finn (or his “tribe”) comes from a cutesy cameo, either; the show makes it clear that Will feels some inexplicable connection with Finn, and that there's some deeper scheme afoot that has barely been hinted at until now.

Under different circumstances, I could see myself being interested in how all this plays out, but mostly I'm left feeling slightly confused and underwhelmed. It was fun to see Sion fully commit to how down bad he is for Will at the end, I guess, and it's kind of nice that everyone else in the group seems to be growing closer (though I could do without Lihanna and Wignall apparently sharing Julius' penchant for shockingly casual dwarf racism). Like I said, there are ways that this finale could have gone much worse, either by tripling down on the incoherent narrative breadcrumbs or by leaving off that final fight with some awful cliffhanger. Still, if I end up back around these parts to cover the next season, I really hope Wistoria can pick up the pace and commit some more time to polish the finer parts of its storytelling. Flashy fights and shiny spells can only get you so far, even in the grand halls of Rigarden Academy.

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Wistoria: Wand and Sword is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.