Wistoria: Wand and Sword

Episode 5

I know we've all beaten the obvious Harry Potter comparisons to death at this point, but man, Wistoria is really not embarrassed at all to just crib from the notes of J.K. “The Black Mold in My Home Has Rotted My Brain” Rowling. I'm not necessarily mad about that, to be clear. For one, the show tweaks the formula just enough to make it easy to excuse its more derivative elements—especially when the production values are going all out like they are this week. Also, it gives me an excuse to promote a different Wizard School franchise that won't cause me to give any money or validation to embarrassingly stubborn bigots! That's always a plus. Now I can only pray that nobody behind the production of Wistoria goes on a horrifying social media rant any time soon…

Anyways, so far as “Raise the Starting Pistol” is concerned, this is a fun episode all around. Yes, we've seen the Magical Tournament Storyline get played out a million times, but like I said before, I'm willing to forgive a lot if the animation on display is riveting enough. Watching Will punch the ever-loving Bejeesus out of an army of golems in front of a stadium packed with his disbelieving peers was riveting enough for my tastes. It isn't all about flash and spectacle, either. We get some solid directorial choices that enhance the story and characterization, as well. I particularly liked the projection effect that the show used when Sion was brooding about being humiliated by Will or whatever he's on about. Some might call that kind of flourish excessive, but I think there's nothing wrong with going above and beyond in the stylistic department when trying to make your otherwise standard story stick out amongst its peers.

That said, the predictability of Wistoria's larger story isn't going to change the minds of any of the show's detractors, either. It's hard to get completely invested in an episode when its plot hinges on such ridiculously obvious turns as Sion deciding to betray Will at the last minute during the competition against Julius. I will concede that it is more interesting to have one of the “members” of the main group of heroes be a selfish jackass compared to, I dunno, whatever role Ron Weasley was supposed to be filling in the later Potter books. Still, these kinds of twists only work once the potentially-reformed-but-still-dubious rival character has had a chance to demonstrate that he could be friends with the heroes. This is like Vegeta pulled his Babidi Betrayal stunt a couple of episodes after Frieza bit the bullet in Dragon Ball Z. It lacks the proper impact, you know?

I'm still having a good time with Wistoria, though, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the show will wrangle the presumably inevitable friendship between Will and Sion. If it's handled in a believable manner, I could see the story benefitting very much from giving its protagonist someone other than Colette to bounce off of. Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to deny Will his growing legion of fangirls but this story would do well to come up with new kinds of friction for our hero to overcome aside from “Everyone in the world is just kind of an asshole to Will because of his lacking magic skills.”

Rating:

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.