Wistoria: Wand and Sword

Episode 6

I was worried that “Between Pride and Passion” might be the first episode of Wistoria to lose me, and that mostly comes down to the way that this magical tournament story has been rushed through to its logical conclusion of Will facing off against Julius. Sure, the rules and stakes of the tournament are simple enough—it's a Wizard Battle Royale, and any kid that has spent the prerequisite amount of time playing Fortnite can follow the gist of it. The problem is that Wistoria's side characters are too underdeveloped to make such a big and complicated affair feel personal outside of Will and Sion's immediate beef. Julius' entire personality is just that he sucks—and the show has such little faith that we'll remember who any of Will's classmates are that it is still making sure that their name cards show up whenever they get screentime to drop exposition or remind us of how they don't respect Will's lack of magic talent.

It isn't that any of these shortcomings would make Wistoria unwatchable, but the fundamental anonymity of such a thinly sketched story runs the risk of becoming too bland to be worth discussing. I bristle at how often folks toss around the word “mediocre” these days because it too often feels like a cheap cop-out for people not to have to actually explain what about a work either did or did not work for them. “Mediocre” is one of those words that sounds like it carries a lot of harsh critical weight until you realize that it doesn't mean much of anything at all without providing a lot of comparative context. In this sense, Wistoria's lack of narrative depth and creativity is what would see it most at risk of falling into mediocrity. No amount of flashy animation and impressively choreographed fight scenes can prevent an audience from growing bored if a show can't rely on its plot, characters, and mood to keep the narrative momentum up. Look at what has happened to Demon Slayer in its last two seasons. There is a show that has all of the production value in the world to spare. Yet it is becoming so much harder to give Demon Slayer the benefit of the doubt after its story and characters have barely been developed after dozens of episodes.

This is where, thankfully, “Between Pride and Passion” manages to take a couple of clumsy-but-still-commendable steps in the right direction. Like I said before, the compelling element that keeps the story going in this episode is Sion forcing Will (and also Collette) to deal with his literal emotional meltdown in the middle of the tournament. It works because, as simplistic of characters as they are, these kids all have good reasons to both be mad at each other and to need to work together. Will's goals have been made painfully clear by this point—and the same can be said about why he's sick and tired of being bullied by pricks like Sion. Collette obviously wants to earn Endgame Love Interest Points by helping Will excel in the tournament and curry favor with the Magical Powers That Be but that means seeking help from an infuriatingly talented prick like Sion—and Sion is tired of being humiliated and ignored by Will's stubborn refusal to back down from competing against his much more accomplished peers.

What this really boils down to, then, is that Collette and Sion are trapped on opposites sides of an unrequited love triangle with Will, except Sion's toxic pride and fractured ego have made it so that the guy can only express his intense desire to get Will's attention and be validated as an integral part of Will's life by being an asshole. He's the Asuka Langley Soryu of Wistoria, which of course means that this episode made me like the jerk a lot more than I did last week. What can I say? I like it when an emotionally oblivious but still recognizably human dork of a protagonist attracts the dangerous and volatile attention of a redhead who would rather blow shit up with their magical powers than go to therapy. So, fine, you've won me over once more, Wistoria. We'll see if you can pull the same trick again next week.

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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.