Maerchen Maedchen Archives

Review:

Things kind of went downhill for this second episode once the opening song started. The song itself is fine is forgettable, but the visuals are for the most part taken straight from episode 1 (one or two seemed to be from this episode, with very few scenes of new material at all). While that in itself isn’t really an issue, I would have to wonder why they felt the need to show the scene of Hazuki running naked with the book three times during that opening. It was not that impressive a scene and it is one that most people would have preferred hadn’t been in the episode and then this opening pushes it into your face making you wonder if this really is the tone they would like to set for the show.

The second issue I had was that Hazuki is enrolled in a magic school and yet it really isn’t all that interesting. There’s potentially interesting ideas behind magic and the books, but the actual process of going to class, seeing magic demonstrated, failing at using magic, finally succeeding, etc, is pretty ordinary to say the least. Add to that we finally hear about the competition coming up and I had an instant Juni Taisen flashback.

While I’m going to give this one more episode because there are elements in this story I’m kind of interested in, another episode like this will see this one disappear from my watch list.

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Thanks,

Karandi James.

Overview:

This is a story about girls (called “Maedchen”) who are selected by “Origin”. They attend school of witchcraft located all over the world to wield their magic and become first-rate “Origin Masters”. Their goal is to win at the annual Hexennacht competition, where representatives of each school compete in their abilities to wield their magic. The winner gets to have one wish magically granted.

– From Crunchyroll

Review:

If the synopsis hadn’t told me about the whole magic competition thing this first episode certainly didn’t tell me anything about it. So I’m kind of on the fence whether I’ll end up sticking this one out or not because I actually really had fun watching this episode, even as it walked through about a million cliché plot developments including a chase sequence with a naked girl.

But, I kind of liked the set up for this. Okay, it won me over right from the start with the respect the main character has for books. More importantly, I found Hazuki an instantly relatable character after she fled dealing with her new sister to escape into a book.

So while all the usual girl travels to magic world standards seem to be at play here, the first episode made me curious about the world and the books and the main character. Which means it more or less did its job. Do I think this will be amazing? Probably not. But it did make me want to give it a go.

Thanks for reading.

If you enjoyed this post and like the blog, consider becoming a patron to support further growth and future content.

Thanks,

Karandi James.