[Anime's Carnot] The Ancient Magus Bride, Episode 1 review (魔法使いの嫁 - Mahotsukai no Yome)
That’s local!
With The Ancient Magus Bride, produced by Wit Studio (Season 1) and Studio Kafka’s Season 2 currently airing, there’s a good case for the new watcher of Kore Yamazaki’s adapted novel. After all, if it’s your cup of tea, you’re in the driver’s seat of having two entire seasons and 36 episodes to go through, plus a book series which you might not have given a second glance otherwise. And there’s nothing more I like than long animes to sink into.
It’s interesting how many animes set in locations like Britain or some Isekai aberration of it, like Wortenplucius Oukoku or something have characters with these formal names that you wouldn’t catch anywhere. Literally everyone here is called John, Mark, Matt…getting oddly biblical here. Elias can slide. I don’t know anyone with an Ainsworth, though. And the name would make me think you have a library at home. Elias does, so I guess it fits. But in Ancient Magus Bride, everyone seems to know Elias Ainsworth, kitted in all-black to their grey, not a conman nor sorcerer, which was an interesting phrasing, but a magus, walking up the steps of the auction stage to collect the girl he’s paid five million for. Suddenly the white cloth marking her as a luxury slave looks conveniently like a bridal veil as she stares up at him.
The love pairing is unambiguous; what might have been the first time we saw colour in her eyes was her locked in eye contact with her buyer. And yet there’s the tension, yet directness and stiff intimacy of a buyer and his valued product, the Sleigh Beggy, two worlds which won’t be bridged in just episode 1.
In the beautifully animated opening song, we see her spinning around in darkness before being exposed to the light, ice, and forest, falling on top of him with a horizon-flat smile, and those sunken eyes that I even accidentally saw in a Season 2 thumbnail—at a school of some sort, maybe? Hatori Chise is a quiet character with repressed emotions and an easy trigger — simply glossing over how her Sleigh Beggy abilities have impacted her life means you see it easily. Appeased with head pats and decent gags whenever Rak from ToG Elias wants her agreeable, she’s taken from being a slave and shown a new world for the very first time, and the carrot and the stick formula plays out again.
“My puppy,” Elias hardly knows her but has his pet name picked out for her.
Writing this back, I realised the chew toy and the leash might be a better name for it. In just one of the many facets of this mysterious world Elias exposes her to, of forests and fairies who have put their ‘Robin’ figure on a pedestal, Chise is nearly abducted to her new newer, unfamiliar home only for Elias to demonstrate a possible darker side, face hidden, as he warns there won’t be a next time. Bar stepping on the rare landmine, Chise’s emotions stay repressed.
The lack of human facial expressions from Elias means we need to take him and his intentions at face value, and for Chise his word is more than enough. I laughed at the scene where Chise asks Elias if she really has a choice in any of this, music still playing, stopping only for Elias’ concession that while she isn’t here to do nothing, he’s sure she has choices, giving the sense that the humour will be found in her lack of normal reaction. Like a baby with squishy cheeks, the humour is in Chise’s malleability, in what you make of it.
But Elias has his own secrets and Chise is more than an empty shell; overly fixating on the end reveal — that she was brought to be his bride seems premature — given the not-so-subtle spoiler being the name of the anime. Chise’s desires are simple, mentioned from the beginning. A simple bed and breakfast is her equivalent of becoming Pirate King or Hokage. Her emotional highs seem to be under wraps now that she and Elias can have mundane conversations over tea, where he explains that being a Sleigh Beggy is certainly fortune - but not always in the same you want it, and so a misfortune of a type. It clearly resonated while with all the force of a pebble in an ocean, he certainly demonstrates an understanding of her and with a carefulness, reminds her that no matter what happens, he is her family. Seeing the necklace he marked her as family with used as her collar and bell later, you would be forgiven in forgetting that Elias let the fairies take her for an educational experience, and the stiffness she noted in his embrace before getting hoisted up was cut short before the timely and comedic reveal that phased out the episode.
If her desires are simple then the Ancient Magus Bride is a story which can only add more to her experience than she bargained for. Already with a diverse range of possible creatures, human and otherwise, and their interest in this Sleigh Beggy–Robin–Magus-apprentice, I imagine she’ll be pulled in every which direction; the jokes will be based on how many canisters of paint you can toss at her and after a wash, how she still manages to retain that neutral green under red.
Raised in the trenches of shounen romance, where a character needs to nearly die or crack to realise the one in front of them is really worth it, I am interested in how their relationship develops. With his ability to literally sweep her off her feet, and lack of boundaries, feeling necessary to instruct a naked Chise on how to fill a bath with water and sit, there’s a good chance that I’m looking at the yeah–ok, sure type of love. The ‘baka!’ sort of love of my teenage watching era, animes like Zero no Tsukaima, punching first and asking questions later long behind me, I do think this is worth exploring. If not for the peace and the beautiful stills it’ll provide me:
Final thoughts:
Mixed messages, Elias’ bluntness—I wondered what sort of show he was running here when he referred to his maid by 銀の君 - basically addressing someone by a prominent feature like “Hey, Ginger!” In the maid’s case, it translates to “You, Silver.”
The anime can go either way for me. The teasing and back-and-forths Chise gets into might be endearing or might turn me cynical, but she’s a girl with her own thoughts on things despite appearances, so at least Elias will likely get his fair share of what he deserves back.
Set in surrealist, modern England and with beautiful detail, Strike the Witch also came to mind. More animes should attempt it. Chise is also a really nice name.
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