©甲本一/集英社・マッシュル製作委員会
After that introductory scramble, Mashle’s tournament story now turns to setting up a team death match. To show how well this series’ humor blends with its storytelling, the previous episode ended with a hilariously dry joke of both Mash and Dot fumbling with the team’s crystals. delivered before the round begins. That leaves Finn as the only guardian on their team, leading straight to the dramatic showdown at the heart of this episode. It’s a clever setup, economical storytelling, funny and engaging in equal measure. It’s Mashle, baby.
The villain, Carpaccio, was introduced at the end of last week’s episode, demonstrating his strength-based philosophy and has gotten on Mash’s bad side. Carpaccio appears as the embodiment of some of the inherent contradictions at the heart of the power structures in Mashle’s world. He believes in the absolute privilege of power, but not in the kind of power that can be achieved or cultivated. All of Carpaccio’s abilities come from the special, top-of-the-line wand he was given at the beginning of his life—he was given everything he needed to succeed from birth. That makes him a natural counterpoint to Mash’s abilities built through dedication to his workout routine, and as seen later in the episode, Carpaccio’s true power also creates so a match is formed intelligently.
As a character, Carpaccio is quite outstanding, even by the rival standards that Mashle always adheres to. These types of can-do people abound in the pages of Jump. But effectively establishing Carpaccio’s base deal will help the program simply use him as effectively as possible. Viewers understood Finn’s weakness, he was holding the crystal that designated his team’s only defeat and began to separate from his muscular bodyguards. So his petty desperation in the face of Carpaccio’s overwhelming, unflinching power can be better appreciated. But Finn at least once caught Carpaccio by shouting a fake spell to make him look away for a moment. The oldest trick in the book.
Lacking strength or some kind of personal magical power that is repeatedly useful, what Finn has is disciplined and desperate perseverance. It’s true, the passionate power rivals Mash’s slightly more actionable variety and stands in direct contrast to Carpaccio’s lack of such emotion. It is reflected in the repeated close-ups of that bad boy’s empty, dead eyes throughout this episode. Meanwhile, Carpaccio’s abilities mirror Mash’s much more directly, as his ability to channel physical damage turns the main muscle mage’s melee moves into a “stop fighting yourself” situation to watch him We try to get over it.
Carpaccio’s abilities are purely a result of his super special wand that manifests as a giant angel nurse thing that protects him. I expected the fight to simply take away his wand, but then Mash’s approach has always been nothing if not unique. Instead, Mash may just need to find a limit to Carpaccio’s power, which he never thought could have a proper limit, since his ability is an immobile, undeveloped gift. development that he has been dependent on since birth. It pushes things into fist-pumping “Yeah right” territory, which is actually much more satisfying than just swatting away Carpaccio’s wand.
It’s all combined with some wild battle animations from Mashle. The sheer absurdity of Mash sculpting his ridiculous iron wand into a tennis racket to volley against Carpaccio is a significant escalation. It’s Mash using real jock powers to take down a magic-using nerd, so you know, I figured it out. For a moment, I was almost annoyed by the cutscene of the crowd of students then explaining what Mash was doing in that highly anticipated shounen style. But then I realized that getting the entire audience to react that way, reciting in unison, was itself an escalation of a general weird joke. This episode is excellent, from top to bottom; really strong in the way Mashle’s second season has shaped up.
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Mashle: Magic and Muscles Season 2 is now streaming on Crunchyroll.
Chris is still the reviewer for Mashle, and the wizards are still nerds. Please contact him on Twitter his or check out the blog’s magical back catalog.
