©大森藤ノ・青井 聖・講談社／ 「杖と剣のウィストリア」製作委員会
Unfortunately, Wistoria ended up with the lame season ending that so many action anime adopt after a big, exciting arc; it was one of those “everyone sits around the infirmary bed and spends time building theories and exposition about stuff that won't even matter until next season” kind of ending. I'm still reminiscing about the worst two seasons of Demon Slayer, so I wasn't exactly thrilled when I realized we'd be wasting most of Wistoria's final half-hour of summer on all the details. Random plot and world building. Clues were never the show's strong point from the start. Ah, ah. I suppose it could have been a lot worse.
Really, my main problem with the way this finale ended was how the big reveals and strange mysteries didn't really hook me that much, because Wistoria's world-building was so sloppy. drop even at the best stage. time. Like, yeah, it was cool that the “king” of Magia Vander appeared before the Deus Ex Machina monsters and saved Will and Co., but also… who is this guy? I feel like I would miss it if a guy literally named “Aaron Oldking” had been introduced in any meaningful capacity until now, so his sudden appearance It feels like the product of lazy writing instead of careful seeding for the future. Also, why did Finn appear in Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? suddenly here? I knew that Fujino Ōmori wrote both that light novel series and the Wistoria manga, but this was the first sign I'd seen that the series were somehow connected. It’s also not like Finn (or his “tribe”) came from a cute cameo; the show makes it clear that Will feels some inexplicable connection to Finn and that there are some deeper plans going on that have thus far been barely hinted at.
Under different circumstances, I could find myself interested in how things were going, but for the most part I felt a bit confused and overwhelmed. It was nice to see Sion fully commit to how badly he treated Will at the end, I guess, and it was nice that everyone else in the group seemed to be getting closer (although though I could do so without Lihanna and Wignall seem to share Julius's usual Dwarven Racist Tendencies). Like I said, there are ways this finale could have been much worse, by tripling the amount of narrative incoherence or by leaving the final fight a cliffhanger somehow terrible. However, if I return to these parts to cover a sequel, I really hope Wistoria can pick up the pace and spend more time polishing the better parts of its storytelling. Flashy battles and flashy spells can only get you so far, even in the grand halls of Rigarden Academy.
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Wistoria: Wand and Sword is now streaming on Crunchyroll.
James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other popular cultures, which you can also find on Twitterhis blog and podcast.
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