I remember watching the orginal Little Witch Academia animated film and thinking 'yeah, this is a good start, but this is a franchise that would be better served as a full twenty-something part series'. Alas, having watched Little Witch Academia TV, it seems this was a false impression.
Make no mistake, I like Little Witch Academia TV. In typical Studio Trigger fashion, it's got a lot of style, fab visuals and a decent voice cast, plus some really original character designs and a penchant for set-pieces and arc pay-offs (by which I mean things get VERY OTT and there are copious explosions and renumerations of catch phrases). However, like Kill la Kill and Gurren Lagann before it (the latter isn't technically an ST work but was directed by Hiroyuki Imaishi, one of ST's founders), it ends up being rather a case of style over substance.
TV is somewhat of a soft reboot for the franchise, but covers much of the same ground: Akko, a young girl from a non-magical family, is accepted into the once-prestigious Luna Nova Academy for witches. Akko has long idolised the magical entertainer 'Shiny' Chariot du Nord, and wants to be a witch in her mold, no matter what anyone might say about her own prowess, or the ethics of Chariot's very low-art form of sorcery. TV follows Akko as she blunders her way through encounters with staff members, new friends and strange situations, all the while developing her magical knowledge and chasing the dream of meeting Chariot in person.
One thing that cannot be said is that TV isn't colourful. It is, and it's lovely to have a (mostly) fun, cheerful and (to my great relief) not-sexist anime series to feast eyes and ears on. Despite featuring a school full of pubescent girls, Studio Trigger (*GASP*) decides not to cram scenes with gross-oversexualisation, as many other productions certainly would have done, and there's nary a panty shot in sight. Female characters are varied in design and motivation, and with 9/10s of the cast (assumedly) identifying as girls and women, it certainly passes the Bechdel test. Sometimes, with its endless messages of self-belief and perseverence (it sometimes feels like half of the dialogue consists of these two themes), TV can feel a little bit twee and pretty darn repetitive (I'll get onto that), but it's still a nice break from 'All Of Our Girls Are Wearing Pink Panties Here I'll Show You: The Animated Series'.
On the other hand, there's a big problem here in terms of character magnetism, and I'll try to explain as best I can; put simply, the first half of the series consists of getting very annoyed at most of the cast for being overly-mouthy, or snide, or prejudiced, and then the second half goes in nearly the entire opposite direction and makes most of them very boring. Lottie, Sucy, Diana and a few of the professors are most affected, as I constantly found myself battling with the idea that the thing I liked most about them was (unfortunately) their visual designs. Akko as an MC is in a paradoxical position of being simultaneously the most and the least annoying character here: she's impulsive, brash and selfish for much of the time, but she's also the only one who consistently gets the plot moving, as characters consistently seem to throw up obstacles to progression that rival Akko's persistent failures in the arts of magic to create a slog-like feel to procedings. It's a good job that Megumi Han does a good job of lending her a certain charisma, because otherwise I think I might have dropped out halfway through; it doesn't help that half of the episodes consist of random stuff happening (love wasps and undead moustachios, anyone?) and the main trio desperately trying to correct wrongs. The latter half of TV deals with Akko's attempts to collect seven powerful 'words' and it feels so different to earlier episodes that it can be jarring. At other times, it feels like the concept of being a Little Witch in Academia is being eroded by themes of destiny, and a Gurren-Lagann-style escalation of stakes. Vitally, though, the moment of contact between Akko and Chariot does meet expectations, is strangely impactful and kept me going through all of the series' boring moments, even if I saw the identity of Chariot coming from... well, since 2013, to be honest.
Little Witch Academia TV is far from the best series I've ever seen and it's not even the best Studio Trigger series either; Kiznaiver had better characters and more interesting themes, so if you're interested, go check it out.
TL;DR though, TV is recommended for people who have really enjoyed Imaishi's past work, and those who like the idea of a cute franchise about cute witches doing magic and which isn't marred by unecessary cleavage or blood splatters up the wazoo.
Screenshots
Add to list