The Ancient Magus' Bride - Reviews

I read the reviews prior to viewing, thus had low expectations. I was pleasantly surprised. I thought it was just going to be a version of Beauty and the Beast.

Story: It's Beauty and the Beast with lots of slice of life. Learn how the heroine gets her magic wand. Go shopping with the protagonist. These episodes are intended to provide backstory about the characters.

Animation: It's gorgeous. It's all in the details. I love the way the light shines on the sea monster's scales.

Soundtrack: Love the soundtrack of the first season

Characters: The characters are likeable, but not necessarily three dimensional. There's moderate character development. It's strength is in the variety of interesting characters, most of which are based on  myths of the British Isles.

This is one of my most favorite shows out there. This is actually the show that got me back into anime. I will admit, it is slow at times and it could do some thing better. But this is a good slice of life anime.

I honestly hope they make more down the road.

It'd be a higher score if they didn't just up and end it but hey. This anime had wonderful characters, amazing visuals and an even better soundtrack. Overall I really liked it but I wish they did more episodes.

I was in the mood to watch a shorter anime, and I had heard this one mentioned a few times, so I decided to watch it without so much as a refresher on the synopsis.

I loved the mystery of the beginning, of not knowing why Chise was being sold and not knowing who the stranger was who bought her. Chise seemed so broken, and I was eager to get to know both her and Elias. I loved watching Chise grow throughout this short series, and that's probably my favorite thing about the show. While I kind of wish I had seen a little more of the quiet Chise presented in the beginning, I think her speed of growth was handled well.

As for Elias... I'm torn about his background. It does make sense with how he acts at times, of not seeming to fully understand Chise, and it does make the romance aspect a little less creepy, but it also made him a less interesting character overall. I'll talk about that more in the spoiler section. Still, I love his design, and his mannerisms.

Now for the world. I love how integrated and natural most of the fantasy is, while it also being believable why humans don't notice it more. This is also where we begin to have issues, though. It's not super clear why humans can see some of this fantasy, but not others--and which humans see what. Normal humans can see Elias, as well as a few other fantasy beings, if I recall correctly, but not much time is spent with normal humans, so... who knows.

This brings us into why Chise is considered valuable--she can see all fae creatures, regardless of if they want her to or not. When I first heard this explanation, it made sense. It also made sense why Elias could see them all, he being a fantasy creature himself. However, as the show introduced more and more characters, I started to question more and more why Chise was supposedly so valuable/special when it seemed like quite a few humanoid beings could see everything she could. It was also implied Chise had strong magic, but I don't recall her doing anything extraordinary with it. Granted, my memory is a little fuzzy because I waited too long to write this review...

But by the end of the show, I was seriously questioning why Chise was so special, as the show seemed to undo what they had set up with her in the beginning.

Also, just a side note, why does Chise see so many disgusting/scary things as a kid, but then sees mostly nice-looking creatures as a teen? I get the show wants us to know how traumatic her childhood was and why she couldn't pretend to be normal, but it seemed a little odd.

A lot of complaints, but it's really just one big issue in that it's really unclear what powers Chise has that no other living human does, plus me being unsure about Elias' backstory. Overall, though, I enjoyed the show. I was always excited to watch another episode, to see what happened next. The biggest thing I enjoyed was just watching Chise and Elias interact, and watching them grow together. The ending could have been stronger in that aspect, but I don't hate it either. Overall, while it's not one I would ever purchase, I wouldn't be opposed to re-visiting it down the road.

Oh, and a warning that there is some near nudity. Everything is censored, but there's one creature in particular that hardly wears anything at all (she only is focused on in one episode, if I remember right, and you don't see her much beyond that).

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SPOILERS BELOW!!!

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Elias. He seemed like such an interesting character until you learn of his backstory. In part the mystery is gone, but in part his backstory wasn't as cool as I was hoping for, which meant that Elias grew a little less cool in response. I don't necessarily mind the fact that he's basically just a large child--especially as it makes the romance aspect less creepy, since both of them are emotionally/mentally figuring it out. However, Elias had been such an imposing, powerful, and mysterious figure. It turns out most of those moments were just him being too child-like to understand, rather than him not understanding because he was an ancient being who didn't think the same as Man. If that makes sense.

So, the way the show went with him wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but I liked my idea of him better than what he actually was.

One other thing. It's odd this show is all about his bride, but there actually wasn't much romance in it. I love slow burn romances, so that's not an issue, but it did seem odd that Elias didn't really understand what a bride was. With that being such an important part of the show to not only be in the beginning/end of it, but also the show's actual title, it seemed odd for Elias to have such a little understanding of it. It also seemed odd things didn't end in a wedding.

I don't know. I love many aspects/characters of the show, but I do wish they had done some of it differently.

There's a lot to uncover in this one!

There wasn't a whole lot going on for the story in Ancient Magnus Bride. I feel that there are reoccurring themes of Chise does something reckless and gets hurt and then Elias does something else reckless in turn to try to protect Chise. It's just a cycle of Chise getting hurt on her own accord and Elias bringing her back to life every time. There was just a lot more I wanted this series to go into that they touched on like Chise's dad and brother, where are they?? Let them reunite again!! Kind of all over the place at time as well. Throughout the whole time of watching this series, I was like, where is this going? How does this arc contribute to the overarching show? 5/10.

The animation was fairly good most of the time and the characters were beautiful deserving an 8/10.

Sound overall was also fairly good, but nothing astounding. 7/10.

Now the characters are probably the most appealing thing about this anime. I really like that Chise doesn't have "main character syndrom". She's been through a lot of hardship and the way she interacts with people and how insecure she always is very much shows that. She wants to save other people, but not simiarly to the way other mains with "MC syndrom" does. She wants to save others because she understands what pain and suffering is and doesn't want anyone else to go through it. She doesn't progress through the series being like "If we try our best and believe in the power of friendship, everything will work out!!" And I really liked that realistic portrayal of her. 

Elias is also another very interesting character as he is half demon and half human making his appearance that of a monster, but he is still capable of feeling human emotions and that is very prevelant throughout the series as it continues. He ends up taking more and more risks if it meant saving Chise or protecting her. There was even a time where he was willing to sacrifice a completely innocent person for the sake of Chise and part of his reasoning for choosing this person is because he's jealous of the relationship they have with Chise. Extremely childish!! He's someone who has lived for thousands of years and yet he has the emotions of a 5 year old because he had never been exposed to emotions like this before. There are times where his infatuation with Chise is very toxic (like the example above) and vice versa, but I think what makes this work/excusable is that they both don't understand emotions like they should. Elias felt jealousy towards that other character which is a natural feeling every person feels, but many of us are emotionally mature enough to know that we can't just kill someone because we're jealous of them whereas Elias on the other hand literally doesn't understand that. He's a literal 5 year old with too much power in his hands. 8/10.

There are many other amazing characters that I could deulve into as well, but this is getting quiet lengthy, so I'll cut it off soon. Overall, I give this series a 6.5/10 desite my subscores average out to be 7/10 because even though there are components of this anime that I really liked, there was just too much that needed to be worked on. If they had a more cohesive story, it would have definitely bumped up the score for me. This anime just left feeling a big 'meh' so I docked it 0.5 points in it's overall score.

TL;DR: If you like interesting, flawed /, and realistic characters and don't mind minimal plot progression, give this a watch!