Flying Witch
Feb 4, 2018Right, it's confession time for me. If you have been reading my reviews than you may have noticed that I tend to rip the anime a new one. There is a reason for this though and it has to do with the fact that I can't turn my brain off when watching anime. I can't ignore the stupid shown in the anime and this is a problem as most anime are very stupid indeed.
In this case I'm not talking about a 90 pound girl catching a multi-ton cruise missile and throwing it back. Yes, it is stupid but it is a stupid that I'll allow. It's anime. Things like this are normal here and I'm pretty much fine with it. It annoys me to be sure but I will not rant about it.
So, having explained this lets rip into this anime shall we? Just a heads up: There will most probably be spoilers. The more I hate an anime the more spoilers there will be.
ART: Art is fine. I've said it before and I'll say it many more times: It is near impossible to screw this up these days. CGI is used a lot but not too noticable.
SOUND: Again no complaints from me. I can no longer remember any of the music used but this is how I prefer it. Voice acting were decent even if they get to do the same thing over and over.
CHARACTERS: Main character is Makoto. She is a very naief girl who is prone to getting lost a lot.
Chinatsu is Makoto's niece, and her aunts youngest child. She becomes good friends with Makoto and becomes fascinated by the supernatural.
Kei is Chinatsus' older brother and he is in Makoto's class. Very leverheaded and nothing seems to faze him.
Akane is the older sister of Makoto and a highly talented witch. She is also very flighty and a bit irrisponsible at times.
STORY: As a witch in training it is time for 15 year old Makoto to head out into the world. Her parents arrange for her to stay with her aunt who lives in Hirosaki. There she goes on a number of adventures.
RANT: Well, in my previous review I mentioned that Rinne was kind of boring. This anime is making me take that back, this is true boredom. Nothing of note happens, and I do mean nothing. How do you make an anime about a with in training moving away this dull and boring? This is exactly the same plot as Kiki's Delivery service!
To be fair, that is a GHIBLI product and of amazing quality that comes highly recommended. This.....not so much.
It is of course completely unfair to compare this to Kiki's Delivery Service but there are many similarities. Kiki told it's story in 102 minutes and managed to cram a lot in its run time. This anime has 12 episodes of 20 minutes and tells exactly nothing. You get glimpses of the magic world and that is about it.
At some point I started thinking of it like this: Imagine Harry Potter's world where you spend the entire run time with Hermoine. As she is living with her family during the summer. Away from Hogswarts and almost anything magic related. The only time you see something of the magic community is when someone or something drops by for a few minutes.
I must also comment on the art. While overall decent quality it is what goes on behind it that drew my attention. Nothing of note happens in the background. In fact nothing happens at all because there is nothing there. When you look at the first few minutes of the anime you'll see immediately what I mean.
Makoto walks through the station and there is either nobody there of people are frozen in one position. The only thing moving and drawn is Makoto and when she gets in a bus even that ends. You see a CGI bus drive through a CGI world. While done well it does show how small the budget was for this anime.
I really can't recommend this anime due to the lack of contect. The first episode is also the best one so watch that but skip the rest. If you want to see an anime about a witch in training then go watch Kiki's Delivery Service.
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I must say I sort of agree with other commentator: if you are watching this the same way as Kiki, you haven't understood, what this anime is trying to express. To me, exposing myself to any art forms means encountering. It's like facing human beings; you can't say how they should be, they have their own way and their own spirit. As long as you assume them to be something else than they are, you will feel yourself unsatisfied and disappointed. You must undestand their groundings and theirs goals if you want to really see their positive and negative sides. As long as you don't watch where _you_ are standing, you are commenting only about yourself and your own taste, not the features of the piece of art. Anime has its own slice of life genre, and if you are trying to twist anime meant to be slice of life to something else, of course it won't satisfy you. It's like trying to seize your thirst by drinking salt. Good critiques are not born by telling how you would write something again. It's about telling how the piece of art is good and how it would be better by its own right. The most important thing is to consider, if you are able to face the piece of art at the even ground. If you know you dislike some genres or types - like slice of life for its slow tempo - or if you love something too much, only way to respect the piece of art is to position yourself carefully. Otherwise you just talk about your own preferences, not about what the art is like, and how it reaches its own goals and represents type of its own.
And considering personal preferences... Well, I must admit I like Flying Witch more than Kiki's Delivery Service. Kiki is a cute movie, with plenty of eye candy and good productional values, but compared to this I feel it in fact lacks elegance and personal spirit. As a heavy user of many types of fantasy, I really appreciate the good sense of wonder, and that's where Flying Witch makes a very good work. Presentation of implicit magical world is very stylish, and it's not rubbed to viewer's face.
hey dude its just a slice of life, do you get paid for this?
Thank you for your comment. I always appreciate it if someone points out something that I missed.
While I do not mind a slow burn in an anime, I do wish to have a goal in there somewhere. As it is 2 years since I watched this I do not remember there being one.
It is prefable to many other anime that I've watched recently in that they forget the main plot completely until the final 2 episodes. At that point they start snorting the nitro in order to blast past the finish line.
I don't hate this anime or even dislike it. There simply isn't enough for me to care. I think that where it failed me is that I saw the potential of what it could be.
An anime with a similar premise is Kiki's delivery service. This anime is also a slow burn. It is a feature length film but ultimately nothing much happens and I absolutely love that anime.
If their goal was to make an anime that is like watching a river slowly flowing past then they succeeded.
This is a bit late, considering, I'm writing this 2 years after this review was published, but I have to disagree with your opinion of the plot. While it's true that not a lot happens, you have to note that one of the tags on this anime is iyashikei, which is a term used in anime that have the purpose of healing or soothing. This anime isn't supposed to be plot heavy, and things are meant to be slow. What you are complaining about is something that was done on purpose.