Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.
What do you think of the “magic school” genre?
In the Anglosphere, it will probably unfortunately be associated for quite a while longer with the Harry Potter novels. Mostly unfortunate because of their author’s utterly appalling views on trans people. Elsewhere in the world however, there is no such association, and indeed there is an absolute ton of light novel material in this genre, most of which never leaves that format but some of which does, including, just from a quick glance around Anilist, The Irregular at Magic High School, The Misfit of Demon King Academy, Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor, etc. You get the picture.
All this to say; Spellblades is very much a product of its own immediate environment more than anything else. Which is itself to say; Spellblades strikes me as incredibly basic from this first episode. But, given some developments in its final few minutes, there is a non-zero chance that it’s Doing Something by actually just pretending to be incredibly basic. Such is the inherent frustration of “non-indicative” first episodes. Which this might not even be, because other than spoiling myself by looking up the source material1, there’s really no way to tell beyond trying to play detective.
So, why not? Let’s review the evidence. First, we’ll start with the “it’s actually just that basic” argument.
Point 1, the characters; we have an incredibly simple clutch of archetypes here. They are all given just enough to say over the course of this episode that they don’t feel like complete cardboard cutouts, but we’re still working in very well established territory here. We have Oliver Horn [Atsushi Tamaru], our lead, who is a Very Nice Boy, compassionate to the point that he’s honestly kind of hard to like. Oliver spends most of the episode bouncing off of other characters and is by far the one we learn the least about, but he’s such a swell bro that he actually tucks his roommate into bed. (You’re not his mom, man, that’s just weird!) Next, we have Katie Aalto [Hitomi Oowada], who loves animals and has crazy ideas like “the school probably shouldn’t enslave sentient beings.” (We’ll come back to that bit.) There is of course also Guy Greenwood [Shinsuke Sugawara], who is the “hot-blooded” son of a farmer and gets very very upset at Katie’s aforementioned ideas. There’s Pete Reston [Riho Sugiyama], son of a pair of non-wizards and the archetypal studious guy with white hair. There is also Michela McFarlane2, a drill-haired off-the-shelf ojou who ends most of her sentences with desu wa. Lastly, there’s Nanao Hibiya [Yuka Nukui], who you can probably discern just from her name is the token student from fantasy-Japan. We’ll circle back around to her in a bit, but for now, just now that she has a sword, and is very dumb and absolutely loves to eat. She’s basically a stock shonen protagonist but a girl.
Point 2, the setting. Other than the sickly-sweet amount of colorful saturation, there is not a ton that distinguishes Spellblades‘ world from any other light novel series with a broadly western fantasy-derived setting. Honestly, even a few little personal touches would’ve been nice, but with two exceptions (talking, rude trees, and clock-nocks, little fairies that live in clocks), every single creature here is something I’ve seen in dozens of anime—and well beyond that—over the years.
Not to mention, Kimberly Academy, as the show’s wizard school is called, is itself set in yet another god damn city surrounded by a circular wall. Just in case you didn’t get your fill of those from the 3,000 other fantasy light novel adaptations that have aired since the decade began.
Point 3, the Troll Scene. Ugh. So, when our lovely little potato patch of protagonists pops over to their entrance ceremony, they’re treated to a parade of magical creatures. Perfectly fine—some of them, like the dragon, even look pretty cool—but, ah, one of the “creatures” in said parade is a troll. In this context, a giant guy who just happens to be green and angry. Hermione Katie sees this and takes immediate, justified offense, loudly arguing to anyone in earshot that trolls should not be paraded through the street like common animals, because they are thinking beings, just like humans. Guy angrily replies that this is fine because trolls are dangerous, don’t “speak our language”, and their being bent to the will of humanity is “only natural.” In the midst of that, a mysterious hooded figure curses Katie’s feet(!) sending her uncontrollably running straight toward the troll, which freaks out at being so provoked, and is promptly knocked unconscious by a group effort from Nanao and the other students. (Nanao, it must be mentioned, uses some kind of sword magic that changes the color of her hair. Neat.) The troll is not directly mentioned again after this.
Now, in theory, I think people should be able to write whatever they want. But, that also means all things are open to fair criticism. So; I have said this before on this blog, I will probably say it again, you cannot use fantasy species as a racism metaphor. That is a thing that we, collectively, human civilization, have to discard from our art. It just doesn’t work. It is perhaps the most overused and ill-considered analogy in fantasy fiction, and as an actual plot it is, on top of all that, just not any interesting. Especially if the side being discriminated against has no chance to ever get a word in, which seems like it will be the case here.
Unless, of course, Spellblades is Doing Something. Let’s now consider the points for that argument.
Directly relevant to the Troll Scene is A; Kimberly Magic Academy is fucked up and evil. This is not really hidden information to us in any way, a declaration that many of its students die, are permanently disabled, or are disappeared by their magical experiments opens the episode. The school’s headmaster, Esmerelda, reiterates that point directly upon greeting the student body, emphasizing that KMA prioritizes “freedom” and “results” and that all else, including the students’ own safety—and thus presumably any sense of morality—is decidedly a secondary concern. This could mean that the whole thing with the troll is just intended as another flag that these are Bad People. Of course, this would require Spellblades to not both-sides the issue, which is a problem that a truly astounding amount of bad anime run into. We’ll see where that goes.
Just as a side note; I’m not going to pretend to be scandalized by a powerful female character wearing what’s basically a bikini top, but it’s maybe not entirely the vibe you want to go for if you’re the headmistress of an evil magic school. On the other hand, in her position, and looking like she does, I’d wear the same thing. Truly, female character design is a land of contrasts.
Consider also Point B; the specific character of Nanao. It is easy enough to write Nanao off as an excuse to wedge a samurai into a setting that wouldn’t otherwise accommodate one, if you’re so inclined. But, Nanao is an oddly-presented character. In addition to all of her typical quirks, she is, as we see in a (sigh) bathing scene near the end of the episode, scarred almost from head to toe from real-deal war wounds. In fact, we learn that rather than entering Kimberly through any normal fashion, she was hand-picked by Michela’s father, who saved her from the midst of a raging battle. The visual we see could be dismissed as taking place in this setting’s equivalent of Asia—called, I am dead serious, Azia—but the framing almost seems to imply that she was isekai’d or something of the sort. The isekai device is much more interesting as something of consequence later in a series, rather than as the basic premise, so this would legitimately be a pretty neat twist. This is reinforced by her apparent ignorance of many customs in the setting, but again, she’s basically Schrodinger’s Samurai at this point. It’s hard to call one way or the other.
And lastly, C, there’s Oliver Horn himself. In the episode’s final act, he scouts out the school grounds at dawn, which seems to imply that he was aware of the general Fucked Up & Evil-ness of Kimberly Academy beforehand. Furthermore, the cloaked figure who cursed Katie is revealed to be an attendant sent by Oliver’s older brother Gwyn, also an academy student, who is shadowing him. This all implies some level of forethought on Oliver’s part, and that of his family. I will admit to being a sucker for “nice protagonist turns out to not be so nice after all” as a reveal, and it would do something to redeem Oliver’s blandness as a lead.
All of this needs context of course. For one thing, it’s not a guarantee that Spellblades will actually be made any better by having some kind of twist, even assuming it does have one. Trying to “Do Something” and actually doing it are, after all, different things. And, really, a show should ideally be interesting both before and after any kind of twist, additional perspective, recontextualization, etc. So far, Spellblades just hasn’t given us a ton to work with.
I’d argue, in fact, that me having to do this much legwork just to ask myself (and you all) if I should be invested in this is kind of a problem in the first place. A certain amount of grace is due to any new piece of art, for sure, but having to hem and haw this much is not a great sign. At least, you wouldn’t assume so, right? Conversely, maybe the fact that I’m willing to do so much indicates that I want it to be good. Of course, that’s true, I want every anime to be good, ideally, but I will admit to having a soft spot for a kind of low-rent fantasy fun. And there are definite upsides here; the actual magic system seems decently interesting, and the production is solid and will hopefully remain so. They’re just not huge upsides, which is maybe why I so badly want Spellblades to actually have good writing, too.
So who knows! If Spellblades appears on this blog again, you can assume it pulled off making the waiting game worth it. If not, you can safely assume I lost interest. What better test is there?
1: Honestly, that wouldn’t be the worst thing, but this is a column about seasonal anime, so it’s rather outside my scope here.
2: Yes that is actually her last name, I’m not having a laugh here.
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