Izetta: The Last Witch

Episode 12

With its final episode, Izetta: The Last Witch delivers on its initial promise and stays true to its nature from back in episode one. Those who didn't give up on the series due to some of the problems it's had along the way will be rewarded for their patience. It's just disappointing that the series couldn't have been stronger along the way.

The general thrust of events in the final episode was fairly predictable. Conversations over the course of the series (and the last two episodes in particular) have made it clear that magic existing in this modern world is an aberration that throws everything off-kilter. It unbalances battlefields, takes fighting out of the hands of common soldiers and pilots, and dramatically accelerates technological developments. As the Atlantan representative points out succinctly at the conference, magic also makes a witch equivalent to a tactical weapon, so whoever controls that witch has both the power position and dangerous envy of the rest of the world. Under such circumstances, there's only one feasible way for the series to both deal with the current situation and come to a final resolution: use the Magic Stones to suck all of the magic in Europe into one titanic crystallized magic showdown between Izetta and Sophie. Since that was clearly Izetta and Finé's plan all along, I'm left wondering if Sophie at any point realized that she was being baited into this endgame.

The battle up until that point was pretty cool, with flying lances escalating into tanks being tossed around in mid-air, until eventually a train was being used as a massive whip and the Eiffel Tower was turned into shrapnel. Finé's impassioned speech capably showed her holding up her side of the conflict too. There were also a few neat surprises dropped in to bolster entertainment value, such as Sieg meeting his end because he hesitates upon thinking he's facing down another Jonas (it's actually just a young Germanian soldier who looks like Jonas) or Sophie revealing that no one alive but her actually knows the final twist to the story of the White Witch; it wasn't Matthias's wife who gave the order to get rid of her in a fit of jealousy, but Matthias himself on his deathbed. He was concerned that Sophie's strong love might lead to complications in his absence that could bring the Church down upon them, which in fairness was probably not an unwarranted concern. Even though she's an antagonist fully willing to turn all of Eylstadt into a cinder as part of her revenge, it's hard not to feel at least a little sympathy for her, since she really did get the raw end of the deal. But what's up with the brief visual of a chain unraveling from her arm right before she perishes? A final bit of symbolism, perhaps?

Amongst other points of resolution, the situation with Berkman was the least satisfying, although seeing him operating covertly in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty in the epilogue was a nice touch. Also neat was the way the series used the involvement of Finé and Izetta to accelerate the timetable for the U.S.-stand-in's entry into WW2 and thus the eventual victory over the Germanians; there's quite a bit of irony in that. The most divisive part of the finale comes with the resolution of Finé and Izetta's relationship. The last scene implies that Izetta did survive but was permanently left crippled by the experience, though the camera is coy about showing to what degree. (She's wheelchair-bound, but is she mentally intact?) I didn't feel that it cheapened Finé's emotional reactions to Izetta's sacrifice enough to be a problem, as Izetta still gave up a lot, and seeing the series end with only one of them still alive would have been too much of a downer. That's the nicest thing about this series: it does have a definitive ending, leaving no story threads of consequence unresolved.

Overall, despite its flaws, I still have to give the series a favorable grade and recommendation, as I think it accomplished what it set out to do as both a tale of magic mixing with modern warfare and a dramatic exploration of how Finé and Izetta became close and got caught in the midst of a World War II mock-up.

Rating: B+

Izetta: The Last Witch is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.