Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Wandering Witch - The Journey of Elaina
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Bayuro2.0
 Posts: 74 |
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Episode two so far is my favorite. We got some bit of Yuri undertone between Elaina and Saya. Saya's crying and suddenly Elaina hit her forehead is my favorite scene. I want to see more of Saya. Saya's crying reminds me of Kumiko Oumae's crying scene in front of Asuka from Sound Euphonium season two. Both Saya and Kumiko is voiced by Tomoyo Kurosawa. I hope she get well soon from Covid-19.
About episode three I feel sorry to that slave girl. She looks pathetic and pitiful but the same time so cute that you want to protect her. Last edited by Bayuro2.0 on Fri Oct 16, 2020 10:00 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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yuzumei
Posts: 53 |
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I was about to drop the show (the first two episodes were very very dull) but after watching ep3 I am giving the show a second chance.
Elaina is completely full of herself and has a god complex. She is a selfish spoiled brat. Instead of finding the answers by herself making her own decisions and grow, her real-life decision making seem to be based on the books she read. She seems to know what to do in every situation. She might help others if that action will help her at the end. That was the case with episode two. There is a flower-zombie apocalypse many are going to die and she is like meh. Poor slave girl is going to have a very bad life and she is like meh tough luck. In the case of the flower apocalypse her inaction makes her complicit of murder. I find her attitude interesting. She helps whenever she see fit. She doesn't want to change the system, she just wants to travel. |
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SaneSavantElla
 Posts: 223 |
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I can see the material takes inspiration from earlier "traveling" stories such as Kino no Tabi and Mushishi, especially with how it likes to present a "dose of reality" amidst its whimsical setting. However I just can't like it, and the primary reason for that is the dislikable main character.
I don't know whether Elaina's attitude now is a vehicle for further character development or whether she's just being presented as someone who is otherwise perfect except for a flaw or two, but I doubt it would change my view even if that were the case. For me it takes away from a show like this to have the protagonist be so shallowly self-absorbed for no particular reason, given that we have already seen her background (a normal, loving and supportive family). It doesn't make her relatable or admirable in the slightest, nor is it enticing to see if and how she would mature (because here she is spouting words of wisdom by episode 2), but you as the viewer is still expected to explore this world with such a protagonist. I'll pass. |
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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Is everybody in this world just varying level of asshole?
Ep1: All the witch refuse to teach Elaine, her parent outright bribe someone to make her a de facto slave for a month and then Fran beat Elaine up to teach her a dubious lesson at best. Ep2: The apprentice steal the brooch, every hotel just kick her out just cause she's not a registered witch and she has to bribe the lady to get info about the brooch. Ep3: Do I even need to say anything? Elaine herself is kinda of an ass too, it seems like she only help people if they worship her. It's just weird how negative everything is. It's reminding me of the second season of Kino journey, and that's not a good thing. It's very well put together, but I don't feel like I want anything good to happen to anybody involved. It's like an horror movie filled with horrible vapid characters, except there's no serial killer to give a sense of catharsis by mowing them down. |
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nargun
Posts: 924 |
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The thing is, the vibe I got from the novel, and the reason I stopped reading half-way through volume 1, is that I really didn't get the vibe that the author agreed with that. It's "tough people making tough decisions", where the "toughness" is all about "whether it's OK to make or let other people suffer". Where the narrative is more interested in the burden the protagonist must carry from turning orphans' left legs into stew than on how that affected the now-monopodal children. Arsehole writing, bluntly. Plus there was some whack story about inflation that... look, I don't waste brain space remembering the details of things I dislike so as I can explain in detail why I dislike them, but it was heavy on shitty right-wing explanations of why inflation happens and is a problem [something about measures of value have to be fixed forever or noone trusts them? Like I said, I have better things to do than to remember this]. So I bailed. Maybe I'm wrong in my conclusions, or maybe it gets better, but you know what? you lot can find out for me, I'm not volunteering. |
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Cardcaptor Takato
 Posts: 4820 |
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I was really excited to watch this show and I'm still undecided if I plan to watch the rest or not. I might just wait till it ends and binge it if I do. Even putting aside the moral issues of the episode, the tonal shift in episode three just feels so abrupt and clashing with the more optimistic tone of episode one and the laid back atmosphere of episode two. I think it would have worked better if they adapted the stories in the original order if the first two episodes give a misleading conception of the rest of the show is actually like. I get they want to aim for a Kino's Journey type of series but it worked better in Kino because they still had a clear sense of ethics and how they handled the conflicts of each place they visited whereas Eliana just comes across as very stand offish which as someone else pointed out seems to contradict the messages of the previous episodes. I also don't buy the magic can't solve everything argument because Kino was able to do more to help others without having any magic themselves but Eliana is supposed to be this amazing genius witch and she just chooses not to help anyone even if their life is in danger.
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EPB
Posts: 3 |
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I think a lot of people are missing a critical point in the 2nd part of the 3rd episode.
Bottling happiness immediately has ominous ramifications from the moment it's introduced and the kid is clearly naive and unaware of what he's about to do. Yet Elaina encourages him to continue with his course of action and then immediately after reflects that she fears witnessing the long term ramifications of uncorking the bottle - ergo insinuating that it was always a bad idea. In other words, she's knowingly complicit in driving someone to commit suicide but feels no apparent guilt. Describing her as an impartial observer would be more believeable if she hadn't bent over backwards and displayed herculean empathy for someone who had only sought to manipulate and exploit her the episode before. It costs her absolutely nothing to at least explain the risks to the kid. Like, if she tried and failed, the argument about her not playing god would make more sense. But she doesn't. Also, remember that she's supposed to be a genius level prodigy. One minute she's highly perceptive and capable of inferring critical information from minor clues, when the plot demands it, yet moments later will act like a thoughtless cretin because it's expedient for the narrative. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11348 |
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Seems like this really wants to be Kino's Journey on a broomstick instead of a motorad. But Elaina is no Kino and this is not working, because they don't seem to have a grip on who Elaina is. As was mentioned, one minute she's bending over backwards to help someone who's lied to her face, and the next she's abetting murder and turning her back on slavery. The only constant seems to be her unbridled ego.
Even if Nino weren't a slave, she wouldn't be any better off with the son, who managed to be more sinister than his father. His irritation at Elaina for fixing the pitcher ("I could've done that") was barely suppressed rage, and it was clear that he only saw Nino as a pet to show off - look! It can clean and cook perfectly to my specifications, and it's pretty and obedient, and it makes me happy to reward it with nice treats! And I hardly ever have to smack it to make it behave... |
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vonPeterhof
Posts: 729 |
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It could also be an example of a mild culture clash. The country Saya and Nino come from is heavily implied to be based on Japan, where it actually is customary to apologize in certain situations where in the West the normal response would be a "thank you". This applies most strongly to situations where the favor wasn't something the recipient explicitly asked for and/or where there wouldn't have been a need for the favor in the first place were it not for the recipient's own carelessness; it's essentially a way of saying "sorry for having you take the trouble". |
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Sisyphusson66
Posts: 96 |
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Completely agree. I haven't seen either Kino anime, but I love Mushishi. What worked about the darkness and some of the futility in Mushishi was, as you said, the lack of power of Ginko. He also tried to help when possible, even if his efforts proved futile. I would also add that he, while the "main" character, was never present at every moment in its stories and they rarely centered around him. These were stories of Mushi, not Ginko. Parables about Mushi and the people who encountered them. Here, these are stories of Elaina as she travels, and is the focal point at all times. I had my own issues with the first episode, but if you had told me that I would think that it was still the best episode three episodes in, I wouldn't have believed you. While episode two was fine, as it showed Elaina's naiveté, episode three disturbed me. In this episode, Elaina shows great indifference in both stories. While I would argue her indifference is worse in the first story, her negligence and inability to show any real care for the suffering of others in the second really rubbed me the wrong way. In the first story, I have no idea how she didn't make the connection right away that the girl in the field was in danger and try to save her. Instead, she just decides to go back to the field the next day and stare blankly at the tragedy. spoiler[She doesn't even mercy kill the brother as he is being consumed(?)]. No reaction on her part. It could be said that it might have been a bit trickier to act in the second half without causing a lot of issues, and she did show at least a bit more disgust at what was going on, but I had issues with how the lesson this episode was going for was just there at the expense of its victims. The lessons she states about the cruelty of kindness and beauty feel off when she was present for each of them, but does nothing.
I don't think this is quite right. I don't think there is an "eventually." this episode hinted heavily that it is happening now. Nino's introduction shows her fixing her clothing up twice. This is followed by the reveal that the village chief was in his study, only to then emerge from the same door Nino had a few minutes prior. All signs are there. My current disappointment is mostly my own fault. I had hoped, with no knowledge of the series, that this was going to be somewhat of a mix between Flying Witch and Restaurant from Another World. Three episodes in and it is clearly not that. I am not expecting her to be any sort of hero or try to save everyone she comes across, but her relative indifference is somewhat disturbing. She has not been worn down by the unjust nature of the world, hardened by it, which would go some way of explaining such a trait. She is still a head-strong, bright traveler excited to see the wonders of the world. I will be disappointed if the next episode starts off, as all of these have, asking us to wonder who this beauty on screen is, only for her to say "It's me." |
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7777ale7777
 Posts: 105 |
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Yeah, I was going to point that out too. |
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Seagloom
Posts: 276 |
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spoiler[Well... >.> That is generally how a story in Wandering Witch begins.] |
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15462 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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I do think that it is interesting that this series seems to have gone out of its way to make the heroine flawed in ways not too similar to many examples in the genre. Rather than an inconsistency of her helping one person and not in the following examples, I am going to take it as she probably had special empathy for the girl that reminded her of herself in studying magic and close to worshiping her, but not to help in the other two situations.
She helped Saya because Saya asked while praising her. She delivered the flowers because she was also friendly to her, but no one asked her to burn the source, though she did witness the guy she admitted that bothered her for coming across strongly. She also semi latched onto the son who also learned was practicing magic, Nino as a powerless slave might be someone Elaina would struggle to grasp while never being asked for help, although did encourage the son to deliver his present which after thinking she realised might not have been too good. If I was to write Elaina's arc, I would think that at some point she really will be hit by what her mother said about the not being special, not in the case that she can't jump into a situation to fix things but these awful situations forced onto others is not something so disconnected from her. Perhaps have a breakdown that would shatter her ego that she is so proud of herself as a genius, and face consequences of situations she let happen. Like the idea that her hometown was hit by something like the flowers she left alone, or a witch she bonds with in seeing herself having some sort of background as a slave that could be saved by another witch stopping to lend a hand. Many people are not perfect, and it would be a story for tis character who thinks that she is perfect to face her own flaws. She is like currently Lawful Neutral. Mostly interested in her own interest although not against simple favors, but also won't go out of her way to harm people for her own benefit either, and also does not want to disrupt the system that she happens to find herself. |
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Gem-Bug
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Also, the way she tenses up and says it's not necessary when the son tells her he has a "present" for her. She's definitely already being abused. So yeah, there's not much more I can add that hasn't been said already. I want to like this show; the world, music, and design are lovely. But oh man, what a dis-likeable main character. The self-important/narcissist types are the ones I can't stand, and having her make a promise to her mother to not act/believe herself to be special -Episode 1- kinda makes it more insufferable. She's not comparable to Ginko/Kino; she has the power to prevent/end suffering she comes upon but doesn't, but then the show still tries to feed you the "the world can be beautiful and also cruel" theme. Unless folks who have read ahead can tell me she eventually gets her face rubbed in the dirt further on, this is going to be a pass for me, I think. Which is honestly a shame. This series feels akin to meeting someone who you feel could be a really close friend, but then like, says they don't believe in vaccine science or something. 
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murgleis1
Posts: 44 |
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Yeah...not to be mean here, but some of you guys need to get a grip. Elaina is a teenage girl - of course she's immature and selfish to an extent. Not everyone is obsessed with s0cial joostice with the foresight or desire to become embroiled in every issue or problem they run across, especially most people around 14 or 15.
My guess is her attitude does evolve somewhat in later stories, but I think it is weird to put her on some kind of moral pedestal. As the article pointed out, both Ginko and Kino sometimes made questionable decisions during their various travels in regards to their reactions to the situations they would find themselves in. They weren't always paragons of virtue either. |
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