Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Wandering Witch - The Journey of Elaina
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whiskeyii
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I dunno, when I was a 14-15 year old girl, injustice was actually at the forefront of my mind, because that's when the naive scales started falling from my eyes about how the world treated girls (and women). And at least as far as the original Kino anime is concerned (y'know, the one that isn't morally questionable), Kino may not have always made the "right" decisions, but they did at least try to help individuals on smaller levels. Even if Eliana wasn't out to enact systemic change, something as small as a mercy kill seems doable, but nope! We're just gonna' ignore that. |
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murgleis1
Posts: 44 |
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That's wonderful and all, but you aren't the main character of the story. So it would be rather strange to push your particular viewpoints on a character that is not you and have expectations that they would behave as you would.
You might want to revisit some of that material. Kino left people to die, made questionable choices and left chaos in her wake on more than one occasion. There was always a reason for her choices, but that doesn't make them "right" by 2020 standards. Last edited by murgleis1 on Sat Oct 17, 2020 12:26 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Yttrbio
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I believe she's 18 in these episodes.
I don't think it really matters what a "normal" person would do in this situation. This is a fictional story, and you don't tell fictional stories about uninteresting things, even if people are normally uninteresting. I think I remember people complaining that episode 1 shouldn't have come first, and while it didn't make any sense when I watched it, I think I may understand now, because right now the character flow is "don't just take everyone else's BS" to "oh, look that's a terrible thing happening (and quite possibly my fault). Meh." In fact, "meh" seems to be the overall use of her character. Being indifferent or not intervening are decisions that could be interesting if they were somehow tied to her character or value system or conscience or... anything about her, really. Instead, though, if episode 3 is the norm, this full extent of this show is "Look, a bad thing happening. And here's another bad thing happening. See you next week! I'm so pretty!" |
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murgleis1
Posts: 44 |
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Nah. She was 14 when she passed her exams. Episode 1 ended with her at 15 years old, which is when she set off on the journey (which supposedly lasts for 3 years). So at this point in the story (episodes 2, 3 and probably the next few) she's still around 15 years old.
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blahmoomoo
Posts: 461 |
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The very last line in episode 1 is "It's' me, age 18.", so she's at least 18 going forward. |
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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I don't know what kind of sociopath kid you've met in your life, but not helping someone in life threatening situation or slavery is not some kind of higher reasoning that only come with time and experience. I'd expect a 15 year old to understand that, hell I'd expect a 5 year old to. Heck, if a baby see someone physically assault someone next to them they start crying because they understand that bad thing happening to fellow human is not a good thing, we come built in with basic empathy. You could make a good story about some amoral observer, but the show doesn't seem all that aware of how off Elaine (and most character in the show) are. |
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killjoy_the
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I think this is a good standard to set. Kino's travels often set her in countries that are more parables and concepts than a place that's trying to convince you would actually have people in it. So their interactions in these strange worlds often make you ponder messages, what kind of concept it's trying to bring, and so on. It was very interesting in that vein, and part of the reason most people seem to dislike the more recent Kino remake-ish is because several of the stories it adapts are instead about action or about characters they haven't been properly following yet, presented in a way that made people uninterested, especially because they were expecting the more philosophical/conceptual countries and stories from before. I'm not gonna deny this is a thing here too - I definitely expected Elaina's stories to be more poignant than just "I'm pretty. I saw a thing happen. It reminded me of a story", but that's what we've got so far. I'm giving it one more episode, but both episodes 2 and 3 did absolutely nothing for me in regards to getting interested in a particular story it wanted to tell or Elaina herself. |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23772 |
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It is interesting to note the (mostly) negative reaction to Elaina's inaction. It's totally understandable of course. As viewers we are trained and conditioned to seek and experience catharsis. The most basic form of catharsis is to watch some sort of bad thing happen and then achieve catharsis when the hero rights (or at least mitigates) the wrong. We get cranky when that thousands years old tried and true formula (thanks Greece!) isn't satisfied, don't we? As I said in the series discussion forum, I wouldn't want a steady diet of this sort of thing, but a dollop every now and then to change up the narrative pitch is not unwelcome to me.
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Hal14
 Posts: 667 Location: Heart of africa |
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For me her personality is the bigger turn-off than her inaction, but together it's a bad combination. I subscribe to the belief that it's not arrogance if you can actually back-up your boasts, so watching a character start an episode bragging about being beautiful and amazing and then not really do anything that episode is kind of obnoxious to me.
I don't have to like a character to want to see their journey. A narcissist who goes around swinging their magic in everyone's face, for better or worse, could be funny but a narc' who just watches silently is boring. |
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Anneyuno1
 Posts: 68 |
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Wandering Witch has good ideas, but it has a poor execution
It's okay as a story if elaina is a bastard but isn't being pragmatic she knows nino is being sexually abused. The scene with the wand makes it completely clear that elaina has the power to take complete control over the situation, but she covers for her once and then shrugs her shoulders only, skips town, and thinks to herself "Showing her that other people are better off might drive her to kill herself. Welp. Not my problem. Whatever." You made it your problem once already. You spent an entire episode pissing around with some girl who felt lonely, but you see someone being abused in front of your face, and now you're Miss Prime Directive? Excuse me, what? This makes her "none of my business" reaction quite jarring especially when the previous episodes showed her as someone kind and loving. But the way this scenario is framed... it's as if the show doesn't realize the magnitude of the cruelty elaina is exhibiting. It's framed as if she's ignoring a much smaller crime. And then there's the first half. She delivers some flowers to the city for a girl in a field, but it turns out that's some magical pitcher plant's hallucinatory poison, and so she just flys off with a "Takes all kinds" as the entire city she just helped infect with a deadly plague dies. You not only had the power to stop this or at least warn them, you were at least a small cause of an entire city worth of people dying. You helped cause this horrible tragedy. With great power comes great responsibility. "I'm just a traveler. Seeya," even Kino got involved in a ton of the stories she killed a king and destabilized an entire country because said king pissed her off. |
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JaffaOrange
 Posts: 251 |
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The direction the of the 3rd episode is puzzling to me. I don't know if it hues closer to the Light novel as I've only read the first 3 chapters of the manga adaptation which cover 2 out of 4 of the stories covered in the anime. The flower story is undercooked. It's like the cliffnotes version of the story and ends slightly differently. The anime implies that the whole town/country is doomed because of the zombifying flowers where as the manga adaptation limits the doom to the siblings we meet. This makes Elaina's inaction a bit more palatable as it's already too late for the siblings but her leaving doesn't mean she leaves presumably hundreds of people to their deaths. And while I did compare Elaina to Ginko and Kino for a bit, they have a code of not meddling too much in people's affairs where as Elaina doesn't have such code, I believe? Sure enough, based on a story the manga adapted, she meddles heaps when she wants.
I'm not sure what she could have done for the slave story and I think we're meant to realise that she has the same hesitations. I'm not sure how she's meant to solve something like institutionalised slavery. But following the back of the flower story, I'm not sure where were meant to place Elaina's morality. In episode 2, she's almost comically forgiving and compassionate where as in episode 3, she seems particularly cold-hearted. EDIT: To expand on the comparisons to Ginko and Kino, Ginko had a refreshing professional attitude of "I'm here to fix your mushi problem, not be your therapist". While Kino had a truly apathetic take on the problems a country she visited faced, partly as a defence mechanism. Since these were established from the get go, we don't need to moralise those characters for not solving every problem and accept their limitation (Ginko's just doing what's in the scope of his job, Kino is just a young girl with decent gun skills developed to protect herself). I'm not sure what Elaina's deal is but my cynical take is that it skews towards a sociopathic "I'll do what ends up making a good story for my diary". |
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Horsefellow
 Posts: 262 |
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Some people get that style of storytelling and character, some don't. Maybe Elaina could solve everything and overthrow societies if she wanted to, but I don't recall any scene stating that was her job or intention. I wonder how much overlap there is with people who also wonder why the eagles never helped Frodo to Mt. Doom, or any other story where powerful beings have no interest or want to concern themselves with the plight of mortals.
I assume slavery is legal in this world or at least the nations we've seen given the nonchalant way it was talked about. Elaina assaulting or even killing the man for yelling at her and then freeing Nino would be illegal if that was the case. She'd be arrested or labeled a fugitive if she fled. I mean, it's like that in the real world too. You can't just kill or steal from people even if you try to justify it by saying they're a bad person. |
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Seagloom
Posts: 276 |
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My memory is a little fuzzy as it has been ages since I read that volume, but I am 90% sure the plant zombie horde is anime only. I assume they threw it in there to give the story some finality. Much like how the manga handled Bottled Happiness. Usually stories end with Elaina's involvement, leading to some janky conclusions. They probably wanted a smoother, less confusing transition to Bottled Happiness. |
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Kelohmello
Posts: 15 |
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I was definitely confused by the abrupt ending of the first section of episode 3 and Elaina's inaction, but it's much harder to argue that she made the wrong decision in the second part.
What is she supposed to do for this girl? She's a foreigner. She was sold into slavery and by that line probably not wanted in her own home. She has no where to go. Disrupting the current situation to "save" Nino would be irresponsible. She's not going to convince the son that his entire worldview is messed up and hurts the girl he likes, he's been raised that way from birth. And doing anything whatsoever to the chief of an entire village has big ramifications. Is she supposed to steal Nino from them and run away somewhere? Okay, and then what? Alot of anime just contrive reasons why these things should just work out should the protagonist decide they want to do something good, but the only actual argument for why that should be the case is the audience wanting a happy ending. But just because it's unhappy or dissatisfying doesn't make it wrong. |
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Adizcool
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I don't understand why people are so mad at Elaina in this episode. In the first part, we clearly see that the plant problem has infested a large number of people. Even if she wanted to help them all, it would take a lot of time to fix everyone. On top of that, she has no connections to any of these people and thus has no obligation to help them. Sure, she could have put the soldier out of his misery, but it does not really matter since she has no need to do that. She is not some Shonen protag who needs to help every person she sees.
In the second part, judging from Elaina's reaction when the mayor said that the girl was a slave, slaves are common in this world. The mayor bought her so she is now her legal property. Elaina may dislike how she is treated, but she is literally a traveller who met that family a few minutes ago. Neither is her place to talk about how Nino is treated, not can she legally help her out. Remember that she was born in this world and is not some isekai protag who sees a slave girl and decides to help her out due to our world's moral compass. Also to the people saying she is also at fault for telling the boy to give Nino the present, she genuinly believed that Nino would like it. It was only after she remembered the story that she realized that something bad could also happen. But since she didn't go back to check on Nino, neither she nor us knows how Nino truly felt after watching those scenes of happiness. The only problem I had with this episode was that the tonal shift was a bit abrupt and the first part, though ended at a perfectly creepy place, was too undercooked to ponder over. |
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