Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Wandering Witch - The Journey of Elaina
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Sisyphusson66
Posts: 96 |
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I generally agree in most cases, but I think the problem here comes from the main character herself. Elaina is strong-willed, powerful, and still very young. Yet, her decisions this episode felt like those of some disaffected teenager seeing something bad in the news, saying "that's awful," and then going about her day like it never happened. The difference here is that she is experiencing these tragedies first-hand. This in direct contrast to the heavy emotions of the first episode and the kindness she showed in the second. I wish that she had acted in both parts, but then have those actions not actually solving the problem/make it worse. I wish she had tried to save the girl in the first part, but then miss the horde of plant zombies. In the second have her offer Nino some sort of relief or something, only for her advice towards the son to cause Nino endless grief and depression through his "kindness." The lessons ring hollow in this episode because she is not affected by them. She observed them, but they don't impact her own life or way of thinking. The first two episode's lessons do impact her, the one's in the third don't. |
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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Who said anything about killing the man?! She's not chained to the guy 24/7, how about just grabbing her while no one is looking and flying off on her broom to the next town/country and dropping her off at an orphanage or something? That is well within her power. Ep2 she spend an entire week helping some rando thief to pass an exam, now she can't even be bothered to travel with someone for a few hours to help her avoid an entire life as a sexual slave? Last edited by meiam on Sat Oct 17, 2020 3:43 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Kiskaloo
 Subscriber Posts: 79 Location: Seattle |
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Episode three was certainly dark compared to the first two, but it did not suddenly sour me to the show or it's concept (as presented so far).
I didn't see the ending of the first story of Episode 03 to be anything ominous. The older guard at the gate made it clear that the population knows there is a large field of dangerous flowers out there and the risk they pose. If they really were a "clear and present danger" to the area, they could have destroyed them (or hired someone to do so) at any time. That the town has such large and strong defensive walls was an implication to me that they were used to these "plant zombies" coming towards them and they were able to take care of such incidents. As to why they have not destroyed this field of dangerous flowers, there is probably a reason, but the episode chooses not to tell us. As for the second episode, I find myself in agreement with those that feel Elaina's role in the narratives is not to be a vigilante, but an observer. She seems to see that Nino is sad because she is a slave with no personal agency, but as others have noted, in this society, slavery is a legal institution and while her personal outrage over that might make her want to kill the village elder or steal Nino away, she has no legal or arguably moral (at least within the context of that society) justification to do so which would make her the villain in the eyes of the son, at least, and probably the entire village. And what would such an action mean for Nino? It seems unlikely that she would suddenly be freed (and even if she was, how would she support herself) and more likely she would be punished severely (perhaps even executed). And as to stealing her away, depending on how prevalent slavery is in terms of land area, it might not be realistically feasible to do so (as there may be laws about repatriating 'runaway slaves' as was the case in the US before Abolition). |
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Adizcool
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I mean she did promise her mother in the first episode that she would try to stay away from conflict if she could. She does not view herself as some special witch or a justice warrior, just a traveller who comes, sees and goes. She only acts if there is something directly affecting her. That's why she showed kindness in the second episode, and why she's much more distant here. Also, since there is a time skip from the start of her journey to here, it would be safe to assume that she has seen such shit in varying degrees before. So it would not be surprising to see Elaina acting calm or cold in such situations. If she tried to fix every little thing on her travels, she would get burned out both physically and mentally. That is why she is distant to conflicts which does not involve her. If she wishes to travel, she must be prepared to see both heartwarming and depressing tales. |
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Electric Wooloo
Posts: 310 |
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If she's gonna keep expecting respect for being a "prodigal master witch" then she best show some of that off instead of ignoring everything. These types of traveling shows are interesting because we get to see what the traveler thinks of and how they react to the places they visit. In this episode it seems her thoughts amounted to...apathy, which isn't interesting or compelling.
If the show turns into "I'm the beautiful master witch Elaina, let's see what's happening in this country!" "Well that's neat, bye. Oh look how pretty the sky is!" then it's gonna get real stale. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2301 |
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As a few folks have already expressed, I want to like this show; it is just very difficult to get there with as little reflection as it seems to want to give Elaina's attitude or the events she witnesses. I don't need her to be a "shounen protagonist" or even to be a good person at all, but I do need the show to frame the way we experience these events so that they have the emotional weight they deserve. Elaina's nonchalant departure, with no contemplation by her or anyone else in the show of what she'd just walked away from in both of the most recent stories (flowers / happiness), just feels strangely uninvested in events the show's already made clear to us it recognizes as important.
I also agree with the various folks commenting that it is very hard to get a sense of who Elaina is. The hard-working, desperate-for-approval Elaina of Episode 1; the sympathetic-to-a-fault Elaina of Episode 2; and the strangely unmoved, uninvested Elaina of Episode 3 all feel like quite different people to me. Even the self-absorbed, "Who's so pretty? Watashi desu!" Elaina of every episode opening feels rather jarringly separate from the other faces she's shown. Part of me wonders if this is supposed to be some kind of long-running setup to show how much of what we've seen of Elaina is in fact recognized by the show as a detached whimsy out-of-touch with the serious nature of the situations she constantly runs into -- if we're meant to expect her to get her come-uppance at some point with her many faces forced to reconcile with one another and the reality around her, or something. If so, though, I think there are better ways to tell that story. Instead, the current approach just seems rather confused about what and who it wants to portray, and why. Last edited by NeverConvex on Sat Oct 17, 2020 4:21 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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stilldemented
 Posts: 232 |
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The only characteristic about Elaina that I'd consider questionable is that she can be proud. The thing that irked me in episode 3 was when the guard was telling her to stop and she stuck her nose up and ignored him. She'll randomly do little things like that which suggests that she considers herself to be above people and situations. And what makes it irksome is that the story itself hasn't really said anything that would suggest that it recognizes this character flaw or intends to address it as we progress.
Though, if I remember correctly, this is the exact trait that concerned her parents into hiring the teacher to humble their daughter in the first place (which wasn't exactly an ideal way of going about it either, but I digress.). I keep hearing that the first episode doesn't happen until the middle of the book...so maybe this out-of-order storytelling is shorting out the character progression/development to a certain extent. I can't really tell at present. I suppose I'm in something of a limbo about whether this character flaw is meant to become something of a plot point for character development moving forward or not. That all being said, I didn't really come out of episode 3 feeling as at odds with the show as many other expressed comments. I didn't feel like Elaina was really in a position to remedy either scenario. The flower scenario sort of struck me as being too little too late to save the brother or sister. I don't think she knew about the zombies. I guess she could have burned the flowers, at the very least, but I'm also sitting here wondering what it means to be a witch. Does she have some sort of mantra towards nature that would compel her not to take action against the flowers? I don't know. In the master/servant scenario, you can tell that Elaina doesn't like the situation. She keeps her wand pointed at the village chief for a pretty long while before she fixes the dishes. But, as an outsider, what actions can she take that wouldn't come back and bite her or the servant? The status quo in this situation is already awful, but taking any sort of action against the chief is very likely to end in him taking his frustration out on the servant once Elaina leaves. You'd likely be aggravating the situation. Which is sort of what the moral of that story ended up being as the son's attempts to bottle happiness and give it to the servant to cure her depression...it is insinuated that it might not be as therapeutic to her as one might think. Good intention or not. But I don't know if hope is completely lost for that particular scenario (though there's a bit of finality to suggest it likely won't have a happy ending), as Elaina's advice of saying thank you rather than sorry can be interpreted as a soft but subtle way of trying to guide the servant towards taking a more positive outlook than a self-deprecating outlook. It's not much, but it might be the best anyone can hope to do for that situation. Last edited by stilldemented on Sat Oct 17, 2020 4:35 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2301 |
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I think these are reasonable questions to ask, but that's also exactly my complaint about the show so far (EDIT: well, in addition to finding the way it portrays Elaina rather schizoid); it creates situations where the viewer naturally asks: "Uh, WTF? Why didn't you stop the zombie horde you just actively helped launch at that town? Why didn't you try to help the clearly victimized slave-girl?" But it full stops, there. Right as the viewer is prompted to ask those questions, Elaina re-asserts her light-hearted traveler's whimsy, re-adjusts her hat-of-detachment-from-worldly-concerns, and zooms off to the next story, physically leaving behind the absolute mess she introduced us to in the last one, with no further reflection or consideration of it. It is as if the only point the show is invested in relaying to us is: "Huh. Lotta messed up stuff in this world. And sometimes I help mess it up. Well, at least I can go have fun in the next town!" Last edited by NeverConvex on Sat Oct 17, 2020 7:16 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Sisyphusson66
Posts: 96 |
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I think we all know that her first episode promise will be broken at some point regardless. How many stories with such a thing actually end up keeping them? Also she is some special witch. It is clear from the past two episodes that being a witch is special and has at the very least some level of high status in a lot of places. That was part of the comedy in the second episode when she was rejected from the nice places to stay. She may have seen things over the three year time skip, but she doesn't act much differently from how she was in the first episode. If anything, she just has more confidence. I'm not saying that she needs to act as judge and jury and go looking to uphold justice, but I would like to see her at the very least try to do little acts of mercy or something like that. It doesn't help that she is involved in both stories in the third episode. The first one she becomes involved inadvertently, but the second one she directly involves herself in briefly. She stops the chief from abusing Nino after she dropped the pitcher with her time reversal magic. There is no way that this actually helped Nino's situation, it probably made it worse. I'm not asking for her to be Maria from Maria the Virgin Witch, but I would like to see here journey actually change her character or help her growth. Nothing in this episode actually seems to do that. |
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Cardcaptor Takato
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Do people making the argument Elaina couldn’t intervene because slavery was legal not realize a great deal of esistance to slavery happened while it was legal in the majority of society? There were countless numbers of slaves who escaped their masters before the Civil War happened decades later. Also it’s a fantasy show and not historical fiction.
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15462 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Back onto the idea of inconsistency, Saya the "random thief" did something that the victims in episode did not do, feed into her ego, heaping praise as amazing.
In episode 3 she even admitted that she was annoyed by the perceived hostility of the guard that would not return the bouquet like she wanted and promised as a favor to deliver, said guard eventually dying. That scene becomes even more haunting when given the context that the reason he wanted to keep the bouquet was that he recognised that it was the shawl of his missing sister. And if anything it was the son that was feeding into her ego as well as a possible point of connection as trained in magic, and if anything that is who gave advice to. Personally I would hope these be the seeds where she might eventually learn that someone appearing hostile to her might not actually be bad and could be a likely victim, and perhaps in a situation she should not latch onto the person that feeds her ego and perhaps she should disrupt a situation to help the one most in need. Character growth is good, and I don't expect it instantaneously. In questions of one's moral good, maybe even appearing as multiple faces, I would like to use myself as an example. I like to think of myself as a morally good person, I would like to help where I could, but I could certainly criticise myself in how I react to beggars, homeless people that need to beg for living expenses. My response to a beggar is generally to try and ignore them, put my headphones in my ears and don't think about it too much, despite some idea that perhaps I could help someone by donating money to them. My reasons include that I really could not help all of them, I would not know if I was even helping the one in the most need, I am by no means rich and should use that money responsibly for my own good, and I suffer from some pretty serious social anxiety that would make interacting with random strangers to be highly stressful. I would make suspicion that many people just watching from the outside could make accusations that two halves of my character don't add up that in many social justice situations I would be Chaotic Good in wanting to help people even if it would disrupt institutions, but when it comes to interacting with people I can be very keep my head down. A reason is that other people might not be able to tell how just interacting with strangers is not as even for me as other people. |
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nargun
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I mean, yes. But on the other hand the entire setting is fictional and created, so if there's a constraint on Elaina's actions it's there because the author put it there. And that means that we have a story about consequence child-rape because the author wanted to write a story about same, and... like, "why would you do that" becomes a pretty apt response. [the "Elaina can't do that" response basically comes from an analytic framework that sees "inconsistency" as the only problem a text can have. But some books can just be Bad consistently and thoroughly; problems with the author's intent rather than their success in achieving it.] EDIT: for "consequence child rape", read "consequence-free child rape" Last edited by nargun on Sun Oct 18, 2020 3:42 am; edited 1 time in total |
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ThatGuyWhoLikesThings
Posts: 1008 |
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Just gonna put this out there: the "just a passive traveler/neutral observer" excuse only really works if they are actually truly just an observer. It doesn't actually work when in both stories Elaina is in fact directly responsible for things proceeding and escalating in the way that they did. Certainly not solely responsible, but she has a clearly tangible role in each story that you can't really dismiss, nor can she, but then she justifies her inaction by pretending she never had anything to do with it. That's borderline sociopathic, and I don't have any faith the show will address this in any capacity going forward.
Plus, yeah, her personality has been incredibly inconsistent from episode to episode. |
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EPB
Posts: 3 |
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I think some peeps are still missing a point here in assuming the only good thing Elaina can do for Nino is free her.
All she has to do is tell the kid not to hand over the bottle. I'd buy the idea that she wasn't aware of the potential ramifications if she didn't immediately exposition to the viewer after that "sometimes kindness is damning" as if she was somehow above it all. It comes off distinctly as if the author is trying to frame it like it was always a bad idea and was always fated to end in tragedy. Which would work if Elaina hadn't also thrown kindling on the fire five minutes earlier by encouraging him to follow through. Note that she was overtly skeptical about the idea at the beginning of the episode and has also been depicted in prior episodes as being relatively intelligent and quick to join the dots. So it seems distinctly out of character to stumble here. Following her parent's advice to avoid danger would also make more sense if the events in either episode actually risked any danger but that's patently not true. The plant can't hurt her and no-one in the second half is any real threat to her and there's not material risk to doing something as little as providing the kid with advice. |
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Kelohmello
Posts: 14 |
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Sounds you're attempting to say here that "Elaina can't do that" is a thermian argument. It's not. A criticism leveraged at the diegesis has to be defended with the diegesis. Contriving some way to make the ending happy would feel hamfisted. The argument that it's out of character for her, or that she should have attempted to intervene and failed as someone else suggested earlier is a much better argument. My point here, I don't see anyone saying that to argue about the subtext. But speaking of the subtext: It also seems like you're implying that because the perpetrator in this story doesn't face consequences for rape that this is somehow inherently bad writing. ...No. That's the point. Nino is the victim of rape. She's experienced something outright horrifying. That's directly contrasted with the son of the rapist, a spoiled kid being taught that getting what he wants unconditionally is normal. He can't even comprehend that his present to Nino could conceivably hurt her, or that it's wrong to force her to accept it. The son is probably going to be like the father one day, and the punch is that he's innocent; he's a product of the environment his dad is raising him in. The one with all the power gets to shape the world. Calling it "a story about consequence-free child rape" is reductive. I think Elaina's inaction is an interesting choice in this episode and I'm waiting to see what that might mean for her character going forward. So currently, I like what they did. It's made me want to see more of this anime. |
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