Mashle: Magic and Muscles

Episode 8

One fun side effect of being a keen genre riff like Mashle is that the series necessarily has a solid sense of the structure and storytelling of said genre. Much of that, early on, is in service of subverting such setups for humor value, having Mash use his muscles to abruptly Gordian-Knot-cut most magically complex challenges. But as things grow in scope, and we get to those more played-straight shonen battle instances I talked about last week, something like Mashle gets to show off how it can keep those fights feeling fun and fundamental even without undercutting them at all turns. That's a good sign, seeing as how this episode cliffhangers with all our heroes split up, set to do battle with their own prescribed opponents in classic Shonen Jump fashion.

The proof of concept before that comes in Dot's battle with the pretty boy standing in our heroes' way halfway through this episode. It's all laid out in an underground arena not unlike something seen in Hunter X Hunter, with Mash and the others, happy to hang back and allow Dot to deal with the direct one-on-one confrontation (they're technically in a hurry to save Lemon, and there's no reason why they have to abide by this guy's structured challenge apart from an unspoken respect for conventions). The dude is downright designed as a diametric opposition to Dot, being a behatted handsome fellow whose plant-based vine magic you'd think would be a natural target for Dot's fiery explosions. So that allows for some solid back-and-forth as far as the tension of the battle goes.

I will say that as the series goes on, Dot's main driving gimmick has already gotten a bit tiresome. His hatred of conventionally attractive, popular guys does, I know, tie into Mashle's overall ideas about people's perceptions of themselves and others as main characters at the center of any given narrative. But Dot's expression of that generally just devolves into samey screaming, and the main grievance of itself honestly swings a bit too close to incel territory for me at times. I worry that Mashle, as somewhat of a satire, isn't going to be concerned with character growth to the point that Dot might grow out of this into some areas of self-improvement. Then again, Lance has managed to become a bit more of a balanced straight-man against the rest of the group who didn't even mention his siscon tendencies once this episode, so perhaps there's hope yet.

Regardless of the personality motivation driving it, Dot stepping up does provide a solidly structured little fight here. There's a satisfying build-up to him being unable to counter the vines and his provocation tactics in placing the bombs. And having them turn out to be time bombs rather than step-on traps plays with the subversion that drives other storytelling elements of an irreverent series like Mashle. Plus you know I'm happy to have a series like this where the explanations of its magic usage are more about the practical applications of what they can do in battle as opposed to detailing any of the specific granular systems that make it work. It's fictional magic, it all ultimately just does what the plot needs it to anyway, so playing off the fact that neither Dot's opponent nor us in the audience would know what magical time bombs actually look like is a clever use of those conceptual constructs.

Its structurally sound principles build up the overall plot that is this coming confrontation with Magia Lupus. It is indeed a little predictable; No sooner had I found myself once again wishing that Lemon would get to do something other than her getting magically puppeteered away as a rescue motivation for the boys to chase after. Though it's nice to have regular reinforcement of just how universally good Mash is despite his blase demeanor, and it does net us a scene of him leveraging a secret floor door open that's pretty funny alongside all the less amusing humor of characters just repeating their bits.

There's also even some expounding on the main gimmicks of Mashle as the party confronts their opponents for next week. Turns out I might have spoken too soon on the expected wrong reads of Mash by the masked man (who turns out to go by the moniker "Abyss Razor", which is a money name!). As he utilized a sword to dispatch some rando at the beginning of this episode, I jokingly questioned if his "magic" was just stabbing people. But it turns out that is the case, with Razor being a magic-less mortal just like Mash, with the mask thus presumably there to hide his lack of face-lines. So between him, and the overarching story element from earlier this episode about students having their magic temporarily stolen, it looks like the show will be delving a bit deeper now into that magical meritocracy structure. That I am excited to follow up on this, with the show proven it can handle regular fights as well as instilling some faith in the coming battles that don't involve Mash.

Rating:

Mashle: Magic and Muscles is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris is keeping busy keeping up with the new anime season and is excited to have you along. You can also find him writing about other stuff over on his blog, as well as spamming fanart retweets on his Twitter, for however much longer that lasts.