Mashle: Magic and Muscles

Episode 5

"Entitlement" has been the distinguishing element of the various bullies Mash has taken on so far through his anime series. It's not just that the succession of jerks our hero has bumped into at Easton Academy are the kind of private school elitists that are a dime a dozen in both real life and fiction. It's that they're dimly aware of the kind of setting they occupy and its propensity for bending to their super-powerful, specially-marked will. I noted last episode that Lance was suffering from a chronic case of Main Character Syndrome, and as this week's episode starts building up a bit of a longer form story arc for Mash and friends to deal with, it does so by introducing multiple new rivals, all self-assuredly centered in the same way.

Some of those new additions are pretty well primed to wind up befriended into Mash's party before all is said and done. Like Lance, newcomer Dot is already present and accounted for in the opening and ending sequences, so we can guess that his antagonism towards Mash is likely to settle into the same sort of amicable rivalry as is already being exercised by our favorite (?) sapphire-haired siscon. Being introduced as a hot-blooded delinquent type who espouses out loud the delusions-of-protagonist subtext of this story lets me appreciate him in concept, and I dig the aesthetics of his beatdown-stick-wrapped-in-barbed-wire wand. Magic may be for nerds, but using a weapon like that to specialize in beautifully blunt explosion magic almost mitigates my issues with the practice. On the other hand, Dot's outspoken schtick has become kind of one-note in just the half of an episode he's already been in, tempered by his aggravating incel-esque declarations of feeling frustratedly entitled to attention from girls.

I can presume that Dot is on-track to (hopefully) mellow out somehow and manifest a few more multitudes as the story goes on. Even this episode makes a point to demonstrate his scruples, showing that just because the wizards of this world are certain of their center in it, that need not necessarily pigeonhole them into an oppressive role. That lays out an arc for his assimilation apart from just being beaten into humility by Mash, especially as the latter seems to have even less interest in his unbeatable role as the satirical center of this narrative than in the previous episodes. It's always been part of the joke, but it really seems to be all they have for Mash to do in this one, whether he lists through Lance helping him with his homework or a host of hopeful bullies coming after him with naught but cream-puff-focused obliviousness.

That's fine enough given how many other threads this episode is setting up for a bigger clash in this scorpion-stalking storyline. There's Silva, who fulfills a more standard bully role separate from the layers we've glimpsed of Dot in this episode. And there's the girl Mash and Dot bump into in the forest, who centers herself not with raw power, but rather with spells of romantic manipulation which compels others to see her as their main love interest. That makes for something of a different spin on that idea of magically-engineered entitlement propelling all these characters. And the show thankfully doesn't drag the reveal out past her initial shows of affection towards Dot, since it's easy to figure out that something suspicious is going on. I have seen a television show or two in my time, I can read these situations.

Even with a few attacks of magical rocks or explosions, this episode still feels like it's working in setup mode pulling all these different characters together to clash. So amongst all that, Mashle expounds a bit on the organization dorm system the school operates under. See, they've got three houses, not four, it's totally different from Harry Potter! It's faintly described so far, but you already get the sense of how the writing is painting the denizens of the Lang house, the seeming Slytherin stand-in, as ostensible out-and-out villains whose unscrupulous ambitions make everything worse for everyone they see as below them. That's compounded by us getting an actual look at the Divine Visionaries, who turn out to be a perhaps-expected squad of shonen-series minibosses, operating under the purview of the Lang dorm's machinations. That gives us a clarified signal about what Mash will be properly opposing eventually, even as he's still dealing with upstart nuisances at this early stage.

Hinting at that structural style still leaves me wishing the episode could find more for Mash himself to do as he's drawn into these struggles. For this episode at least, it seems a lot of the social satire of this wizarding world is simply in continuing to gesture at its oppressive elements, without giving the likes of Mash or even Dot to call out what could or should be done differently. Yes, this is still the beginning of a longer story in a genre not exactly known for its turbo-charged pacing. And it is still decently funny so far. Maybe that's just a sign of the appreciative potential I'm continually sensing in Mashle, that I'm anxiously waiting for and looking forward to the more impressive ideas it can get to once it gets going. Or maybe, like all the enemies in Mash's orbit at this moment, I'm just being entitled.

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.