10 Second Anime - Witch Craft Works - Episode 12 [END]

Witch Craft Works - Episode 12 [END]

Evermillion's power saves the city, and dueling contracts keep our heroes alive. Back to peaceful days for Takamiya and Ayaka? Kinda sorta.

Week End blows up everything, but Takamiya puts everything back together, and somehow Ayaka exchanges her life for his when he used Evermillion's power. Week End is not a happy camper, and stabs him in the back, literally. Her plan was to take White Princess Evermillion in some fashion if he died, but she has to settle for leaving him alive and coming back at a later date with another plan.

I'll discuss this a little more in my final thoughts of the series, but we get an awful lot of Sherlock Holmes style explanation after-the-fact with this show. Long story short, Ayaka's contract with Evermillion supersedes Takamiya's more recent one, but all Evermillion did was rescind Ayaka's contract with Takamiya, returning his bit of magic that she uses for healing back to him, leaving him enough magic so he doesn't die. Man, these witches have to be lawyers to make stuff happen with their familiars. Which explains why even enemy familiars act like this if they're not fighting each other.

So, Takamiya has to make a new contract with Ayaka to wake her up, but he chickens out and kisses her forehead. Gah! Look at how luscious the animators made her lips! What's wrong with you Takamiya?!! Ahem.

To finish out the story, we see that Chronoire has her own agenda of having, uh, fun with other Tower Witches, and rounds up all of Week End's minions before finally incapacitating Week End herself. It isn't hard, since she used up all her magic fighting Ayaka. But then Mrs. Kagari steps in to tie up all the loose ends.

Week End's plan had taken years to plan and prepare, but she miscalculated on two fronts. Chronoire fed Takamiya her pill to loosen the seals, which is why he had more power than he should have to save the city. Also, she figured Kagari would take a week to recover her magic from putting all the souls of the citizens in stasis, but she was back to full power in only 20 hours. 20 hours! Workshop witches really don't play fair, but then they can't leave their cities, so I guess it's a fine tradeoff.

Things are back to normal after Mrs. Kagari defeats Chronoire, and it looks like they really compressed this fight down to fit it into this final half hour. However, back to normal means the Tower Witches are still picking fights with Ayaka, and while she's still recovering her magic, they might have a chance. Uh, no. Remember, she had no trouble taking out another Tower Witch with her bare hands, er, knee. The Basics, she called it. So, yes, overpowered Ayaka making the Tower Witches feel inadequate means back to normal. The End.

Final Thoughts: Witch Craft Works was a fun show, but it may have been a little too faithful to the source material in its adaptation. Ayaka is a main character who doesn't say much, and often did things without explanation, until they were explained much later. In a manga, a wall of text on a background image may work, but in a cartoon, we need more fluid exposition. It made me think of how Sherlock Holmes stories were written, where we see the main events which evoke mystery, but only find out later how to explain them from Holmes who collected his information out of sight of the reader. We were told and given hints he was doing something, but why, and what he found, only came out in the end. Same here for Witch Craft Works.

There is obviously a rich and intriguing back story between the Kagaris and the Takamiyas, but all those hints and flashbacks didn't help us out all that much for the 12 episode story, other than as characterization devices. Still, the planning to end the series with a city wide calamity was well paced, except for cramming too much into the last episode for the side stories. I wanted to spend more time with Evermillion and find out what her deal with penguins is. I mean, we now know what Takamiya's deal with penguins is because her world is his dream land. Perhaps if we had a 24 episode season, more of how this magic works, and how the Witches choose their familiars, or vice versa, could have been explained. How they were depicted working, and how all the witches' familiars thematically fit with their outfits and powers was still great.

The girls were gorgeous! The backgrounds were gorgeous. The dialog was funny, as were the slice of life moments. The characters were also fully developed, and just seeing them interact with our proxy Takamiya was a good device to get a sense of their motivations. It made me want to spend more time with them, which is a good sign for the success in bringing these characters to the animated screen.

I would recommend this show for anyone who wants a lighthearted magical girl slice of life show. You'll love the characters, the colors, the random humor which turns out not to be so random, and nobody dies, even if they get beat up a little. I have to knock it a little for trying to jam too much of the manga's details into the show when they didn't have time to explore them, leaving the last half hour of the final episode feeling rushed. Still, a beautiful show, with beautiful witches. The manga is still running, so I hope the producers' merchandise sells well enough to support another 12 episodes sometime in the future.