Highlights
- Wistoria: Wand and Sword focuses on thrilling action sequences over compelling story or character development.
- Episode three continues to repeat the same story points, with the dungeon scenes being more enjoyable.
- The promise of a Grand Magic Festival and a deeper lore hint at potential exciting developments in future episodes.
Wistoria: Wand and Sword is one of those anime where you have to know what to expect before you jump into the series. If you expect a compelling story with great character development and larger-than-life objectives, well, this is not the anime for you. What this series has to offer is the good old-fashioned thrilling action sequences.
Not to say that the story or the characters are bad, but based on what they’ve delivered in the past two episodes, the battle scenes are clearly where this series shines the most. It’s not even an exaggeration to say that every other story element in Wistoria is created for the sake of enhancing the action. At least, that is the case for the two episodes that fans have seen so far. So let’s see if that is still the case for episode three.
Same Story, Different Episodes
Episode three tells the same story that has already been told since the first episode. You could argue that it somewhat expands on the premise a little bit, but at its core, this episode is still focused on finding different ways to tell the same thing.
Different Ways to Tell the Same Thing
There are a couple of main points that the story keeps telling the viewers since the beginning of this series:
- The main character, Will Serfort, may not be able to use magic, but he is an exceptional swordsman.
- Most of the magicians in the academy despise Will, look down on him, and want him gone.
- The only reason why Will keeps working hard in the academy despite all the mockery and humiliation that he receives every day is because he wants to fulfill his promise to his childhood friend, who has now become one of the best mages in the country.
These three messages have been said in the last two episodes, and it is repeated once again in the third one. To be fair though, Will said it in different circumstances to different sets of people. But at some point, fans need to know more about the story other than these three talking points. So hopefully, future episodes can come up with something more interesting to tell.
“Even if I can’t use magic! Even if everything tries to tear us apart! I’ll come for you no matter what! Just like I promised…”
– Will Serfort, Episode 3
Can’t Wait to Get to the Dungeon
All three episodes of Wistoria: Wand and Sword come with roughly the same structure. The first part takes place within the majestic halls and the spacious rooms of the academy, while the second part takes place in the damp and dangerous dungeon. Up in the academy, the enemies are self-righteous mages. Down in the dungeon, the enemies are bloodthirsty monsters.
Unfortunately, the story that happens in the academy feels repetitive and slightly boring, while the action sequences that happen in the dungeon are simply way more fun and interesting to watch. In fact, we are often tempted to just skip the first part and go straight to the dungeon instead. It seems that the story has become nothing more than a light appetizer to the heavy and meaty action sequences.
In Praise of Action Sequences
In the first episode, Will defeats a giant bipedal monster with his sword. In the second episode, he defeats a self-righteous mage with his trusted sword. This time around, however, his sword is not strong enough to hurt the monster. So he comes up with a different way to subjugate the monster.
Different Ways to Subjugate a Monster
The sight of Will jumping around before eventually unleashing numerous deadly slashes at his opponent is truly marvelous to behold. That being said, even intense fight scenes can get boring if the protagonist keeps repeating the same moves over and over again. Fortunately for us, Wistoria acknowledges this issue and delivers a new way to subjugate a monster in this episode.
The main enemy of episode 3 is a colossal ice monster that happens to be impervious to physical attacks. Since Will already knows that this is the kind of monster that he will face for this particular challenge, he already prepared something special that he never used before. A tool that allows him to instantly destroy various parts of the monsters at the same time. He prepares some bombs. The introduction of this simple tool deeply enhanced the thrill and excitement of the battle.
Electrifying Animation
As we’ve mentioned quite a few times already, electrifying battle animation is one of the greatest strengths of Wistoria: Wand and Sword. And as expected, this episode also delivers the same level of thrill and intensity during the fighting scenes. From the trembling roar of the colossal ice monster to the ear-splitting series of fiery explosions to the destruction caused by both the monster and Will’s bombing campaign, the animation looks so fluid, smooth, and deeply vibrant.
A Promise for Something Great and Exciting
Fans have been moaning about Wistoria’s generic story across all three episodes. No watcher is expecting something grand and surprising; just a dash of excitement is all they need. As it turns out, the end of episode three seems to promise just that. There are two important things that are revealed in this episode. The upcoming Grand Magic Festival and a shocking secret that deepens the lore of the Magic Kingdom.
A Grand Magic Festival
Near the end of the episode, the show finally reveals the mythical Magia Vander, a title bestowed upon the most powerful magicians in the country. One of them offhandedly mentioned something about a magic festival and how they could potentially find a good candidate through the festival. Following the tropes of the action shonen anime series, this could only mean one thing. A tournament.
From Dragon Ball to My Hero Academia, almost every action Shonen series has a tournament arc. Since Wistoria loves to insert popular anime tropes into its story, it’s highly likely that the aforementioned festival will have a tournament element to it. Tournaments may be one of the most overly-used tropes in anime, but fans are still excited about seeing it.
Deeper Lore for the Magic Kingdom
Another important thing that was mentioned by one of the Magia Vander is regarding the sky. According to the legend, the beautiful blue sky that everybody could see and enjoy was actually an artificial sky. A long time ago, the original Magia Vander protected humanity by creating the artificial sky. Based on what the current Magia Vander said near the end of episode three, it’s highly likely that there is a problem or at least a complication regarding the artificial sky. Not only that, it seems that the situation is much more dire than initially thought, but nobody except a select few knows anything about this issue.
Every fantasy story needs a deep and compelling lore. The legend surrounding the foundation of the country and the original Magia Vander seems to be the main lore for this series. Not only that, based on the little information that fans know thus far, this whole artificial sky debacle certainly sounds super fascinating, to say the least. Looking forward to finding out more about it.
Conclusion
The third episode of Wistoria: Wand and Sword has a tremendous gap between its highs and lows. On the one hand, the story has become quite repetitive while still remaining as generic as possible. On the other hand, fans get to see a brand new style of fighting that is superbly animated, just like most other action sequences that watchers have seen from the series thus far. Hopefully, they can improve the story while still delivering the usual high-quality animation, especially during combat, in future episodes.
Wistoria: Wand and Sword is available to stream on Crunchyroll.
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