Once again, it is Halloween, the second most important holiday in the magical girl calendar. Tonight, magical girls can go abroad without calling undue attention to themselves.
This year, I am dedicating International Cute Witch Day to Little Witch Academia. I much enjoyed the short film (it came out in 2013) some years back, but I admit I’ve not seen the widely popular television series that came after it and became available in the U.S. last year. It’s on my list.
For some reason, I barely remember what the short film was about, though I remember enjoying it. It was was an obviously Harry Potter-influenced story of quirky girls going to witch school, and it had some high-flying broom scenes with the kind of creative yet jerky animation for which Studio Trigger is known.
Speaking of Trigger, I finally got around to watching Kill la Kill about a year back, and it completely blew my mind. It might be the best skewering of the magical girl genre I’ve ever seen, because it not only mocked it mercilessly, but unlike the slew of grimdark shows we’ve had lately, demonstrated in the process that it actually understood what the genre is about. So I trust the studio to know how to handle magical girls.
If they could do magical girl warriors so well, they could probably do cute witches well, too, and the popularity of Little Witch Academia tends to confirm that.
