Walpurgisnacht: ‘Little Witch Academia’

Little Witch Academia, directed by Yô Yoshinari. Written by Yô Yoshinari and Michiru Shimada. Music by Michiru Oshima. Studio Trigger, 2017. 25 episodes of 22 minutes (approx. 9 hours and 10 minutes).

Available on Netflix.

Today is Walpurgisnacht, the second most important day in the magical-girl calendar, so now is a good time to discuss one of the most popular cute witch franchises of recent memory, Little Witch Academia.

This title first made its appearance in 2013 and 2015 as a duo of short films that were generally well received. The original film once had its home on Crunchyroll (if memory serves), but a quick check reveals it is there no longer.

The concept was adapted into a 25-episode television series in 2017, and it found a home on Netflix shortly thereafter, where it still resides. A mostly pleasant and sometimes silly coming-of-age story, Little Witch Academia is basically “Trigger does Harry Potter.”

Background

Studio Trigger was famous even before it existed because its founders were the creators of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagaan, which became an instant classic of the mecha genre because of its blend of corny humor, over-the-top action, bizarre animation style, and sweeping science fiction epic. Once they had their own studio, their first official act was to attempt to do the same thing for magical girls that they did for mecha by creating Kill la Kill, which is not as magnificent as Gurren Lagaan but impressive in its own right.

Trigger was coming right off the end of Kill la Kill when it dived into Little Witch Academia. Though Kill la Kill is infamous for its raunchiness, Little Witch Academia is a surprisingly wholesome work of family entertainment, though it takes a long time to get up to speed and ends up uneven in presentation.

Synopsis

The story takes place in an alternate world where magic was formerly commonplace but is now on the wane both because the energy necessary to produce magic has been draining and because technology has moved in to take its place. Akko, an impulsive and scatterbrained girl, fell in love with magic as a small child when she saw the show of a magical entertainer named Shiny Chariot. Determined to become just like Chariot, Akko enrolls in Luna Nova Academy, one of the last remaining schools to train witches.

Although Akko is in love with magic and idolizes Shiny Chariot, she soon finds out that most of the world doesn’t share her views. Magic, having weakened over the years, and being unable to compete with modern machinery, is scorned by the government and the people at large. In response to this, witches have grown more rigid and set in their ways; Shiny Chariot is out of favor with them because of her showboating, and they distrust Akko because she doesn’t come from an established witch family.

On top of this, Akko soon becomes disillusioned when she discovers the difference between having a goal and actually working toward it. She wants to be just like Shiny Chariot in her magical ability, but when it comes to actually studying magic, she’s a slacker. And it also turns out that she doesn’t have much talent: In particular, she can’t manage to ride a broom.

Despite her disadvantages, she has a few things going for her: After a misadventure in a magical forest, she happens upon a magical staff that is none other than the Shiny Rod, the wand once wielded by Chariot herself.

She also manages to make friends with two other misfits. First is the quiet and bespectacled Lotte, who’s madly in love with a massive series of chick-lit novels that are an obvious parody of both Twilight and Outlander. The second is the brooding and misanthropic Sucy, who loves brewing potions, especially potions made from mushrooms.

The Story Arc

At first, the series is mostly episodic, depicting the daily antics at the academy caused largely by Akko’s combination of high energy and low competence. Over time, it gradually builds a plot, mostly surrounding Akko’s interactions with two professors. One is Ursula, a meek astrology teacher who becomes Akko’s mentor.

It is no spoiler to state that Ursula is actually Shiny Chariot herself, but the reason she has hidden her identity forms a major twist in the plot. The second professor is the brusque, strong-willed, and innovative Croix Meridies, who arrives late in the series, brandishing a new form of magic blended with technology and promising a revival of the witches’ status in society. Croix’s ongoing conflict with Ursula makes up much of the plot, though Akko herself is largely oblivious to it.

In addition to the politics at the academy itself, there are troubles brewing in the world at large, mostly in the form of politicians who have nothing but contempt for magic and view it as largely worthless. Akko has a perfunctory love story with a boy named Andrew Hanbridge, the son of a major political figure; according to rumor, Akko and Andrew were supposed to be an official item by the time the show was over, but writer-director Yô Yoshinari hated that particular subplot and curbed it, so it ends up petering out. It’s like a creator committing executive meddling against his own work.

Commentary

Little Witch Academia is certainly entertaining, a gentle and mostly pleasant story of girls growing up and indulging in over-the-top comedy, though I’m not convinced it works better as a full-length series than it did as a short film. The original short was cute and self-contained, whereas much of the series feels like padding.

There’s also the matter of Studio Trigger being … well, Studio Trigger. This studio built its reputation on sheer audacity, combining a Looney Tunes-like style with complex story lines and outrageous humor and action. The motto of Gurren Lagann was, “Kick reason to the curb,” and Kill la Kill followed that up with the less quotable, “Not making sense is kind of our thing.” Characters in both shows, especially the latter, pull deus ex machinas out of nowhere and pass them off with cheeky remarks. It works in those cases because those shows have insolence and illogic baked into their very premises.

Little Witch Academia employs the same brand of humor, though it does so less consistently, but it doesn’t pay off in the same way simply because this isn’t the same kind of show. This is a contemporary fantasy set in a school, so the magic it presents necessarily needs to follow rules. Trigger’s previous work proclaimed, “Screw your rules”—and it was great. But that can’t fly here. So when the characters pull Looney Tunes stunts, such as a scene in which Akko hauls a giant cannon out of nowhere and fires herself from it so she won’t lose a race, it’s disruptive and obnoxious rather than funny. The same goes for the action sequences: There is an absolutely magnificent wire-fu sequence in which Ursula defies gravity to dodge various high-tech traps laid by the devious Croix, and it’s certainly exciting, but within the context of Little Witch Academia, it just makes no damn sense.

Themes

Thematically, the show’s central message appears to be that achieving your dreams means buckling down and working hard. That’s certainly a good message I can get behind.

More interesting to me, however—though not fully developed—is the conflict between magic and technology. It is strongly indicated, though never stated explicitly, that magic is exclusive to women, and we never see a warlock amongst the witches. At the same time, the politicians antagonistic to magic are exclusively men. The one character who seems able to move easily in both worlds, Croix, who has combined magic with technology, wears her hair in a short boy-cut and has a generally androgynous air. The show seems to suggest that the conflict between magic and tech is also a battle between the sexes. Although the grand finale naturally presents a certain glorification of magic, it by no means presents a solution or resolution to this antagonism.

(Shameless plug: By coincidence, my magical girl novel Jake and the Dynamo depicts something similar with its all-female magical religious hierarchy and all-male secular government. Volume 2 coming soon!)

It is also unfortunate that the implications of this alternate world do not get explored. The existence of magic is common knowledge, and once upon a time, society relied heavily on witches before technology began to develop. It would be interesting to see what assumptions or social institutions such a world might have produced, but there are hints the writers haven’t thought these things through. For example, at one point, the characters casually mention—without elaboration—a time of witch-burning: This is a common trope in stories featuring witches, but in the world of Little Witch Academia, such an event is puzzling, at least at first glance. A burning of witches, in this world, would make as much sense as a crusade to smash up computers and cars. Such a thing could conceivably happen, but it requires explanation.

Conclusion

In any case, this is overall a fun series. I want to say it should take itself more seriously or be less manic in places—but that would probably make it less fun. It’s an excellent cute-witch series on the whole, so I suggest binge-watching it on Walpurgisnacht.

It is, after all, a safer and more wholesome activity than calling up Yog-Sothoth, whom you cannot put down.

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