Little Witch Academia TV Series

[Kazu-kun]

Originally Posted by dniv

Kazu-kun I disagree. I'd be willing to see much more of this show. There are always more issues to consider. The protagonists worked out one thing, but the most important question is what Akko would be like after losing the staff/stuff that defined her as a person before that. She was special because of that really, not just because of her belief in herself. I argue that would make everything interesting since everything in this show has revolved around her.

The show lost a lot of the conflict it had going for. Akko has been struggling not just to become a good witch, but to be recognized. She was antagonized by the teachers (specially Finneran) and the students (specially Hana and Barabara and even Diana). Now she got their respect. She still has to improve as a witch, but the conflict with her peers and the system the school represented has been resolved.

Along with that, all the character dynamics have changed. A lot of the fun in the first cour was a result of Akko being a trouble maker, but now she has calmed down considerably. Sucy was a huge troll and that was really fun too, but now she has gone soft and shows her caring side to Akko more openly. That's cute to see as a resolution for her character but is not nearly as fun exactly for that same reason. Diana herself has gone really soft too, even more so than Sucy. She's not even a rival now but more like an onee-san character to Akko. That's cute too for the endgame, but it doesn't provide conflict to work with. Amanda and Constance opened up to Akko, and even Hanna and Barbara stopped shitting on her.

Like I said in my previous post. These are all characters that reached endgame. That means they have resolved all their internal issues and are more honest about their feelings. Sure, they could do a story about how Akko would get by without the rod like you suggested, but with all the characters showing respect and support for her openly like they do now, it would be pretty dull. There wouldn't be nearly as much sense of struggle.

[grecefar]

they can do a movie like tamako market, akko and diana ship it's popular now.

[Kazu-kun]

Yeah, a movie or ova sounds more viable.

[blakstealth]

They can always make a movie or second season where the tensions between the two countries hit an all-time high, and the diplomatic relations deteriorate to the point where they go to war. Then the Parliament/government decides to militarize and weaponize the witches to gain the upper hand.

edit: Now that I'm thinking about it, it almost sounds just like Izetta. eh, nevermind lol.

Maybe introduce aliens or something....

[alex_drian]

Originally Posted by grecefar

they can do a movie like tamako market, akko and diana ship it's popular now.

Well, I don't know about the ship but in that sense is possible, I say Tamako Market Love Story kinda come of nowhere. Maybe Yuto appears for cause problems?

[Tenzen12]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

I agree. I didn't like that item of wardrobe from the beginning. That black leotard-like outfit really amped up her sexuality. I thought she outshone Croix in that department during the last few episodes.

Amping sexuality of person in question is not what you want from teachers wardrobe, though.

[Slayerx]

Originally Posted by dniv

@Slayerx First off, you should know I think that the particular country that was going to be hit by the nuke doesn't matter. I'll explain why later.

I agree that the weak point of the series was its pacing. Because of that pacing they couldn't fit in a lot of things like character screen time. I disagree with your analysis on the source of the final conflict. It was foreshadowed throughout the entire second cour.

Spoiler for length:

Hatred and anger are just as good motivators as awe and wonder. But if we look at what happened to Croix, I instead see that as satire/irony (because in the worst case, I can always appeal to postmodernism to ignore the creator's intent). Croix was punished because she tried to forcibly ignore tradition (because she wasn't picked) and activate the grand triskelion all by herself. I actually thought this whole story arc idea was very clever. I feel like the show was saying that Croix failed because she tried to ignore witches collected wisdom and tried to build her own system (that operated by itself and she didn't understand its blindspots even though it was getting the right results) and the whole point was that after the system started achieving everything by itself during ep 24, this blind desire to continue moving towards the original goal as well as Croix's lack of knowledge about the intricacies of her own system, led to everything going wrong and her failing. She failed because she didn't realize that she needed the other wand to activate the world reconstruction magic and her machines went haywire because there was too much about gathering hatred energy that she hadn't sufficiently tested. Basically, the show was implying: if you try to do everything by yourself, then you're much more likely to f*ck up badly because the real world is intricate and if you try to build your own system yourself, then it's more likely than not that you'll f*ck up a lot of things by trying to do so.

Aside from that I thought that the final episode was very interesting and original. Whether it was the A.I. itself that was showing the broadcast to everyone because it assumed it was going to win and using that broadcast was a good way to sink despair into the whole world if it succeeded in its goal of nuking a country or whether it was woodward or the grand reconstruction magic or croix showing that broadcast to the whole world is unclear, I think it's interesting that they decided to leave that vague and I think that it was a brilliant idea (for the creators). That was honestly the most meta thing I'd ever seen because that was literally them giving a commentary on the effect of watching anime in general and how it can move people's emotions (in this case the video was real, but it was probably so surreal for most people that it might not have even seemed real in the first place). When you watch a show, you're basically immersed in it and treat it like it's real (though I guess that depends on the show, lol). Also, episode 25 was definitely heavily symbolic and I think it really shouldn't have been taken that literally. Everything from going up to the sky by working together to fighting a nuke (and we all know how Japan feels about Nuclear Weapons and their aftereffects on the world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godzilla_(1954_film) (the original Japanese godzilla movie was a critique of the U.S.'s action of dropping nukes on Japan in WWII for those people who don't know). I think that's the darkest fridge horror I've found so far. Notice how Akko the Japanese girl and Diana Cavendish the British (standing in for the west I guess) girl together defeated the nuke heading at some country (because that's Japan's job as the only country ever hit by a Nuke and so it knows how much it hates them; that's literally the motto of the nuclear memorial museum in Hiroshima) and note how Andrew was like we should tell them (the unnamed country that doesn't matter except on a symbolic level as a country possibly threatened with the fact) that they're going to be hit by a nuke, even if they blame us for it, it's still better than letting innocents getting hurt. Lol, that ep 25 was just savage. I think it was just amazing imo, one of the best I've ever seen. It's just super symbolic. You get what you put into interpreting it IMO.

Yes i get the part about Croix's actions blowing up in her face, what feels slipshod is that this all ended up taking the form of some random hate missile. I don't even know where that missile came from; in the last episode the killed Criox's monster and were all happy and then suddenly we cut to the missile flying in the air with no clue where in launched from. Criox designed her system to gather magically charged hatred so that she could use the power to break the seal, so why then does her AI suddenly decide to become a missile and blow up some other country? Usually when you have a plot about an AI running wild, the AI goes to some kind of logical extreme of what it was designed to do. This feels like the AI decided to just did something else just to create our climax. It would have made more sense if criox built a system to create hatred not just to gather it. Also i felt like the missile was just a plain boring final enemy... its not even clear exactly what the missile was supposed to do; was it just gonna "spread hatred" or was it actually going to explode and kill people. Its threat just felt too vague. That's why i would have preferred something like a monster attacking a city since that puts lives that we can see in very immediate danger. Its just about good build up and creating excitement.

And a reason why i highlighted how we have no name for "that country" is really to highlight that i feel that this part of the story was not well thought out. We don't know the name's of the countries, or why there are even any tensions. All we know is a bunch of people got angry over a soccer match and now they are on the brink of war... And even that just makes things sound more ridiculous. What's more is that this whole conflict between countries has no real baring on the plot. It has no purpose. The only relevance is that criox needed a source of hatred to fuel her magic, but this conflict between nations was not needed; the riots gave us plenty of fuel for hatred, and if she used her app on a worldwide level she'd probably find more than enough hatred around the world to fuel her magic. Simply put, this whole conflict between nations had a very flimsy foundation; Why should a i care about a conflict i know nothing about? Heck the fact that tensions are flaring because of a soccer match makes their conflict sound immature... Their conflict isn't even really part of the central theme's of the series; this is a series about achieving your dreams, not about the horrors of war. it all felt like an unnecessary distraction rather than a pivotal plot point

Heck thinking about it, the monster fight from the second ova actually achieved similar result. The town was in danger and it was up to Akko and her friends to save the day, but their magic wasn't enough and needed to get extra energy from the crowd believing in them. And as far as final conflict's go, i'd say i was much more invested in the final fight with the giant from the OVA than i was with the magic nuke



Come to think of it, another thing that was never made clear is exactly what Criox wanted to do with the world reconstruction magic. Chariot made a big deal about stopping her but if all criox wanted to do was restore magic to the world then there wouldn't really be any meaning in trying to stop her. Criox's method certainly should have been stopped, by by the time Chariot stepped in Criox had already finished collecting the magic she needed; the time to stop criox had come and gone. That final race for the magic in ep 24 would have made more sense if Criox had some kind of negative wish she wanted to fulfill with the reconstruction magic

Originally Posted by Kazu-kun

Yeah, a movie or ova sounds more viable.

One thing i think would be a good idea is a manga. A manga would be a lot cheaper to make and could run long enough to cover more than what an OVA or a movie could cover. Depending on on how well the manga does that could even convert some storylines into OVA's later if they like. Sure Trigger is not a manga studio, but maybe they could have one of their writer's team up with a manga artist or something

Honestly it kind of bugged me that they tried to force that bit about the girl's being the new nine witches at the end. The characters just simply didn't have enough build up for something like that. I mean of the 9, I'd say only 4 of them actually got proper development. Sucy and Lotte fell to the sidelines in the second half of the series, Amanda and Constance got a bit of focus but not nearly enough, and Jasminka was just a one note character. I don't think a 25 episode long series could provide enough screen time to give such development. I feel like the idea should have been shelved and saved for a sequel manga series where they would have a lot more time to develop the cast... heck i think i would have liked it if Hanna and Barbara could have been worked in, though they would need some HEAVY work; it did kind of bug me how they didn't have much individuality

[Magewolf]

Originally Posted by Slayerx

Yes i get the part about Croix's actions blowing up in her face, what feels slipshod is that this all ended up taking the form of some random hate missile. I don't even know where that missile came from; in the last episode the killed Criox's monster and were all happy and then suddenly we cut to the missile flying in the air with no clue where in launched from. Criox designed her system to gather magically charged hatred so that she could use the power to break the seal, so why then does her AI suddenly decide to become a missile and blow up some other country? Usually when you have a plot about an AI running wild, the AI goes to some kind of logical extreme of what it was designed to do. This feels like the AI decided to just did something else just to create our climax. It would have made more sense if criox built a system to create hatred not just to gather it. Also i felt like the missile was just a plain boring final enemy... its not even clear exactly what the missile was supposed to do; was it just gonna "spread hatred" or was it actually going to explode and kill people. Its threat just felt too vague. That's why i would have preferred something like a monster attacking a city since that puts lives that we can see in very immediate danger. Its just about good build up and creating excitement.

And a reason why i highlighted how we have no name for "that country" is really to highlight that i feel that this part of the story was not well thought out. We don't know the name's of the countries, or why there are even any tensions. All we know is a bunch of people got angry over a soccer match and now they are on the brink of war... And even that just makes things sound more ridiculous. What's more is that this whole conflict between countries has no real baring on the plot. It has no purpose. The only relevance is that criox needed a source of hatred to fuel her magic, but this conflict between nations was not needed; the riots gave us plenty of fuel for hatred, and if she used her app on a worldwide level she'd probably find more than enough hatred around the world to fuel her magic. Simply put, this whole conflict between nations had a very flimsy foundation; Why should a i care about a conflict i know nothing about? Heck the fact that tensions are flaring because of a soccer match makes their conflict sound immature... Their conflict isn't even really part of the central theme's of the series; this is a series about achieving your dreams, not about the horrors of war. it all felt like an unnecessary distraction rather than a pivotal plot point

Heck thinking about it, the monster fight from the second ova actually achieved similar result. The town was in danger and it was up to Akko and her friends to save the day, but their magic wasn't enough and needed to get extra energy from the crowd believing in them. And as far as final conflict's go, i'd say i was much more invested in the final fight with the giant from the OVA than i was with the magic nuke



Come to think of it, another thing that was never made clear is exactly what Criox wanted to do with the world reconstruction magic. Chariot made a big deal about stopping her but if all criox wanted to do was restore magic to the world then there wouldn't really be any meaning in trying to stop her. Criox's method certainly should have been stopped, by by the time Chariot stepped in Criox had already finished collecting the magic she needed; the time to stop criox had come and gone. That final race for the magic in ep 24 would have made more sense if Criox had some kind of negative wish she wanted to fulfill with the reconstruction magic



One thing i think would be a good idea is a manga. A manga would be a lot cheaper to make and could run long enough to cover more than what an OVA or a movie could cover. Depending on on how well the manga does that could even convert some storylines into OVA's later if they like. Sure Trigger is not a manga studio, but maybe they could have one of their writer's team up with a manga artist or something

Honestly it kind of bugged me that they tried to force that bit about the girl's being the new nine witches at the end. The characters just simply didn't have enough build up for something like that. I mean of the 9, I'd say only 4 of them actually got proper development. Sucy and Lotte fell to the sidelines in the second half of the series, Amanda and Constance got a bit of focus but not nearly enough, and Jasminka was just a one note character. I don't think a 25 episode long series could provide enough screen time to give such development. I feel like the idea should have been shelved and saved for a sequel manga series where they would have a lot more time to develop the cast... heck i think i would have liked it if Hanna and Barbara could have been worked in, though they would need some HEAVY work; it did kind of bug me how they didn't have much individuality

I think the Grand Triskelion used the tools it found laying around to restore magic,which included Criox's left over hate magic. That is why you ended up with a slow speed missile chase watched by the whole world.

As for why Chariot went all out to stop Criox i can think of many reasons. She had no real idea of what the seal was breaking it might, destroy the Grand Triskelion, release all its magic power at once and destroy the world, or just not work and blowback and kill Criox. And Criox was not acting very trustworthy so letting her have the power to reshape the world seemed like a very bad idea.

[Kitsu Breaker]

The show had very good moment, i will say one of the best of the year but I think we can improved with just little changes
Like for example, make Akko know about the search of the seven world more early, like that episode when Wood offere change her destiny, and use more random episode to the wake up the world and not wait two or tree episode to new words.
Also, remove Andrew, he really really was irrelevant and not very fun

[Tokkan]

First 13 episodes are now on Netflix with English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Turkish and Japanese audio but it seems due to a glitch certain dubs (including the English dub) are missing for select episodes.

Edit: The German, Polish and Turkish dubs have apparently been removed (for now?) but now every episode has English dub available.

[Funkatron]

Originally Posted by Tokkan

First 13 episodes are now on Netflix with English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Turkish and Japanese audio but it seems due to a glitch certain dubs (including the English dub) are missing for select episodes.

Edit: The German, Polish and Turkish dubs have apparently been removed (for now?) but now every episode has English dub available.

Thanks for the heads up. I do have a concern: since we are going to have people who kept track of the Japanese release and those who wait for the Netflix release, should the mods consider doing two discussion threads for shows picked up by Netflix?

[Mad Pierrot]

Just marathoned the series. I liked it but I think the best episode was when Akko entered into Sucy's mind due to how the animators outdid themselves.

The missile threat felt unneeded to me. I think they could have ended it with the Star Wars-like episode.

By the way, wasn't Ursula's identity kind of obvious to everybody? Even in the first episode there is high focus on her. Nevertheless, the series was quite good

[Slayerx]

Originally Posted by Kitsu Breaker

The show had very good moment, i will say one of the best of the year but I think we can improved with just little changes
Like for example, make Akko know about the search of the seven world more early, like that episode when Wood offere change her destiny, and use more random episode to the wake up the world and not wait two or tree episode to new words.
Also, remove Andrew, he really really was irrelevant and not very fun

Well i'm not sure if i would cut out Andrew entirely, but i would vastly downplay him. The point of his character seemed to be to show the common attitude towards magic, but not enough is done with his character to really justify how much screen time he got. Heck he and Akko end up having the same conversation 3 times (andrew disparages magic, Akko talks of her dreams). The only time his character did work was in the first episode when that conversation was new and then in diana's episode where he provided some additional perspective in what was going on with Diana. Other than that, he doesn't really have much to do and he's not even that entertaining of a character in his own right.

As far as changes go... for the first half of the series, I would have the dragon and the zombie episode reworked; good ideas, terrible execution. And if we are cutting down on Andrew then we don't really need the love bee episode, though the episode did have some entertaining bits like Sucy's mischief and Lotte getting a date (that was just adorable)

As for second season... Its a bit hard to tell what i would cut and what i would keep since there are a lot of great episodes. My biggest complaint is the lack of Sucy and Lotte... So first i would cut out the first fight with Criox and Chariot; the fight was nice, but that episode didn't amount to much. It was just an overblown way of telling us that Criox was a threat and chariot was on to her. Instead i'd use that extra time to work in another Sucy episode; not necessarily important, but Sucy is always entertaining. The patience word episode was the weakest and needs the most work(seriously, they gave Akko a curse to break that had a time limit, in an episode about patience); perhaps see if that could be reworked into a more Lotte focused episode since it does take place in her home town. Amanda would still get an episode, but if we are cutting down Andrew then we can work a different plotline, perhaps one that would allow Sucy and Lotte to have a bit more screen time instead of getting totally sidelined.

The final conflict of the series i think needed more work... first, as i mentioned above, i feel like Criox was lacking when it came to motivation. Her methods were bad enough to give her the villain label, but she didn't seem to have a villainous goal in mind for the world reconstruction magic. That's fine in and of itself, but without that evil goal, there's actually not much reason for Chariot to go after like she did; the time to stop her had came and gone. Perhaps Criox could have wanted witches to rule the world. Though this would still end with an anti-climax where criox can't even use the magic... as for the final monster; again, i feel like that missile didn't make sense. Though it could with a bit of tweeking. For instance, instead of croix just gathering people's anger, she could have designed her robots to spread fear and anger; Her robots could have screwed up the soccer match to start the riots, or caused the riots to turn more violent. This way, when her machines lose to Akko and the shiny rod, they decide the most logical move is to create more fear and anger to gain more power, and thus it attacks a city which would bring us to our final climax... Though i would have had Amanda and her group play a smaller role, just so that Sucy and Lotte could have a bigger one. Ya i know they were trying to do a new 9 witches thing, but the series just wasn't long enough to make it work.


Another small thing i might have liked if they could have done a bit more with Hanna and Barbara. Would have liked if they had a bit more individuality to eachother instead of coming off as duplicates. Honestly one of my favorites bits with those two was when Barbara tricked Hanna into going with her to the nightfall convention. Would have liked more of that. Also would have liked if they were more talented as witches; part of what made diana work is that she actually WAS as good as everyone said she was. Hanna and Barbara don't need to be THAT good, but they should atleast show some good talent on their own. It might have also been nice for them to have a bigger role in Diana's episodes; Seeing how much they care about Diana could have made them more endearing. Heck they actually could have replaced Andrew (giving him even LESS purpose in this series)

Originally Posted by Mad Pierrot

By the way, wasn't Ursula's identity kind of obvious to everybody? Even in the first episode there is high focus on her.

Hard to say, i like many others had that little reveal spoiled due to the short films. Granted would have been interesting if the writers could have thrown in a red herring to throw fans off. For instance, they could have made it so that Chariot didn't simply color her hair blue and pick a new name, but instead took the name and identity of a former classmate. Until the reveal, fans would not know if Ursula was indeed Chariot, or if the writer's rewrote Ursula's background to split her role.

[DemonneoPT]

Damn, the last episodes were so good! The animation and OST together with the climax of Akko's achievements were just beautiful. Honestly, this was such as enjoyable show. Trigger delivering as usual! I will watch anything made by them everytime!

[Dextro]

Good news everyone!

Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time is coming to the Americas for PlayStation 4 and PC via Steam in early 2018, Bandai Namco announced at Anime Expo 2017.

via: Gematsu

You know, I really wanted to dislike Bandai Namco after the DLC infested Katamari for the Vita put me off but then they started porting a bunch of niche japanese games over to the west, they keep releasing Vita games and have changed policy to allow sub options where possible. It's really hard to dislike them after this

[supersalam]

Little question here: In episode 15 Ursula goes to save Akko but doesn't take her broom and kicks ass, but in episode 21 (Wagandea tree) Ursula takes the broom but she is kinda weak.
So, I'm guessing, using the broom makes her weak?

[Julio C]

Originally Posted by supersalam

Little question here: In episode 15 Ursula goes to save Akko but doesn't take her broom and kicks ass, but in episode 21 (Wagandea tree) Ursula takes the broom but she is kinda weak.
So, I'm guessing, using the broom makes her weak?

No, she just didn't have time to think and plan out. She quickly had to react.

[Theo]

Dub Chariot, who is supposed to be one of the most prominent characters in the show, is completely different in tone and demeanor from the original.

Her under-appreciated and over-worked tone is gone, replaced by a generic line reading. Episode 7 and 11 are the main culprits, where she lacks any exasperation over Akko's progress.

What the fuck?

[Slayerx]

Originally Posted by Theo

Dub Chariot, who is supposed to be one of the most prominent characters in the show, is completely different in tone and demeanor from the original.

Her under-appreciated and over-worked tone is gone, replaced by a generic line reading. Episode 7 and 11 are the main culprits, where she lacks any exasperation over Akko's progress.

What the fuck?

Ya got a listen to the dub and i don't like it. I was worried with Netflix having the license as they just don't have the experience. Would have so wished this series could have gotten claimed by funimation

Ursula is particularly bad. Her's is a role that requires a lot of skill since she needs to have a soft spoken voice that's lacking in confidence most of the time, but then be able to flip to powerful and confident all while sounding like the same person. She's got neither. As you say, her regular line reading is pretty generic and lacks character, and when she DOES need to blow up in someone's face, she doesn't. Looking up it up, they gave the role to someone who is new to voice acting and it shows. Honestly, it feels like she's afraid to yell in the sound booth

Akko's voice actress has a lot more experience; its actually the same voice actress for Ryuuko Matoi and Diane from the seven deadly sins. I thought she did a great job as Matoi and Diane, but i feel like Akko is a bit outside of her range. It doesn't seem like she's comfortable doing a lighter voice. I feel like i can hear it best when she's doing action scenes; where she performed well as Matoi, her Akko feels a bit weak. I feel its a common problem can run into; when they are working outside of their range it becames hard to properly emote while still maintaining their voice. Her role as Akko works out ok for the most part, but she can't quite nail those emotional scenes. Its a shame too since Akko's emotional break downs always tore my heart out. I feel like its a miscast; Honestly i think she would have done better with Amanda

Diana, kinda hard to judge since Diana doesn't emote as much as other characters, though just like with the short films, i really do think they should have given her more of an aristocratic accent to sell that high nobility. Sucy, eh its nothing special; though its hard to nail just what kind of voice she should have in english. I feel like Lotte might be the best fit, but she doesn't really do well enough in those few moments when she needs to sing, but that's not very often.

[blakstealth]

Originally Posted by Dextro

Good news everyone!



via: Gematsu

gimme gimme gimme. looks like the best harry potter game to date