Mashle: Magic and Muscles

This anime was recommended to me by both Christian and Michael. Now by the time I decided to start watching this I had forgotten the details of either review I read, which is probably a good thing as I wouldn’t be too influenced by what they thought other than that they liked it. And I can see why.

First, some background. Basically the world is filled with magic users. In fact, they killed off those who couldn’t use magic, and it remains a crime to house anyone who can’t use it. So some pretty dark tones present. However, most of the time this show is just funny as hell. Since Mash can’t use magic, his dad had him train his whole so he could defend himself. Turns out all that training has turned him into someone unnaturally strong, allowing him to accomplish just absolutely stupid feats. Seeing him attend a Hogwarts parody and perform better than the magic users purely based off his insane muscles is so funny. Oh and a large motivation of his is cream puffs, he’ll beat up all those racists and snobbish elites over cream puffs. The real goal though is to become a Divine Visionary, who are basically recognized as God’s chosen and hold lots of power in the world.

Mash is also maybe not that bright, and the dub’s voice actor gives such a good deadpan delivery of basically everything that it really just adds to the comedy. Season 1 does feel maybe a bit rushed, with fights being short (and that’s coming from me, who complained about long fights in other shows) and the plot having absolutely no brakes. I think a little downtime or just a slower pace would have benefitted this show. They could have also let the side characters stories develop a bit further, which would build upon the more serious themes of social standing and a person’s value which are never really delved into beyond a quick mention. This would probably require more than your standard 12/13 episode season, but I don’t know if to get to the end point of season 1 could be stretched out over another cour. Regardless, the format did serve the humor very well, so if you’re here for that then it’s good.

Overall a good time, and I continued straight on to season 2, which brings us to the Divine Visionary candidate exam, advancing the plot through basically a tournament arc. To continue with the Harry Potter parody, this is basically the Triwizard Tournament, although it’s only between the school houses rather than other schools. In general some of the details of the world are not fleshed out, like they mention other schools existing previously but have not acknowledged them again yet, but they might add some of that in the future. Anyways, season 2 manages to address many of my complaints from the first season, slowing things down while still being funny, aided by it’s use of meta humor which generally scores well with me. I’ll admit a downside to watching the dub where I did meant lots of on-screen text went untranslated, so I may have missed some jokes. I do think that some of the fighting may have actually been dragged out this time, but it was better than the quick fights of season 1. Overall it’s a good continuation, and I look forward to the already announced third season.