Everybody’s talking about this anime for everything. Everything was perfectly organized for me to end up getting hooked on a ridiculous bad anime that I would force myself to watch because I started (hey, Attack on Titans), But I’m a war veteran, calloused by wrong hypes and would never fall into such a childish trick, right? WRONG. It’s obvious that I took some time I didn’t have and stopped to watch. Here’s a brief report of what I found in the first 13 episodes (really less, but I don’t want to give too many spoilers). In an unrelated spoiler: I liked it.
Starting then with the character presentation:
Martin Mistery (formally Yuji Itadori): Main character, has a sad past partially told so far (more on this later), has shallow thoughts about life like every main Shonen character and for now bases his motivation on a promise he made. He already starts with some out-of-the-normal characteristics, but not enough to harm the setting. Apparently nobody talks about this after the first episode.
Sasuke without depression (formally Megumi Fushiguro): That guy who appears strong in the first episode and already gets a buff to be smart and not unbalance the plot. He has a problem with his female name, but apparently this is part of the things that will be developed in the future (I hope). He starts as the group tutor’s pupil (obviously has one, more on this later). Despite this “the world is cruel, death is the only path” face, he is not the depressed of the anime, it’s just his way.
A Tsundere (formally Nobara Kugisaki): Last to join the group, despite already being a different student from Martin Yuji. Already in the beginning it’s shown that she has a sad story to develop. The little that is shown is just enough to understand in parts the differentiated part of her behavior. As a good Tsundere she gives CONFLICTING SIGNALS, but doesn’t become annoying until now, more by the anime’s ambientation than by the personality itself, but if it works this way for me, it’s okay.
New Kakashi (formally Satoru Gojo): The master, tutor, leader and businessman (this last one I made up) of the team. The funny and humble one that could literally reduce the anime’s plot to half an episode (LITERALLY, THIS IS INCLUDING SAID BY HIM IN A DIRECT AND CLEAR WAY). Certainly will be buffed or we will have a need for frightening force progression until DBZ standards.
Besides them we also have secondary characters, all with unnecessary gimmicks: The boy who only talks by onigiri ingredients, the girl who can’t get the story’s basic energy source and the panda (don’t ask, nobody talks about this). Besides the support characters and villains, but about these I leave it to whoever is going to watch.
From now on I’ll refer to the characters only by their cute name and not the official one because I’m lazy and I really didn’t memorize any name and I only think by nicknames.
Well, but what about the story?
In a world where curses exist and they materialize in the form of monsters, a group of humans imbued with the same malign energy fights against such evil forces for the good of humanity since the most primordial times. And to ensure that a new generation of sorcerers capable of guaranteeing the security of our world as we know it exists, this group maintains… exactly what you thought, a magic college. Two actually.
But before that; Martin Mystery is a young man who takes care of his grandfather with a terminal illness. Martin has strength, agility and other inexplicably superior capacities to normal human without any explanation, but he doesn’t like to take advantage of that. In reality he HIDES it.
Until a certain day he finds himself involved in a battle between the malign forces and a sorcerer where he ends up ingesting (yes, ingesting) a cursed artifact that theoretically should possess his body, but FOR PLOT REASONS he manages to control the entity and they go on to live in a partial symbiosis.
This creature is extremely powerful and is divided into trocentas parts.
High dramas roll behind the scenes and it’s decided that well, he will finish ingesting the other parts because apparently gathering all the pieces of an extremely powerful creature has no way to go absolutely WRONG.
And with that, he will need training and be monitored, thus the useful is united with the pleasant and he goes on to be part of the place you just imagined if you are paying attention.
Back to the (magic) college(s);
But is it worth watching?
Do you think I would be wasting my time writing LITERALLY THIS TEXT if I thought the anime was bad?
The anime strangely has all the good clichés you expect in a shonen, but MYSTERIOUSLY has almost none of the BAD shonen clichés. Don’t ask me how they managed to squeeze sense into whoever is responsible for this, but in some way they did and I am not even a bit unhappy with it.
Besides that the setting takes place in the regular modern world and the spirits follow the traditional Japanese representation where they affect humans, but are not perceived by those who don’t have the necessary powers. Standard.
That said, the anime has several references, situations and behaviors ermm… mundane. Pop culture is inserted without any shame and the anime also knows not to take itself seriously in several moments, even when not necessarily being forced a comic relief. I don’t know if I can explain this decently, but think that sometimes characters can have a “silly” behavior simply because normal people in general can have “silly” behaviors without a reason for this, while in fiction works this usually happens to force “that funny moment”.
The sushi image above is clearly a comic relief moment, let that be clear.
How to watch? Where to watch?
The anime is available on Crunchyroll
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Currently in what could be called the second arc.
But no theme. Between episodes 13 and 14 (aka at the end of the first arc) there is a New Year Special that besides summarizing well the beginning of the story (much better than me doing this, at least) still brings some cool information about the manga.
And yes, available on Crunch too.
Before finishing
I wanted to leave here this thought that the anime provides us already in the first episodes:
Final score (temporary, right? The anime is just starting…)
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