200 Word Anime: The Ancient Magus’ Bride – Episode 10

Chise returns to the land of the dragons to create her wand and gets a story about Elias from Lindel. Read on to see what Karandi and I thought of the episode and catch up on any of our reviews you might have missed here.

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Weekend Otaku:

Relationships, like people, see a certain level of maturity as they progress. The ones that last a long time do so because of an intimate understanding between the people involved and are built up over time by their shared experiences. One interesting thing I think this episode does is to look at how a relationship might only begin to grow when one or both sides concede something.

Cold is used as analogy from the opening moments of the episode to symbolize solitude.  Elias fights through a winter storm in his first conscious moments and Lindel is seen travelling across winter landscapes as he searches for his purpose. Elias cautions Chise to keep warm as she sets off to travel without him and comments on the “cold air” when he’s sitting at home in her absence. Showing warm food and environments when they are with others was a subtle way to express the warmth that companionship brings.

The story about young Elias seems like an aside until you think about how much he must have learned about the world and about people in those early days with Lindel. The child-like eyes that Chise mentioned a few episode back were much more noticeable in the curious way he watched Lindel and Rahab in this one. The more crucial part of this was in Rahab explaining a mage’s duty as being a guide for others. This may have influenced Elias’ decision to take in Chise hundreds of years later.

Returning to my first point though, recall that Lindel was initially opposed to taking Elias as an apprentice (eventually agreeing to “acquaintance”). He finally agreed because he understood how he could help Elias be a part of their world instead of an aimless spirit. Elias too is slowly learning this lesson with Chise. Renfred’s cryptic warning at the end about how keeping Chise as a pet will ruin her, like the worry that Lindel and Angelica express over Chise being content with it, is a good indication that it can’t continue.

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Karandi:

As Weekend has said, this episode puts the focus squarely on the relationship forming between Chise and Elias, and yet it does it by separating them for much of the episode. The indirect way the anime draws our attention to the main problem in their current relationship and asks the audience to reflect on it is quite refreshing and serves the dual purpose of filling in some of the blanks in Elias’ background (though opening up a lot more questions than it answers in that regard).

I do want to mention the musical score this week which I really loved, particularly for the dragon flight. Closing my eyes and listening to that music was an amazing experience (so yes, I had to watch the sequence more than once because clearly I wasn’t watching with my eyes closed). However, what this  made me realise was that for once the visuals just didn’t convey the strong sense of wonder or really captivate me emotionally during this sequence. I can’t actually put my finger on why not because it isn’t as though the sequence is poorly done from a visual point of view, but the sky and clouds, even the dragon itself just seem ordinary when compared to the sound in this scene.

The other part of me wonders what the deal with the wand is. I know they mention it is helpful for mages but I don’t think we’ve actually seen anyone use a wand at this point and given it gets relegated to a background point of this episode I’m curious as to whether the wand will ever be significant or whether it was just a convenient excuse to have Chise visit Lindel.

Still, Elias’ back story more than made up for any faults I’ve mentioned. This was a great episode and I’m looking forward to learning more next week.

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That’s all we had for this week. Did you enjoy the look into Elias’ past or do you have many more questions that you’re dying to have answered? Let us know in the comments, and don’t forget to visit 100 Word Anime for our coverage of Black Clover.