Wistoria: Wand and Sword Season 2 ‒ Episode 11

The fight between Zeo and Elfaria might just represent the best spectacle we've gotten yet from Wistoria's second season. We've got just two opponents squaring off in a confined arena with only their wits and their magical prowess to determine the ultimate victor. Not only is this Elfaria's first time in the spotlight as the heroine of the show, which already makes this a landmark event for Wistoria, but the stakes of this fight are pretty damned high, given that it's technically nothing more than a recruiting bout. Will teaming up with his beloved Elfie is what the show has been dangling as a carrot in front of our faces for years, now, and this psychotic Zeo bastard is trying to steal Elfie's man! I don't know about all of you, but this is the most locked in I have been to Wistoria in ages.

There's only one problem, really. The fight, for all of its many twists and turns and awesome show-stopping moments, is just that: A fight. We already got the setup out of the way last week, too, which means we've got maybe fifteen or so minutes of actual content to burn through in an episode that needs to run for the standard 20 minutes (once you take out the OP and ED). What does that mean for us? Well, obviously, it means that all of the students, teachers, and Magia Vanders in the audience have to keep incessantly chiming in with their commentary, regardless of whether they have anything meaningful or interesting to say.

I'll give you a perfect example of what I mean. After the opening clash of the fight leaves Zeo smashing a horde of Elfie's clones, and while our witch takes flight to gain the high ground, the show interrupts the battle so Cerridwen can helpfully inform us that “All of the attacking and defending up to this point was to allow her to escape upward, which will allow her to hammer down her true attack.” Finn then chimes in to explain that “she did it all while maintaining a double so accurate, it passed for a Magia Vander.” Yes. We all know this. It literally just happened on screen. Anybody with functioning eyes already understood every single bit of that without the need for the brain-dead comments from the peanut gallery.

I know Wistoria is far from the first anime to pad out a battle with a bunch of filler play-by-play from the onlooking allies, but this all seemed especially inane and pointless. It would be one thing if we were operating in Jujutsu Kaisen Land and the audience needed a Bachelor's in Made-Up Anime Magic Bullcrap to even grasp what was happening in front of them, but we're firmly in the territory of basic elemental magic stuff here. Elfaria can make doubles and shoot fancy ice spells. Zeo is a lunatic who blows shit up really well with his lightning. As the one slightly welcome bit of commentary explains to everyone at home, Elfie is a genius at crafting complex and novel spells, but Zeo is a fighter who was born to actually wield those spells in combat. It's a dynamic that is plain as day, and the episode would have been much better if ninety percent of the filler reactions from everyone else had been cut.

Still, it really is a fight for the ages, at least so far as the canon of Wistoria is concerned. We've gotten so much talk of how powerful and dangerous the Magia Vander are, but it's another thing altogether to see two of them really go at it against one another. If the last couple of episodes have worked hard to endear us more to Elfaria, this episode at least does one thing perfectly, which is to prove that our Ice Maiden is just as badass as Will. She will need to be, it seems, to take on all of the forces that are preventing her from getting that private time with her Hero that she's been dreaming of all this time.

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Wistoria: Wand and Sword is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.