Wistoria: Wand and Sword Season 2 ‒ Episode 4

Man, for a moment there I thought that I somehow missed that this second season of Wistoria was a mini-series, or maybe a movie that got chopped up for broadcast, or something like whatever the hell Netflix is doing with the latest JoJo's Bizarre Adventure anime. Even though this episode is called “And So the Story Begins,” it damn sure feels like an ending. If nothing else, I would bet money that this run of episodes was meant to be the finale of the last season when it was originally planned out. How else do you explain it?

The thing that makes this a somewhat frustrating chapter of Wistoria to cover as a critic is that it really doesn't offer that much to comment on other than its rather bizarre placement in the first half of a second season. Last week, we got an episode that existed entirely to hype up Will's badass transformation, which gives him the power to shut down this attack on the Academy once and for all. This week, we spend another major chunk of the episode hyping up Will's big moment, which eventually leads to him hitting the monster-thing really hard, and then he teams up with Elfaria to do a fancy ice-spell/magic sword combo. That's really all there is to this thing. It's cool enough, once we finally get to Will's showstopping special moves, but nothing is happening in the story or character development to give this climax any real weight.

The beginning of the episode is maybe the most frustrating part, which sees Finn chewing the scenery and dumping more exposition about Will's mysterious (and almost certainly magical, after all) origins and his interest in the unfolding events. It's literally all this guy has done in every single appearance he's made, and the repetition is made worse by the show's weird pacing. We met Finn exactly one time at the end of last season, and then after years of waiting for this new season, Finn has just randomly dropped into the story to play the same old shtick of “Ooh, aren't I so mysterious and knowledgeable about important lore?”

Once we resume the climax that was already in progress last week, the show continues to take its sweet-ass time getting to the point. After repeating the slow-motion cliffhanger from the previous episode, the show makes sure that literally every single character we just spent half of an episode checking in with gets to squeeze in another line of shock and awe at Will's reappearance. Then, as Will ever so slowly makes his way toward the baddie of the ordeal, the show indulges in its cheesiest instincts and has the entire city cheering Will on, including random civilians he has never even met before. I get it, we're giving Will his flowers after a lifetime of being put down, but none of this feels particularly earned or resonant.

Still, when Will finally swings his sword, it's pretty cool. The animation of this season still has not managed to catch up to the heights of the first, and given how many obvious animation shortcuts we're still seeing in practically every scene, I'm getting worried that the production is going to have a hard time even making it across the finish line. For goodness' sake, when you factor in the seven minutes of opening and closing credits that we get, Wistoria couldn't even turn out a full-length episode for this supposed grand finale of its prologue. I haven't completely lost hope in Wistoria, but these last two episodes have been incredibly uneven. Hopefully, once the “real story” starts in the next chapters, the show will have a chance to recuperate and return to the narrative fundamentals.

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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.