This series utterly boiled my blood. It was just edgy for the sake of being edgy, feeling like it was written by an 12-year-old edgelord who spent way too much time watching dark stuff and talking about the world being all depressive while being dressed in black clothing. Either that or the writer was high off his head smoking some high-grade stuff because the stories he was haphazardly pooping out didn't make any sense.

Not only that, he was also caught between two minds of what he actually wanted his series to be, switching between lighthearted, happy-go-lucky adventures to something needlessly grim and dark so chaotically, it gave me tonal whiplash. One episode, the Wandering Bitch came across a village with a tradition of having pretty ladies stamp grapes for wine in an innocent adventure then the next she's be travelling back in time and seeing a kid butchering our abusive parents, turning her into a crazed serial killer. Ugh.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Our story begins with our bitch being retold a story of her mother's adventures when she was little. The series did little to mask the fact the protagonist, Nike, of Elaina's favourite story is infact just her mother. This inspires her to enrol in witch academy and become a witch so she can go adventures like Nike. After a timeskip, we see that Elaina has gradulated witch school at the tender age of 14, making her the youngest to do so. Still, she needed a mentor before she became an offical full-fledged witch. I don't know how that works, but okay. The series attempts to use the classic hero's journey troupe, but gets it all wrong as it depicts Elaina's cowardly senpai witches rudely slamming the door in her face when she asked them to apprentice her. It was outrageous as it sounds. No one would ever willingly turn down the chance to tutor a once-in-a-lifetime prodigy like Elaina knowing the publicity that would come their way having mentored such a prospect. At the very least, they wouldn't slam the door in her face and risk getting on her bad side, because she's clearly going places.

From there, she runs into her classic "out there" mentor, Fran, isolated far off from the main town. Fran tasks her with basic household chores that you already know is going to be one of two things, either disguised training or a disguised life lession. It just happned to be the latter in this case. Near the end of the first episode, it's revealed Elaina's parents hired Fran to teach her nothing (at first), then overpower her in a test in order to teach a valuable lesson of humility, fearing at the rate she was going that she end up becoming conceited and arrogant. They would be right, too.

After a heartwarming moment between the two after Elaina breaks down crying, Fran then taught her for real within a Rocky-like montage, making her full fledged witch within that timespan. Before leaving on her journey, her mother handed her three promises.

1st: "That when faced with danger, flee at once."
2nd: "Do not believe that you are special." Remember that you're equal to everyone else. (basically, never be above your station)
3rd: "To come home someday and let us see you happy and healthy."

Well. Elaina does the first one and disregards the rest.

Hell, even in the outro, jetting away from her parents on her broom, she was already talking herself up in a pointless self-intro that just made her look exceedingly arrogant and vain.

"Now, then. Here's a question for you. Who might that witch be, the sight of her as she flies over the stark mountain range lovely enough to take your breath away? Why, yes, that would be 18 year old me." Okay, bitch. Get off your high stick. You're not all that.

We see in the next episode of her talking herself up again in yet another annoying self-intro that sadly became a recurring theme throughout the series, throwing away all of her initial development and reverting her back to square one. Some people have defended her character flaws, but the reason why I can't agree personally is because Elaina has no one to bounce off or put her in place. Vain characters like her only interesting and likeable when they have other characters to play off. Outside of the characters she encounters in these one-off episodes, she's mainly by herself, frustratingly stroking her own ego everytime she does her self-intro routine. It was infuriating.

The next episode introduced the worst character in the series, firmly ranking Elaina at number 2. A weird, obsessive lesbian by the name of Saya popped into the fray, mudding the already fractured tone of the series with cringey, unfunny comedy, because we really needed yuri. Ugh. Just to be clear, I'm not homophobic. I enjoy both boys' love and girls' love, leaning more toward the former, but they need to be established and written tastefully. Just having a character weirdly obsessing over another of the same sex comes across as the author's weird tink.

And Saya certainly felt less like a character and more like the writer's own sexual desire for some girl on girl action. She was weird the second she was introduced, even going as far as to steal Elaina's ID Brooch (proof of her being a fully fledged witch) just so this random girl she had only just met wouldn't pass through and be on her way. Saya remarked that she was "lonely" without her little sister to keep her company, but that just made her look like even more of a loser, attaching onto the first girl she laid eyes on.

Saya then becomes absurdly romantically attached to Elaina and started trying to treat her like a wife whenever she appeared. Fortunately, she didn't appear in many episodes, but the ones she did appear in dragged the already low quality into the abyss.

I've already mentioned how the series feels like it was written by an edgy 12-year-old typing up his first fanfiction but here's an example of how depraved the series can be. During her travels, Elaina comes across a braindead boy gathering the happiness of others in a bottle so his father's sex slave could watch those very happy people living far more fulfilling lives that she could ever never even hope to have when he releases the cloudy substance and it forms visions above her. Yeah, the kid wasn't very bright. He was so foolishly naive he never clocked the little girl attending to their every needs without compensation was their slave, whom his Dad was raping in the Light Novel. (The anime toned this down and just had her as an abused slave instead)

See what I mean about the series being edgy and dark for no reason? There's no deeper nuance or layers to this. It's just a warped piece of nothing for the sake of shock value. It gets worse when Elaina, our main character, does nothing to help the poor little girl despite having the power to free her. Outside of using magic to fix a vase the little girl mistakenly dropped to prevent her cruel owner from beating her, telling her an "Arigato" (Thank you) would suffice instead a "Gomen'nasai" (I'm sorry), she's does nothing. Instead, she just left and flew off on her broom, basically saying, "Oh, well. Sucks to be them" in frightening, cold indifference.

It painted her in such a poor light that any indifference I had built up for her up to that point turned into outright contempt.

It just makes her needlessly heartless and callous. It's not like she couldn't have saved the girl because she totally could've if she so chose.

Elaina not helping those in need is the equivalence of a highly skilled and trained martial artist watching an old man in his late 70s far past his prime getting his ass handed to him by a couple of kids and just thinking to himself, "Damn, wouldn't wanna be that guy" before continuing on his way. That's what Elaina basically is in her world; the equivalent of a highly trained martial artist. She has the power to help, but she just doesn't. She stupidly tries to justify her inaction with "just because one's doing the right thing doesn't make it right" in a pretentious attempt to sound philosophical and deep. It's incredibly frustrating and makes her so unlikeable.

I kinda get wanting a self-interest character, but you don't want to run the risk of making your protagonist heartless. Yuna, from the series, Kuma, Kuma, Kuma Bear was a self-interest character, too, yet she extended a helping hand to those in need. Not because she was a hero or wanted praise or anything, but just because she was a good person with a kind heart. I find that much more relatable.

Elaina's characterization is very inconsistent. One moment she was portrayed as a jaded, hardened warrior who's seen the worst mankind has to offer (which makes no sense given that she's a sheltered girl) and the next, she's sheltered again.

Episode 9, an example of the latter, really angered me. Elaina was asked by another witch to travel back in time with her to prevent the death of her friend's parents so that friend wouldn't allegedly murder her abusive uncle, transforming her into an insane serial killer. I mentioned this at the start of the rant. At first, they believed her uncle was the one abusing her after her parents were murdered, so they travelled back in time with the express purpose of preventing her parents' murder so she wouldn't move in with her abusive uncle and wouldn't need to go psyco killing him. But no! The episode laughably revealled it was the parents who was abusing her all along. The dad was raping her and the jealous mom hit her in retaliation. So, she stabbed them up and gave Elaina a crazed smile with blood stained teeth. I could only laugh at such degenerate writing only a little kid would ever find deep. Anyway, the other girl had to kill her all over again as Elaina could only cry and watch, because apparently now she has a heart.

After returning to the past, the girl loses her memory because magic operates on a Fullmetal Alchemist equivalent exchange laws. The greater the magic, the greater the cost. It just so happened memory loss for the cost of time travel.

Elaina dashes off into the night and laments about how useless she is about being unable to do anything. Nevermind the fact she's had the chance to help others and chose not. Her breakdown feels entirely disingenuous. The episode ends with Elaina questioning her life purpose and the next episode airs regarding a lighthearted flashback of Elaina's mother training Fran and her friend, once again haphazardly switching tones.

This is an horrific series that suffers from a severe case of identity crisis, not knowing whether it wants to be early Berserk with edgy and dark tones or Dragonball with lighthearted, happy go lucky adventures. (I say early Berserk because I know Miura - god rest his soul - redefined his early ideas and turned them into his strengths). So, it ends up recklessly juggling these two tones to an atrocious effect. I get the sense it wants to be HunterXHunter skillfully telling a serious story with quirky flair to lighten the series, but Wandering Witch's episodic strucuture doesn't allow for this. The reason why HxH's switching tones works as opposed to Wandering Witch's is because its structured like the epic adventure that is, with long arcs that features build-ups and cooldowns. This allows the audience the appropriate time to reset. Journey of Elaina, on the other hand, just throws stories of wildly different tones in our faces with no forewarning due to the episodic nature of the series, resulting in tonal whiplash.

The world building is incredibly insufficient. With Elaina essentially warping from city to city, there's no sense of adventure. She arrives at a new town and leaves at the end of the episode, flying away to some new place. It robs the audience of the feeling of journeying with the character this way. The reason Pokemon has always felt so fun even now is because we actually see the characters travelling. They don't just teleport to a new town for Ash to challenge the gym. At times, they're on the open road experiencing the world around them and the many different species of Pokemon inhabiting their world. This makes every destination our heroes arrive at feel that much more earned and rewarding.

Wandering Bitch: The Journey of Elaina could take cues.

Horrific series.

I didn't even mention the atrocious body-switching episode where it introduced Saya's incestous sister, because the series really needed incest. Ugh. Just another example of why an edgy twelve year old must've wrote this.

Straight 0/10. I have nothing nice to say about such an degenerate pile of edgy nonsense.