A show about a modern setting where not only magic exists, but a courtroom specifically meant for magical criminals. That sounds like a good premise that could be a pretty good show if done righ--
...
...I'd rather not judge a book by its cover, but a pervert frog person sidekick/familiar is not exactly the best way to start out a show about magic lawyers. Or at least, that's just my opinion. Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe it's the BEST way to start a show about magic lawyers.
MAYBE ALL SHOWS OUGHT TO HAVE FRO
#Introduction#
Wizard Barristers is an original show, not a sequel or an adaptation of a manga or novel and etc by the studio Arms. It's about magic criminals running amok and being brought to justice. Like right away it begins with this crazy over the top battle between a wizard criminal and a SWAT team on a train that results in explosions, a whole train being turned upside down and then exploding while simultaneously crashing into buildings, and then even a helicopter is taken down (and then explodes!).
Then after all this, the pair of human cop characters jumps onto the train, spits a cigarette at him, shoots him like 3+ times in the leg and boom, he's arrested. It's a short quick two minute action scene and at that point you're not questioning why wizard lawyers is a thing but wizard police isn't a thing.
It's after this you realize the show isn't the human cops having silly but fun over the top battles with magical criminals and then the wizard barristers do their thing in court. No, as a matter of fact, there's zero sense in the human police going after the wizard criminals at all. Following this realization, you're struck with a second one. That there is an actual serious main plot in a show about wizard lawyers in a modern day setting.
#Everything is Wrong#
- "Characters"
- Magic + Imagination = CG Mechas???
- The Horribly Executed Premise
- Terrible Lawyers
#"Characters"#
Almost all of Wizard Barristers' are or a combination of: cliche, boring, and generic.
Our main character is half-Canadian (they make sure you know you know she's Canadian repeatedly) Cecil Sudou. Sixteen years old, Cecil is the youngest person to become a wizard barrister (they also repeat this ad nauseum). A traumatic event that happened six years prior to the show which she has no recollection of resulted in her mother being put on death row after using magic to defend Cecil. Thus, to try and get her mother a retrial, she becomes a wizard barrister.
The only problem is she's not a very good one, Nor does she ever improve (she and the others at one point go to Boston for "lawyer training" but none of it is shown as it's just an excuse to get Cecil to go on a road trip back to Canada). But magic wise, because she's the main character, she literally cannot stop becoming capable of using new different types of magic. It's stated that wizards are only capable of using one type of magic, but Cecil ends up with three or four different sorts of magic. At one point, she literally just gains magic wings with absolutely no explanation because she's falling from the sky. Convenient.
Whenever she's in a difficult spot, she just gains a new spell to get her out of it. It's lazy. Mind you, her starting magic is she can take metal from the area around her and literally create and pilot gigantic CG mechas.
Moving on, there's Natsuna Hotaru who like Cecil, became a wizard barrister at the start of the show. For more than half the show, her entire purpose is to simply be rude to Cecil because Cecil is the main character so Cecil is actually doing cases immediately after becoming a wizard barrister. Should have just had "THE RIVAL CHARACTER" flashing in neon letters over her head every single time she was on screen. Except no, because that never really goes anywhere. In one of the later episodes, I guess they just decided enough was enough and put them together and then in one episode, Hotaru almost spontaneously becomes friendly towards Cecil after finally having a conversation with her rather than just throwing everything she says back at her over and over again.
There was the Law & Orderesque duo of cops which I had wished the show would have actually had been revolved around. But that would have been too silly and fun, human police busting magical criminals after crazy and over the top fights. Instead, they're supporting characters that have their own role to play in this show's main plot (yes, it has one).
Who else was there? There was a blue haired guy wizard barrister who would yell at Cecil for using magic and thus getting fined for using magic. There's another female wizard barrister who seems weirdly obsessed with Cecil despite only recently meeting her. The female boss wizard barrister character was interesting in the fact that she'd go so far in bending the rules she'd let her entire office of wizard lawyers raid a gang base while rampantly using magic despite openly using magic being frowned upon or usually considered a crime. There was another female wizard barrister whose entire dialogue revolved around guys. There's an old man wizard barrister who I thought nothing of at first but the episode starring him is hands down the closest this series has gotten to getting something resembling genuine enjoyment out of me.
Apart from the old man, literally the only other enjoyable (???) character is Cecil's familiar, whom is a perverted talking frog person named Nana Genie (that sure is a name I'd give a pink haired perverted talking frog sidekick). Really, I could not even begin to go into how amazingly deep this frog character is. I just can't do it. I can't do it. I just cann
#The Idea of Magic + Imagination (?) = CG Mechas???#
I don't think it can be said enough that the first two minutes of this show was basically an act of deception. None of the action scenes following that first one reach that level. It's crazy, but fun to watch. But after that, it's more or less mostly CG mechas created from magic battling each other. Even when it doesn't get to the level of mechas, the magical battles between the criminals and wizard barristers are hardly that fun to watch or interesting.
This show is supposed to be about magic. But the main form of magic most commonly used by characters is taking the metal from their surrounding areas to construct giant CG mechas. It just seemed like they didn't even try. Rather than even attempting to try and make their take on magic even slightly interesting or neat, they just ended up going with this instead.
#The Horribly Executed Premise#
And inconsistent tone
There are two ways I could see the premise of wizard lawyers working well.
One, you could replace the modern setting with a fantasy setting and it'd be a serious show about the going ons in a magical courtroom in a world of magical beings and wizards and so on.
Two, keep the modern setting, but cast aside the seriousness of it, and it'd be about ordinary human police arresting out of control wizards. "My neighbor wizard set my dog on fire" and so forth.
Both options could be done in an entertaining way, surely. Wizard Barristers however unfortunately, was all over the place. It's a modern setting with perverted frog sidekicks, human police whom go after these supposedly super dangerous magic criminals with nothing more than a pistol and succeed in arresting them (and in the first two minutes of the show, no less), CG mecha battles, grudges and an uneasy relationship between the humans and wizards, and the occasional demonic summoning ritual.
Not only does she not use the rocket launcher at any point, but she was the one chasing a magical criminal who upended a moving train despite having nothing but a pistol and a lit cigarette at the very start of the show.
Don't even get me started on the episode where they took on a hostage situation while dressed as magical heroes (???) or the "Okay, let's go on a road trip to Canada" episodes. You can either go for non-serious or serious. Trying for both will more than often end in disaster. Either focus on Cecil trying to help her mom and magical conspiracies or give the world the spin-off about a super team up between the pervert frog and hilarious old wizard barrister that we deserve.
~~I would pay to watch that show. No hesitation.~~
#Terrible Lawyers#
Throughout the entire show, it is pounded into your head that in this world, using magic is not viewed as okay. If it's not done in self-defense or the defense of others, it is more often than not considered a very serious crime which may result in being put on death row. Wizard barristers aren't the police, their role is to defend or prosecute magical criminals in the courtroom.
...Or not. These wizard barristers, if they're not getting into magical battles, they're using magic to get evidence they otherwise wouldn't have been able to obtain. The boss/head of the office isn't against it at all either. Hell, she essentially encourages the entire office to raid a gang base with almost everyone using their magic to obtain one of the gang members to use as a witness in a case.
It makes you wonder... if magic is so common in this world that just an ordinary bank employee can be a wizard, then why don't they have wizard police as well as wizard barristers if magical crime is such a problem? Apart from the first action scene, it's mostly the wizard barristers who end up being the ones battling most of these magical criminals anyways.
Additionally, more often than not, the courtroom ends up just being another site for magical battles to happen. In one case immediately following our wizard barristers successfully avoid their defendant ending up on death row, their defendant essentially confesses that not only did she kill someone with magic, but she had intended to do it out of revenge. Then the wizard barrister with Cecil breaks her restraints allowing her to go on a rampage intending to kill everyone present in the courtroom.
One of the later cases (without going into spoilers), Cecil's side despite being the defense essentially act as the prosecutors and the prosecutors act as the defense. I believe it is mentioned that their office of wizard barristers only does defenses earlier in the show, but it's just so nonsensical... they could have just had Cecil's side be the actual prosecutors of the antagonist. It's not like the lawyer aspect of the show is the main thing or anything. It's perfectly fine for the courtroom parts of the show to be completely nonsensical and weird.
The old man lawyer outright uses magic to get evidence proving the innocence of his and Cecil's defendant, and outright fake collapses in the courtroom when the judge begins to ask him if he used magic to get this evidence. When this happened (I correctly and preemptively guessed that he was faking it), I underwent an uncontrollable fit of laughter. It's later stated by one of the other wizard barristers that he does this regularly.
Right after coming out of the hospital, he just moonwalks away. Are you kidding me???
#Conclusion#
Am I still talking about this show? Good lord.
The plot while bad, dumb, and more than a bit jumbled, doesn't warrant its own section. Also, I can at least give them that at the very least, there IS a main plot (from beginning to end) unlike some other bad shows. Additionally in comparison to everything else in the show, the plot didn't give me any major headaches apart from a few things that are more or less outright major spoilers. Considering various other aspects of this show I've already gone over, it's hard to make serious complaints about the plot. "There's a dumb twist? Who cares, THERE'S LITERALLY A PERVERTED FROG PERSON AS A SIDEKICK."
It certainly isn't the worst thing I've watched. It's down there, though. A 1.5 out of 10 or rather a 15 out of 100. I of course don't recommend watching it (it's somewhere in that gray region between hilarious and annoying on the spectrum of bad shows, maybe a bit closer to annoying), however...
If at all possible, I'd recommend literally the first two minutes of the very first episode and the fifth episode (the elderly wizard barrister one). If I ever reach the point where I'm capable of compiling a list of most hilarious episodes from "bad anime", this old man is a strong contender for the number one spot.
Oh yeah, and this is a bit of spoilers I guess, but towards the end they had this gem of a death scene. Really amazingly animated. I mean that's what you'd expect because after all, it's almost the climax of the show pretty much. They certainly wouldn't drop the ball there.
