Little Witch Academia

A Harry Potter Mash-up With an All Female Cast (Plus Like One Guy)

Akko wants to be a witch after seeing a Shiny Chariot magic show when she was a child. The magic, the feeling, the entire show made Akko’s life-long dream to be like her idol and to make people smile through her magic.

Unfortunately Akko is absolutely terrible at it. She can’t ride a broom and she has little to no magical talent, which is very obvious once she makes it to Luna Nova, the premiere witch academy that Shiny Chariot attended all those years ago.

She meets her roommates and her first friends Lotte and Sucy upon arrival and somehow finds the lost magical tool of Chariot’s: Shiny Rod.

Her personal goal is to become a witch like Chariot but she slowly comes to realize she needs to save magic by finding the lost 7 words of the original Nine Olde Witches.

Magic is dying out in this world and modernity is taking over. There are multiple instances of magic being depleted and how useless it is outside the power range of the sorcerer’s stone and you might be wondering why go through all the trouble of reviving it when it’s no longer useful?

Honestly me too. At least there aren’t any morbid witch hunts here and people give grudging respect to the witches they meet. There isn’t a power imbalance between the witches and common folk (it’s actually pretty tilted toward the normies) so that kind of conflict is entirely avoided.

Much of the conflict stems from Akko herself and her complete lack of magical ability. She tries and she tries and she tries but it’s not sticking for her and we watch her fail over and over again that halfway through season one it feels really tedious and annoying.

She has a strong, unflinching personality and will gladly take up any challenge knowing full well it is out of her abilities. In a shonen anime, this would be applauded and she would be seen as a tragic hero, unable to succeed but trying her darnedest regardless. But for some reason, I just found this aspect of Akko’s personality supremely annoying. She never seemed to learn from her mistakes and she ran headlong into danger no matter what, her plot-hole-shield impervious to her dumbassery.

She of course makes a lot of good friends, initially annoying them with her (toxic) positivity and then winning them over with her charm.

Most of season one is driven by her mistakes and ineptitude and the side characters definitely have more character development than her. She’s static, but foolishly headstrong which also drives the plot forward when it would have killed anyone else without plot armor.

The story really picks up with season two, developing story hints laid out within the first season and finishing in an amazing grand finale of superb animation. And through it all, Akko is the same overly confident and charismatic character. We delve more into her and Chariot’s relationship and there are more than several head cannons surrounding her and Diana (which I, of course, ship but nothing is actually canon so feels bad man. They have the most growth in their friend relationship and that ending? That ending is really one that doesn’t scream heteronormativity so do with that what you will. I actually watched this entire thing because of this ship so was it worth it? ehh not really but I did enjoy their friendship develop) and eventually figure out what the world is lacking, not just in magic but in themselves.

The final villain is rather silly in my opinion and the final fight, which is gorgeous, still made me question a lot of things about the show. It wasn’t that coherent overall but it had enough side plots going that I was more or less invested. But I sat through all two seasons regardless of my annoyance with the MC and my irritation at the flimsy main plot the world was built on, so that says something about the story. Or maybe about me. Who knows.

Not sure if another season will come out of Studio Trigger for Little Witch Acadamia but if they do, I’ll be excited to see what happens next.

This was a decent watch. I probably won’t do it again but if you like magic and slice of life high school life, drop a few hours on this one. It’s a fun watch.