Wistoria: Wand and Sword Season 2 ‒ Episodes 1-2

©Fujino Omori, Toshi Aoi, Kodansha/Wistoria: Wand and Sword Production Committee

The premiere of Wistoria's second season was mostly concerned with reintroducing all of our characters and establishing the context for what's to come. It's the typical work of a new season's first episode, but the result was still satisfying, since it managed to include some solid character work and social commentary on top of all of its table setting. The second episode is nothing but full-throttle action and spectacle, with Ringard Academy seeing its biggest crisis ever at the hands of our villains from last season, Marze and Headless. It's all gas and no brakes now that the barrier has fallen and the monsters are on the loose, and Will is going to be facing off against his most impressive and deadly foes to date.

On the one hand, I might have appreciated just a little bit more of an on-ramp to his massive, status-quo obliterating event. Usually, the attack on the home base is the climactic event of a major storyline, indicating nothing will ever be the same and so on. Here, in Wistoria, we're barely out of the opening act of the whole story, and fresh off the heels of the already intense conflict that the students just barely survived in the dungeons below the academy. Certain emotional beats hit, which I believe could have landed with much more impact if the show had given its characters just another episode or two to get back into the groove.

Then again, these feel like fairly minor criticisms in the grand scheme of things, since Wistoria has always been about melodrama and spectacle first and foremost. This week, the spectacle is a heck of a lot of fun. It's not perfect, unfortunately, as the episode is filled with very obvious and somewhat distracting animation shortcuts that stand out all the more when you compare them to the killer cuts that exist in this very same episode. We've got lots of still frames set against moving backgrounds, barely detailed background extras, and the occasional edit that makes it hard to follow just what disaster is occurring where and to whom. This makes some of the episode's bigger dramatic moments whizz by without much registering, and I'm already having a difficult time recalling the finer details of any story beat that isn't directly related to our main cast.

The stuff with Will and Co. is just as good as ever, especially as things get really heated in the episode's final moments. Regardless of its pacing, this attack on Ringard is clearly meant to completely shatter Will's confidence and security, which is on top of his humiliating failure in the exams last week. Seeing Rosti get merced right in front of him might not have been the most shocking development ever, but Will's shock still plays well on account of the excellent animation and voice acting. Our boy may have just gotten a nifty Wis power-up in the dungeons just recently, but this might be the kind of major trauma that sends him into whatever the Wistoria version of Super Saiyan Mode is.

To be clear, though, I'm not convinced that Rosti's death is the horrible loss that Will is meant to take it as. Last season, I discussed all of the clues that make it feel pretty obvious that Rosti is a projection or magical doppelganger being controlled by Will's beloved Elfaria. She's a master of Ice Magic, Rosti's name is just two syllables off from being Frosty Snowman, and the guy literally explodes into magical, shiny snowflakes when he sacrifices himself to save Will. It still might mean bad news for Elfaria, and Will's pain is quite real, which means the dramatic stakes of the death still work. Besides, I welcome any opportunity to make her more of a confirmed presence in our hero's everyday adventuring. I could be wrong about all of this, of course, and maybe I'll be eating crow next week when we get, like, a whole flashback dedicated to Rosti's complex backstory and tortured personal life. I doubt it, though. You don't keep a character's actor a secret unless there's some twist surrounding the reveal, and Elfaria being the real Rosti is literally the only reveal that makes sense, so far as I'm concerned. We'll just have to see how things shake out, I suppose.

Episode 1 Rating:

Episode 2 Rating:

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.