epochsonder:

Thoughts and feelings about the “Ancient Magus Bride”

Hello and welcome to my opinion lol

There’s a lot to unpack here.

First off, I am a fan. Second, it’s been a few months since I saw the dang anime so my memory may be off. Third, I had the english translations so it is possible that things were mistranslated.

When I began watching/reading the series, I was extremely excited and pumped. It was an extremely gorgeous anime and manga, beautiful soundtrack as well. But almost immediately after Nevin’s scene, I was left feeling kinda disappointed. I felt it didn’t reach it’s potential.

So here’s why I think it sucks:

Why the flippin hell is Chise 15 years old???

Okay like seriously, I get that the target audience is supposed to be teenagers but man it was really creepy. Like how? Why? Damn, it was also really strange for him to bathe her too. Thankfully nothing else crazy happened (except for the neck lick). 

I don’t know if being 15 in japan is different from being 15 in the US, but here, it’s just all sorts of wrong. She’s too young and way too mentally unstable.

Using Chise’s crappy childhood as “hail mary” for poor writing 

I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to scream when the story would fall back onto Chise’s childhood as a crutch. And it kills me that they came up with the worst possible childhood to help fill in the plot holes. I was like: 

“Hey uh Chise, what are you doing? You’re making a plot hole.” 

Chise: Don’t judge me It’s because you don’t know what it’s like when no one likes you and my mom killed herself i see monsters everywhere I want to die

It was frustrating and I felt it was lazy writing on their part. Don’t get me wrong, I get what they were aiming for the ‘zero-self-esteem-broken-abused-can’t feel anything’ character but they just didn’t quite hit it.

Everyone acts out of character when the writing gets tough

This is a HUGE pet peeve of mine, when writers get lazy and just have a character act out of their natural means to cover the plot hole. To me it just takes away from that character. 

I’m just gonna pick on Chise because she had the most ‘out-of-character’ scenes. There were a lot of times were she would switch between a weak-depressed-quiet girl to a determined-well spoken-strong woman, then back to frail again. 

For example I believe it was the last episode where Chise was just fearless and brave, like that came out of NO WHERE. The hole damn time she was just like a wet napkin then suddenly I guess she channeled her inner woman?? Ahhhhhhh jeez

I will give props to Silky and Ruth, they were the only two who (I felt) developed naturally, character-wise.

Their forced relationship

First and foremost, purchasing Chise was an absolute surreal way to start the story and relationship. This is not a relationship, this just a cryptid who bought himself a rare magic creature to use her (idk what his intentions were)

Second, (I love Elias but) I am just so fucking puzzled to why he wants to marry her?? They have nothing in common, other than they can all see the same shit with their ‘sight’. 

He’s an old being who does nothing, she should be in school or therapy. But he wants to marry her right off the bat, like this doesn’t feel genuine. It was definitely hard to connect too. I felt like, again, it was lazy writing. Rather than having something naturally develop, they just forced it with the auction: That way they have to be together!

And another thing, it kills me that Elias is just so clueless to his emotions, like where were you these last hundreds of year?? You know damn-near every spell but didn’t have time to learn yo self?? Come on boi!

Even the gottdamn ending it took Elias like 15 mins to realize that she was in a wedding dress with wedding rings ready to marry his stupid ass. DUDE YOU WANTED THIS EP 1

What is up with Cartaphilus???

What kind of funky writing was that? I didn’t even realize that he was the arch-nemesis until like halfway through the series. He felt like an after thought, like they forgot to write a villain into the story. His motives and backstory just didn’t add up. And I see that they tried to make him seem edgy with all the monster splicing and craft, but like his whole existence is an anomaly and doesn’t fit in the story.  

And again I see that they were reaching for that “anti-villain” trope where it turns out that the bad guy is just hurt and misunderstood. But oof, they missed that one too. 

Carta’s intentions and motives just were not very clear so it was hard to sympathize with him.

But besides all the above, it was a pretty decent anime^^

Give me your opinion, I’d love to hear it!!

Rating:  3.5/5

Diet recomemdation: Great for unstable monster-romance, and age-gap dieters.

To make your AMB Cake: Take your poorly written batter and place it in a plot hole oven at misunderstanding° over 24 episodes and add a spinkle of Harry Potter.