Hein (fub) wrote,

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Finished series: Good Witch of the West

We've finished watching Good Witch of the West (also called Astrea Testament).

Firiel Dee is the daughter of an astronomer. Roux, a boy roughly her age, is his assistant. The observatory is in a tower somewhere far away from anywhere -- but not too far that Firiel can not attend the coming-of-age ball in the castle of the local noble. She wears the pendant that her mother left her when she died, and it turns out that it's a heirloom of the royal family -- Firiel is actually a princess!
But meanwhile, the astronomer's lab is trashed by soldiers because his research is 'heretical' -- he has been collecting an Ephemeris, a 'tide book' of sorts with the position of the 'daylight star', some sort of Yin-Yang thing that hangs in the sky.

Firiel runs back to the nobles, befriends a fellow princess who is running in the Queen Election (who happens to write slash featuring Roux and her brother), gets sent to a monastery to be taught how to seduce the men of neighbouring countries, gets introduced to the royal court, befriends a unicorn, goes on a dinosaur hunt, uncovers a conspiracy and finally saves the world with her passionate speech to the queen!

Clearly, the writers couldn't decide on what story to tell -- so they decided to cram everything in. Any of those stories seperately could have been very interesting, but because of the rushed execution it all turns into a jumbled mess.
Add to that that Firiel seems to lack any sort of common sense and only manages to make up her mind when her decision will put her and others in danger, and it is very hard to actually care about what happens to her -- certainly her potential love interests would be better off without her.

Visually, the series is quite good. The decors do a good job of evoking a fantasy world, and the character animation is (mostly) good. Some things are too obviously CGI, though.

Good points:
- Visually appealing;
- Interesting world;
Bad points:
- The main character has a grating personality;
- Jumbled mess of a plot -- is there even one...!?

A 5.5. Good for a rainy afternoon if you have nothing else.
Tags: anime, full review

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