IZETTA: THE LAST WITCH

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MANGA ComedyShuumatsu no Izetta

REVIEWS

• 

  beanwolf

  60/100
  An anime-original project with a killer setting and premise... only to be crushed by poor execution. Failed potential.

  Everyone say it with me: "FAILED POTENTIAL". This show had a good chunk of the anime community clamoring for more after the first few episodes. How could a witch flying around on an anti-tank rifle killing Nazis possibly be a bad thing? Well, it turns out that even the most novel or interesting of new intellectual properties can turn to shit given enough time. To be completely fair, Izetta was a slow burn when it comes to pure combustion into garbage, but I was naive to ignore the signs that showed up as early as the second episode. Overabundance of "A-1 face" character designs, steadily increasing amounts of fanservice to the point of absurdity, a growing amount of plot-convenient asspulls, and a glossing over of the ever-important political interactions (this is alternate WW2 after all) are some of the biggest shortcomings that this show came to present. The first few episodes were light on these though, and I'd be remiss if I didn't admit that I had bought into the show entirely at that point. You can check my season previews to see just how excited for it I was and how much promise I thought this series had (which it did), only for how dejected and sad I am here to tell you how it all turned out in the end. If you're still interested enough in the premise to check this one out, just know that although the action scenes are pretty good and well choreographed, it's not enough to save the show from the stark contrast between them and the political/fanservice/yuribait segments.

  "What do you mean yuribait segments?", you might ask. Well, this show was determined to incite a lesbian relationship between our two main female characters because it figured that it just couldn't be interesting or well-done enough on its own to warrant selling enough merchandise to make the property profitable. Many a scene of Finé and Izetta laying on a bed or eating lunch together was enough to make me just want to puke with how the series' incredibly poor attempt to make this "subtle". Let's not even talk about the episode eleven hamfisted euphemism for sex (complete with orgasm) that not even Disney could have gotten away with without raising eyebrows. Yuri is more than fine in my book, but you have to do it right. If you're just going to bait it, do it like Hibike, but otherwise you better just go full Sakura Trick, because everything else is just going to make your "product" feel like garbage for any normal person to watch. Actually, I think that's a great way to sum up my feelings on Izetta as a whole. It's a product, and was designed to be that from the beginning. It never had any aspirations of being art, like Flip Flappers obviously did and succeeded in. What's sad is that I don't even think Izetta succeeded in being a successful product, with originally great, albeit generic, visuals and soundtrack grinding to a mediocre halt at about the halfway mark.

  I'd avoid this one unless you really just want to see how the premise plays out (poorly) and can let the bad stuff roll off. It's the only way you'll be able to stomach the rest of this series.

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• 

  CodeBlazeFate

  40/100
  In the fires of the show's train wreck path, we can only grieve at what could've been.

  A bad yet entertaining show can go out in a blaze of glory. A show like this gets put out of its misery like a dog on the streets.

  SPOILERS FOR SHUUMATSU NO IZETTA

  I'm sure we all remember what happened with the spring 2016 anime known as Kabaneri. To recap, Kabaneri started off strongly and interestingly before divulging into a convoluted mess that made everyone remember this series as "the biggest disappointment of the year" rather than "the biggest blockbuster anime of the year". Something similar happened here. This when this series started, it had a fairly decent reception and many people interested, thinking that this could quite possibly be the dark horse of the season. Unfortunately, it lost all of its luster by the end, and now, it is up to us to bury this series and say our final goodbyes to this failed soldier. You may ask: "how did this series flop on us all?" Well, let's find out, shall we?

  To be fair to this series, the premise is one of the most fascinating of its season. A witch gets summoned to fight for one of the many European countries (this one being Elystadt) oppressed by Germania's assault during World War II. Even the first episode managed to feel like it would turn out to be interesting, if not necessarily as grandiose as a war series tends to be. Unfortunately, some of the series's major problems come early, with one of the biggest being how the magic is explained. There are these things called "ley ines" (which no one can see, ever, so how were they recorded?) which are the lines of magic energy that allow witches to use their magic. However, they aren't everywhere, so Izetta has to be careful not to wander into an area in which she cannot use magic. This becomes a problem due to the fact that we can never truly know where they are and where they stop, meaning that the writers can, on a whim, make Izetta accidentally go off to a bad location without us knowing any better until she suddenly falls down and gets herself injured, which end us happening in episode 9, bit I'll get to that episode is the point in which the series jumped the shark, later.

  While episode 9 is the point of no return, the part that first comes of major concern is episode 4, where they fake Izetta's power via theatrics to fool the world into thinking that she is a very powerful witch while beating the Germanians in another battle. However, this raises the question of "why didn't she just use her own magic when the world from this point on, will know of her magic anyway?'. Not only that, but it leads into one of the tritest setups that I ever have to see: the whole "this person I admire is secretly a fake" cliche". It turns out that there was a spy all along, and Jonas, the guy who found out the secret about Izetta, is blackmailed by the spy that he'll kill his family. Then, he gets shot by him before the guy runs away, and then Jonas is shot and "killed" by Sieg. This should really affect his family given how much they talked about it. However, we never see his family once. After a few meh episodes, one ship explosion that took one torpedo when they explicitly said it required 4 to do the job, and one ball later, we finally get to episode 9.

  Turns out, in episode 6, there was a girl who kissed Izetta in order to make her bleed that way said girl could drink her blood (don't ask me how this makes sense, or how they manage to pull it off realistically; this show never bothered to make it work). Turns out, she was a copy of the real White Witch: a girl described in legend to be a noble and tragic witch. I won't even get into how many of the false versions of the story there are here, as only the one showed in the middle of the finale is right, which means the series has lied to us extremely often. Let's just say this: now, she is evil. Also, they are mass-producing clones of her via magic that they shouldn't understand thanks to how this works. After struggling against her, Izetta loses power, and crashes into the land below. How? They went out of their way to state that she is still on land where the ley lines are located. Apparently, they didn't care to explain this, as there is no indication that her powers were manually shut down. Then, she starts bleeding despite nothing indicating that she was badly wounded anywhere. You could assume the crash did this to her, but all it was, was her tumbling a lot with nothing harmful going into her. She is then captured. Episode 10 even explicitly states so. So why is she still with the good guys? It turns out, that in that same episode, they retrieved her. Since that's the case, why did the Germanians bother saying that they got her. Also, why did the SS try to kill Berckmann? They had no reason to fire him, let alone execute him.

  Somehow things only get worse in the final set of episodes. In episode 11, they start moving to the area with Izetta seemingly getting ready after another yuri bait moment, but in the very first 5 second of episode 12, she is already at the fight with Sophie already hovering opposite of her. After about 8 minutes, we get this. Remember when Sieg shot Jonas in the head? Turns out, he's completely fine, with the Germanians, and then he shoots Sieg out of panic. This raises a multitude of questions that damn this series even more into absolute failure. Whatever. The day is saved, Sophie is stopped, the Germanian operation has been foiled, and peace roams the land. Also, despite the last few episodes making it out to be a heroic sacrifice for Izetta to fight, she is perfectly fine, and in a wheelchair. This is just like when Ikoma copped out in the finale as Kabaneri by also living after he was supposed to die. All's well that ends well, I guess. Either way, the script is dead, and I still don't think I've covered all that makes this plot so terrible. Why did Izetta's grandmother call Sophie a traitor? They explicitly showed that when Ozetta asked if her criticism of Sophie (interfering with humans) was the reason, she said no. How did Izetta get captured prior to episode 1? Issues like this further break this sorry excuse for a narrative.

  The cast isn't great either. Izetta, while adorkable, and determined, isn't a compelling protagonist despite still being the best character here with a believable backstory. She was saved by Ortfine when they were young, as the locals were about to kill her. Speaking of Ortfine, she's your typical strong-willed leader pushed to her limits. Nothing much to her. Most of the cast is also pretty forgettable and unexplored, like Bianka, Sieg, Hans, Berckmann, etc. Also, Berckmann's son, Ricelt fits this bill too, getting a mostly useless episode 7 to himself before he and the spy both die.

  It's the villains that are pathetic. Otto is just a lame tyrant interested in witches, and there's nothing else to him. I struggle to find any reason for Elliot to be here given how useless he is. Then we have Sophie. She is a generic antagonist introduced just to have an eventual final boss, in the same vein as Biba from Kabaneri (as if there weren't enough comparisons between the two shows already). After being betrayed, she wants revenge. In episode 6, she is presented as this mysterious figure. After that, she's just a vengeful maniac who cackles while doing evil things for the sake of it.

  This series looks pretty good, despite the fact that the studio Aija-Do isn't well known. If this show stayed consistent, this might've put them on the map. Sure, the citizens of Elystadt have this generic light novel look to them, and many characters have those gaps in their mouths (meant to represent lips) that are way too big sometimes, but Izetta, and the styles for the Germanian characters look a lot more interesting and varied. The action looks nice too. Special mention goes to that section in the OP where Izetta is moving from bullet fire. They even went out of their way to not only get the looks of the weapons and cars right, but they even animated certain moments in the black and white box look reminiscent of that of the actual days of WWII. I wouldn't say the show looks great or amazing, but it's clear that there was some significant effort put into this show.

  The music was composed by a newcomer named Michiru, who does a fine job. Many of the vocals are in German, and in certain scenes, they fit perfectly, even if none of the songs are ones I would go out of my way to listen to. Still, its experimental and it works rather well. The OP, "cross the line" by AKINO with bless4, is a satisfying and energetic OP with some tight build-up and several electrifying moments. As good as it is, I'm even more impressed by the ED, "Hikari Aru Basho e" by May'n, who, if you don't know, was the voice for the singing done by Sheryl Nome in Macross F. Here, she delivers a powerful, emotional, and slow-moving song that makes me wish this show was as gripping as its ED. Everything works rather well, except for the dub, which is comprised primarily of newcomers who do a mediocre job. That's the simuldub business for you, but hey, anything to give this show some kind of boost, right? It honest to God needs it.

  I'm sure we, the people of this community, will cynically remember this in the same way we did with Kabaneri only 6 months before. Only this time, even less of us cared in the first place. In the fires of the show's train wreck path, we can only grieve at what could've been. An interesting first half that led into a stupid yet equally by the numbers second half that only served to make the first half's flaws more apparent. It mostly felt like a love letter to World War II, but that's all this show was good for. Even then, they stopped doing interesting things with that by the second half, so there's nothing I can latch onto in order to recommend this show to anyone.

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• 

  TheAnimeBingeWatcher

  40/100
  A depressing exercise in squandered potential.

  "Sword Art Online."

  That was the thought in my head the whole time I was watching Izetta: The Last Witch. Which is stupid on multiple levels. For one, I've never watched Sword Art Online. I only know it through Youtube roasts and the shockingly good abridged series, so I cannot claim to have an accurate frame of reference. For another, the only thing Izetta shares with SAO is a character designer; otherwise, they're entirely different series. There is nothing rational about me comparing these two series to describe my opinion on it. And yet, that's where my head went. So perhaps it would be better to describe it this way: watching Izetta: The Last Witch felt like what I imagine watching Sword Art Online must have been like back in the day. A promising start with a killer premise, moments where it's delivering on that premise spectacularly, but it's ultimately suffocated by the most aggravatingly juvenile storytelling priorities imaginable. It's a show destroyed by its own worst impulses, constantly shooting itself in the foot with one bad decision after another until the potential it showed at the start feels like a cruel joke.

  Our setting is Legally Distinct World War 2. And by legally distinct, I mean it's literally just World War 2 but all the countries have sillier names. Germany is the Germanian Empire, Britain is Brittania, you get the gist. Interestingly, our protagonist is from Fantasy Switzerland (I think? Maybe it's Austria, I'm not sure), which isn't usually portrayed as an important player in WW2 fiction, so that's neat if nothing else. Her name is Princess Fine, and she's desperately running around the continent trying to set up political deals to bring the Allied Powers into the war so her country can be saved from Germania's onslaught. But when the Germanians capture her, she stumbles across someone else who's been suffering in their captivity: Izetta, her long-lost childhood friend and the last living witch on the continent. One daring escape later and they're zooming across the Alps with one goal in mind: use her magic to fight back and turn the tide of war at last.

  To be sure, the whole "World War but with magic" thing isn't exactly a fresh new concept. Just a year after Izetta, Saga of Tanya the Evil's adaptation would take that idea further than Izetta ever dared imagine. But I at least want to give credit where it's do before getting the knives out: yes, it's pretty goddamn fun watching a cute anime girl zip around a battlefield with a machine gun as a broomstick, overturning tanks with a flick of her hand and hurling ballistic missiles like javelins. It's all very well animated, the camera swooping and spinning with delightful verve while the sound design works overtime to sell every crunchy explosion and collision. It's pure popcorn, but you know what? Sometimes popcorn just works. There's an art to making a show that's just dumb fun, and Izetta knows that if you're gonna deliver a concept as silly as Magic vs. Nazis, you better execute it with enough passion and effort to remind people how damn entertaining it can be.

  Except Izetta isn't just dumb fun. At least, it's not trying to be. And that's where the problems start.

  You see, Izetta's magic power isn't omnipotent: she can only use it where the land's leylines run underground. And Fine knows that if Germania finds that out, Izetta's potential as a symbol of resistance will be doomed. So the battle becomes just as much about propaganda as on-site combat, strategically sending Izetta to battlefields where leylines run thick and staging false displays of power in places that have none. Izetta isn't just fighting to stop Germania and save Fine's country; she's putting on a show to convince their enemies and potential allies alike that the war's as good as over now that she's entered the fray. And honestly? I kind of dig it. It creates a new kind of tension to the proceedings, as even a successful battle might let her secret slip if things go badly. And it adds stakes to the politicking Fine engages in throughout the show, as her potential allies' support is conditional on keeping this lie afloat while Germania's spies are searching for any weakness they can exploit. Information warfare is a huge part of any war, and I was excited at the prospect of how Izetta might explore the challenges of controlling the narrative in the midst of all its Nazi-blasting action.

  Unfortunately, things very quickly take a turn for the stupid around episode 5, when a couple military officers have a loud, obnoxious conversation about Izetta's secret out in the open where anyone could hear them- which, of course, someone does. And then the person who overheard them, a fanboy of Izetta's who looks up to her, blabs to the first person he meets that he just discovered her secret, who of course just so happens to be a Germanian spy. And it was at this point I felt my eyes rolling so far back in my skull I ended up staring at my own retinas. This is just awful, awful plot contrivance, and it's not the only time the story twists itself into knots to force drama. Later on another disguised spy forces a kiss on Izetta in full view on Fine while acting as suspicious as possible, and neither of them even consider sending out a search party or restraining them on the spot before they disappear. They don't even tell anyone! Izetta could just say "Hey, so this weird lady made out with me out of nowhere while saying cryptic stuff, you might wanna keep an eye out for her," but no, it vanishes from her mind the second it's over! Like, what???

  What's doubly insulting is how little this propaganda plot ends up mattering in the end. By the time it's revealed, the show just throws in another evil witch to serve as the final boss and the entire thing is dropped with zero fanfare. We waste so much time building up the tension of Izetta lying to the country she's protecting, and for what? Hell, even putting aside the wasted thematic threads, what about the emotional effects, Does Izetta feel guilty about the people trusting her when she's not as strong as she pretends to be? Does Fine feel guilty about forcing her friend to take up this burden? Shouldn't the weight of this lie affect their relationship in some way? Or is cheap yuribait the only way this show knows to get you invested in them? Oh sure, you'll see them clasping hands tenderly in slinky dresses while blushing together in bed, but their relationship is frustratingly inert. Izetta has no self-worth and wants to fight for Fine's dream because she's the one person who was ever nice to her, Fine finds courage in Izetta's strength while regretting the fact she's making her fight, and that's how they stay until the last couple of episodes. All the propaganda plot is waste time promising interesting developments that never materialize; as far as the show's central relationship is concerned, it might as well not even exist.

  But that's not the worst way Izetta wastes its time on meaningless bullshit. No, that dishonor goes to some of the most godawful, forced fanservice I've seen in a long time. Christ, where do I even start here? It's not enough that the camera's always leering at Izetta's ass while she's swooping around the battlefield, it has to hit every space on the Forced Fanservice Scene bingo card. Whu-oh, this one lady is a grope monster and molests Fine and Izetta for no good reason! Whoopsies, this guy heard a scream and thought the lady knight was in trouble but he just walked in on her bathing instead! Aw shucks, they're talking about boob sizes so Fine can get self-conscious over her flat chest! Because that's what a head of state concerned with her country's future is concerned about: not having big enough boobs for the camera to gawk at! Yeah, fucking bite me, show. Whatever chance Izetta had of being a flawed-but-entertaining thrill ride goes out the window when it indulges in this slop so callously. It even has the gall to shove those leering camera angles in our face when Izetta's at her lowest moment being tortured by the big bad evil witch, because of course it fucking does. Here, at least, is one place I'm pretty sure my Sword Art Online comparison is justified- and that does not reflect well on either of them, that's for sure.

  In the end, Izetta just feels like a waste. So much entertaining action, so much promise to be something more, and all the show can think to do with it is waste time on shit that doesn't matter and insult my intelligence by shoving tits in my face when it's out of ideas. I almost wish it were worse; at least if everything sucked, I wouldn't be tortured by how much better it could have clearly been.

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