I took an impromptu four day weekend this month, and on one of those evenings I decided to finally finish watching Maebashi Witches, a show I had started around the time it began airing in April. My feelings about this show are… Complicated. So, I want to spend a little time reviewing it. This is going to be part review, part compare-and-contrast to my favorite anime, Sarazanmai. And not for nothing, I genuinely do see a lot of similarities between the two. But also, a lot of differences! There will be major spoilers for the entirety of both shows here.

To briefly summarize, Maebashi Witches is a show about five girls who are selected by a weird frog-like creature who they call Keroppe to train as witches by opening up a flower shop and granting people's wishes in order to earn their way to being fully recognized witches who can use their powers more freely. Of course, each girl has her unique reasons for wanting to be a witch, and these are explored throughout the course of the show. Oh, and it's also an idol show with many musical numbers throughout.

Maebashi Witches' pace and tone balance are… Kind of a mess. This gets better as the show goes along, but it's never fully resolved. Actually, I think it mostly improved in the back half and then took another dip in the final couple of episodes. I was immediately put off within the first few episodes when it seemed like they were trying to pack in so much that there was hardly any time for a single scene or line of dialogue to breathe. Serious, dramatic moments would be cut with humorous moments at the exact wrong time or the exact wrong frequency. There were exceptions, but very often it seemed like the show desperately didn't want us to feel the appropriate emotions a particular scene called for. No need to dwell on that sadness or anger or complex jumble of feelings, it's time for Yuina to shout about how she just caught onto something the rest of the cast has been talking about for like five minutes already.

Speaking of Yuina, who is ostensibly our main character… Somehow I feel like I learned the least about her throughout the series!? I still have questions about what exactly she was hoping to accomplish by becoming a witch, while it was pretty well spelled out with the rest of the girls. I think the show was trying to say that she didn't really know herself, but I gotta be honest, that just didn't sit right with me. I wanted something more concrete with her. She's just kind of a mystery, and that's weird when everyone else very much isn't. I also didn't fully appreciate the show bringing up her self awareness about how others find her annoying and how she often takes longer to figure things out than other people, as if we're supposed to go "aww okay, we forgive you" for all the times she completely killed the mood of scenes with his behavior. I definitely don't think it's wrong to have a character who struggles with these things. I just don't think using a character like this to frequently mess up the tone of your own story is the best way to endear us to them. Surely there must be better ways to present a character who's Kind Of A Lot.

As for the other girls, I've got no beef with them. All of their stories were clear cut and well structured. It's through them that this show really shines, by tackling a number of issues relevant to girls and women in current day Japan—and, I mean, the world in general. Fatphobia. Impossible beauty standards. The destructive potential of doggedly pursuing social media fame. Friendship fall outs when people grow up and change completely. Being used by so-called friends. Poverty. Parentification. Online sexual harassment and predation. And, while this particular storyline wasn't quite as satisfying to me, I also enjoyed seeing the struggle of someone trying desperately to pursue a particular schooling and career path, only to fail time and time again. I appreciated the message that came out of this that continuing to blindly encourage someone who's already tried their best without fully listening to their troubles is irresponsible. And I appeciated the conclusion to this character's journey: That, even if you ultimately fail, sometimes it's worth it to pursue something you want very badly until you decide for yourself when to give up. That it's best for it to be your own choice when to stop, not someone else's.

So, like I said previously, I couldn't help but notice a lot of similarities to my favorite anime Sarazanmai while watching those last few episodes. Some of them are pretty superficial, but I know Sarazanmai so well that they really jumped out at me, so I feel compelled to talk about them.

• Kinda shady frog-like creature who grants the main characters their powers (though I'd argue Keroppe is far shadier than Keppi).

• A focus on the personal and interpersonal issues concerning a group of teenagers, specifically complex real world issues (well, I don't think many real teenagers are living with the aftermath of killing a guy at age 10 to protect their much older brother, but many real teenagers are getting mixed up in crime, so I mean real world issues in a general sense).

• Said group of teenagers initially starts out fairly hostile towards each other, but gradually warms up and becomes inseparable as they learn each other's greatest struggles (not an uncommon thing in anime in general, I'll admit).

• Focus on a real world location in Japan (Asakusa, Tokyo for Sarazanmai, Maebashi, Gunma for Maebashi Witches).

• Traditional Japanese aesthetics mixed up with the modern.

• An emphasis on musical numbers in each episode—though I won't deny Maebashi Witches put much more care into this. But I mean, Sarazanmai isn't trying to be an idol anime, either.

• The series ends with the group of teenagers having to overcome the threat of forgetting each other after forming a close bond.

I feel like I'm missing some… But that's what I've got for right now.

Despite all the similarities, Maebashi Witches just doesn't have The Juice for me as Sarazanmai did and still does. Sarazanmai has one fewer episode than Maebashi Witches does, and yet it never felt like it was mile-a-minute or like important emotional moments were being interrupted. But Sarazanmai does plenty of things differently. For one, focusing on a group of three teenagers rather than five meant a lot more could be accomplished in the time it had without it feeling rushed. Sarazanmai does have five characters among its main cast, but the other two are essentially the series' antagonists, and comparatively, they really don't get much screen time—just enough to make the fanbase go wild for them and fill in the missing information themselves (though there is some supplemental manga and audio that helps with this).

Actually, as much as I loved Sarazanmai right from the very beginning, I didn't go truly feral for it until the final episode. And I think comparing the final episodes for both shows really highlights what makes one so special for me and one not.

I'll start by saying that yeah, shipping is a factor here. Kazuki/Enta/Toi from Sarazanmai is still my all time favorite ship, and getting extremely into a ship is a surefire way to make me a massive fan of a show/game/whatever. But I didn't really get a sense of strong romantic potential out of Maebashi Witches. I was unfortunately cursed by some kind of mischievous forest creature at birth to be a lesbian fujoshi, but listen, I still get somewhat attached to the lesbians when I see them, and frankly I didn't see them in Maebashi Witches (aside from the one secondary character who is explicitly in a relationship with another woman but whose partner we never see—bummer, but that wasn't the point of her storyline). I say all this to make the point that I'm not unbiased here, and my bias leans towards shows where my mind can latch onto romantic potential.

So, regarding those final episodes. Sarazanmai's is so lovely, my favorite episode in fact, because it doesn't make a point to wrap absolutely everything up in a neat bow. We're left with several heavy questions. How do you handle the deep romantic love you feel for your clueless and potentially uninterested best friend in a homophobic world? How can you keep going when you've just been released from three years in juvenile detention to a world where your entire immediate family is dead? Are you okay with pledging a deep connection to your friends even when you're aware your efforts to love them might fail? How do you face life when the future is so uncertain? None of this gets answered. If we, the audience, feel drawn in enough to engage on a deeper level, this show provides a LOT to chew on. It basically ends on the note, "We can't tell you one way or another, but this might not all turn out okay. That's life!" That's something I can actually think about. The episode is dark and contemplative and high emotion while ending on a hopeful note, but it doesn't necessarily mean there's hope beyond the very moment it ends on. The post credits scene is simple and quiet, and again tells you nothing except "these three are together right now, and will continue into the future together" without saying for how long, while also telling the viewer "it might not be okay for you, either, but keep going." Or at least, that's how I read it with the context of the entire show behind it.

Meanwhile, Maebashi Witches' last episode… Well, it was crammed full of stuff, just as the early episodes were. It was by no means awful, but it just left me with a feeling of "okay". The girls still face problems, but it seems like they'll be fine in the end, as long as they have each other. Thank goodness the scene where everything turned out perfectly for them was a fake out (a fake out that I wonder why they felt the need to include, honestly), because I was thinking "you cannot be serious" when watching it. But the actual end we got was still that things were pretty much okay with them. I didn't get any sense that their futures could potentially be hopeless—and like, I don't want them to be. I far prefer undeniably happy endings to bleak endings. But my favorite is complex endings, where things are both okay and not simultaneously. I like that tension. I could see some people wanting to continue the threads left here, but I'm okay with just leaving the show where it ended. I don't really want any more of this. My mind doesn't want to dwell on this beyond this review, because I don't feel that tension.

I feel like I may have painted Sarazanmai as a very serious, unfunny show, but actually it's hilarious. It just does a much better job of balancing the two sides than Maebashi Witches does. The post credits scene of Maebashi Witches' final episode is silly and fourth wall breaking and leaves a hint of a mystery, but I don't really care about it. Actually it kinda made my eyes roll, because again, the tone just didn't sit well with me. I found myself wanting this show to take itself a little more seriously given the serious topics it tackles—just a little, moments of levity are still important—but right to the very last second, it just couldn't.

A lot of people do seem to like Maebashi Witches, so hey, give it a watch if it sounds interesting. I did think everyone except Yuina had a great storyline, so maybe watch it for them? But oh, jeez, I really didn't like Yuina, which certainly doesn't help my opinion of this show given that she's THE main character… Choco-chan was my favorite, but if I were to guess, I think she's the most popular among the main cast. We don't find out exactly why she's so enjoyable until the show's second half, she's kind of a non-entity in the first, but the payoff was worth it with her. And the music and character designs and settings are lovely. It is pretty unique within the magical girl genre, I think it would be an at least decent watch for anyone else who loves magical girls.