Ancient Magus Bride: Season 2 – Episode 2 Review

Magic is beautiful, but also deadly.

The second episode of Ancient Magus Bride Season 2 has aired. Chise has found a student who passes out in her arms and she doesn’t know what to do. On top of that Elias has his things going on in this episode. What will it all lead to?

Let’s find out with a Recap and Review.

Recap

The episode opens with a white-haired person seemingly walking through the hallways only for them to be asked if they are the new teacher. We then cut to Chise with her sickly charge, whom she lifts with ease thanks to the Dragon’s Curse giving her the strength of two people. The girl wakes, embarrassed at being princess carried, and Chise sets her down before asking how she feels and offering medical advice due to her time helping clients back in the village.

The girl tells her that she gets nervous easily and so she offers her tea and potpourri, both of which are meant to calm her down. She asks what she should offer to pay it back, but since Chise doesn’t know she just asks for feedback someday before heading off. That girl, Philomela, then gets approached by another student known as Veronica who brings her to the next class.

As for Chise, she goes to visit Alice, who has cut her hair. It turns out she used it as part of a bargain to make a contract with the Will-o-Wisp from last season, who likes the scent of fire coming from her. So she wove her hair into a pouch and then put a lump of its coal into it. Though the Will-o-Wisp explains that it didn’t make the same kind of bargain as Ruth, meaning that it won’t die when she does.

Chise heads to her first class, whereupon she gets hit with anxiety from remembering her past before Alice gives her a push in the right direction. She then enters the class where she meets all her new classmates and her professor, who gives her an overview of the principles of Sorcery and how it’s fundamental to learn as much as they can and experiment. Since Chise is a visiting student, she isn’t expected to practice their way of using wizardry but should work on General Studies.

Veronica makes nice with Chise while one student with headphones looks like they are about to have a heart attack. Alice runs into her on their way to their next class, where we see that the white-haired figure is Elias in a glamour. They’re having a class on becoming Mages, with Alice, Renfred, and Chise acting as assistants.

Elias explains that Magic relies on borrowing strength from the neighbors and so how much aptitude you have with them determines if a sorcerer can use magic and become a Mage. He then reveals a bunch of neighbors who lived in the College and warns them not to do anything to upset them. Their exercise is to use their power to light a candle, with Chise and Alice demonstrating.

One of the students talks crap about Alice and gets his hair set on fire, and then her candle goes up in flames because she was upset and Will-o-Wisp expressed that. Chise manages to coax the Salamander into helping her with ease. That demonstrated, Elias allows the other students to give it a go with another warning not to do anything to upset them again.

One of the students greets them, but she warns him that he smells of rust and so he backs off. Another gets greeted friendly by one of the neighbors, indicating they would likely be able to become a Mage. Another makes the horrible mistake of pissing off a Salamander and gets nearly gets roasted until Elias steps in, which burns away his Glamour.

Fortunately, Elias smacks some sense into it and has Chise calm it down before stating to the others that was why he said not to upset them. Countless Mages have been eaten because they didn’t play it safe. Those who believe they have aptitude were then asked to raise their hand so they can return to the next class, while the others were told to quit as they ran a risk of getting cooked next.

Class is dismissed and some of the other students note that Elias’ appearance reminds them of a Muryan, like Miss Alexandra. They’re people who were transformed by experimenting too much, with him being thought of as being at least Level Three (see last episodes’ notes). Beatrice, one of the students, finds his bone structure amazing.

We then cut to Alice and Chise who head to the floor where instructors gather. They run across the student who was said to smell of rust, who greets her and introduces himself as Rian. He asks her if she could teach him how to do magic before we cut to another underwater hallway with hi-tech security.

Review

Okay, the second episode gives us our first look at some of the classes in the College as well as introduces the other major supporting characters.

As you can see, Philomela is the sickly girl who was also spying on Chise earlier. She seems quiet and nervous but has ties to Veronica. Chise got to show off her skills in peddling medicine from back in the village with her, offering her something to help treat her nervousness.

Rian, meanwhile, clearly has high aspirations of becoming a mage. But the moment he approached one of the fire spirits, he was told that because he smelled rusty they wouldn’t want to partner with him. He still hasn’t given up though and instead approached Chise to do so.

Alice, a returning character, has been on good terms with Chise since last season even after they were enemies once. She entered into a contract with Will-O-Wisp, who I will call Blue Flame, whereupon it hangs out with her because it likes her smell and does things for her. Their contract isn’t the same as Ruth’s with Chise, so it won’t die when she does. It’s purely transactional, but they’ve got good chemistry since the last we saw them during the final battle against Joseph.

The classes themselves gave some short but helpful insight into the nature of Sorcery and Magic. Knowledge is key, but the difference is in the execution. Sorcerers learn to manipulate the world through their own internal reserves while mages ask for the neighbors/others to help them in exchange for something else, using their knowledge to utilize their power. Neither is without risk, but mages deal with non-humans all the time, and as we’ve seen it doesn’t take much for a mistake to cost you dearly.

We also touched on Chise’s anxiety a bit, but thankfully it seems her school life here will be much better than before. Alice is nice to her and Elias is there. That being said, the next episode is going to cover quite a bit and we see that Joseph will be returning for a scene that should have been earlier but was likely repositioned to account for the episodes themselves.

Looking forward to it.

Changes from Manga

I covered most of the changes from the last episode, so there’s not much to cover here. It finishes off Chapter 47-48 “Birds of a Feather Flock Together I – II”:

• Chise originally gets eyed by Philomela during class, and she feels the gaze is familiar. But after class, Chise runs to escape being questioned where she comes across Philomela passing out.