English Dub Review: Mashle – Magic and Muscles “Mash Burnedead and the Accelerated Battle”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Mash and Lance take on the Second and Third Fangs of Magia Lupus, respectively. Both reveal they were horribly abused as children, the Second because he gained a magic nullifying eye and the Third by having to live up to impossible expectations set by his father. They are both soundly beaten after receiving the bare minimum of sympathy and kindness, so Mash and Lance move on to face the First Fang. Friendship and stuff, I guess!
OUR TAKE
Huh, I honestly didn’t think we would be picking off the Second and Third Fangs this quickly. They set up the fight with Finn and Dot against Fourth and Fifth too and I really thought they were gonna pick those two off first, both to go in descending order and to space out Mash’s next fight and give the rest of the group a chance to shine on their own. But uh…no! We’re knocking off Three and Two, who you would think would be the more elaborate and intimidating fights, in one episode just to get a move on I guess! We’re also checking off a lot of early Shonen tropes at once, namely the tragic villain backstories and the old enemy, Lance, now fighting against a new enemy alongside the main character. That said, they don’t really do much to make Lance connect to Third Fang (yes, I know they have names, no, I’m not looking them up). Lance is fighting to cure his sister’s disease while Third Fang is just trying to please his unpleasable father, which are pretty different in terms of motivations. Arguably Third Fang is better because he isn’t creepily obsessed with his sister as his whole personality (seriously why is that still a thing in these shows).
The other fight, Mash versus Second Fang, is a LITTLE better in terms of parallels, but only in the sense that both of them are potentially ostracized because of conditions they can’t control. Except, as we’ve seen over the course of this series, Mash is doing pretty dang well for himself despite the lack of magic, while Second Fang having an anti-magic eye sounds like something that would be pretty useful, not reason to IMPRISON A CHILD AND ATTEMPT TO MURDER THEM. By the way, I guess he escaped somehow and joined Abel, the First Fang, later, but we don’t really see that. At least it seems like him and Mash are friends now, for all the good that will do. I suppose the next episode will be about giving Finn and Dot an actual chance to be interesting, though that wouldn’t take much effort. Actually, for as much as I’m ragging on this show here, it is actually entertaining enough that I might keep up with it after I’m done with this review, so clearly it’s doing something right. Three more episodes, let’s see where they take us.
"There are also other characters that come and go (also owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery conglomerate media company)."
Huh. Is that just referring to other characters from the show itself, or is this implying that the new season is going to have cameos from other WBD IPs