English Dub Review: Mashle: Magic and Muscles “Wahlberg Baigan and the Magic of Darkness”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Midair in the distant sky, Innocent Zero uses a forbidden spell, Living Dead, to resurrect Adam Jobs, whom Wahlberg faces off with.  Adam was considered a top legendary magic user in the Magic Realm and Wahlberg and Innocent Zero’s master at the same time.  Meanwhile, Mash continues his fight to save his friends from Cell War’s magic while learning more about his past.

Our Take: 

The epic battle between Wahlberg’s students and Innocent Zero’s allies is in full swing with its surprises and magic.  From the looks of this week’s episode, it’s unsurprising that they won’t let up until the last wizard is left standing.  Last week, we discovered that Innocent and Wahlberg were students of the greatest magic user in history, Adam Jobs, during the confrontation between the two powerful wizards.  This episode further expands this character by showcasing that Adam had revolutionized modern magic for years, creating the academy and the Bureau of Magic.  He intended to support the Magic-less by having the strong magic users coexist with them, but from the looks of things, his dream didn’t exactly go as planned.

Adam’s magic is helpful for Innocent Zero, as his forbidden spell, Living Dead, resurrected their teacher to confront Wahlberg.  However, Adam’s lifeless body is controlled by its puppet master, Necrosse Mance, who uses Adam’s Dark Magic to attack Wahlberg.  Fortunately, thanks to his training by Adam, Wahlberg managed to defeat the puppet master with his three-dimensional space magic, leading him to confront Innocent Zero once more without any distractions.  Through its flashbacks, the episode shows the importance of Wahlberg’s relationship with Adam, which helped him overcome the seemingly powerful Dark Magic.  It may not hit me emotionally, but it represents Adam’s dream as a source of the show’s expanded world-building, which could play a role in its potential third season.

The episode’s second half then has Mash finishing his fight with Cell War before the latter harms the students with his black carbon tower.  However, it also shows Mash’s true purpose in Innocent Zero’s scheme.  He’s revealed to be one of Innocent’s six sons, born to grant Innocent a dangerous type of black magic called Forbidden Magical Body Construction.  This magic would grant Innocent an immortal heart if he took the hearts of his six sons.  In other words, if Mash dies, it’s game over.  Afterward, Mash successfully strangled Cell unconscious despite Cell’s diamond-edged discs giving him trouble.  In fact, he strangled Cell so hard the latter hallucinated Mash feeding him cream puffs nonstop.

Overall, the episode is another fun and thrilling continuation that further expands the characters’ relationships amid their high-stakes confrontations.  More importantly, it still contains the silliness in its humor that’s off-putting for the right reasons, including Mash’s reaction to his origin.  With only three episodes left of the season, don’t be surprised if they continue down this path as the final showdown reaches its climax.