English Dub Review: Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina “The Girl as Pretty as a Flower / Bottled Happiness”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

In the Girl as Pretty as a Flower, Elaina stops by a flower field with various flowers. She meets a girl who gives her a bouquet of flowers to take to the next town and give them to anyone. However, a sentry stops her recognizing the shawl wrapped around the flowers. The older sentry explains to Elaina that the flowers are poisonous to people he goes to burn them. Later that night Elaina recalls a story from her favorite series about a flower that can lure people to their death. The next day she goes back to the flower field to see the sentry that stopped her yesterday. He rejoices over the fact that he found his missing sister and how beautiful she’s become. Elaina leaves immediately and as she leaves it appears that more people wander in the direction of the flower field.

In Bottled Happiness, Elaina comes across a boy carrying a bottle in his arms. She finds out that the bottle contains the happiness of other people, and that the boy is using it as a gift. It reminds her of a story she once read about a husband who used magic to capture images of places to show to his sick wife. He invites her over for a meal that his crush, Nino cooks. Elaina meets the boy’s father, the village chief who is a creep. Nino breaks the vase after she’s startled by the boy and the father yells at her. Elaina repairs the vase using magic. After that, she leaves only to remember the ending of the story she told the boy. The ending of that story was that the wife fell into depression after her husband’s return with the beautiful images and took her life in grief.

Our Take:

This week’s episode of Elaina’s journey took a dark turn. Elaina encounters a vicious magical flower capable of enchanting people. Then she encounters a father and son that just scream trouble for their servant, Nino. It’s clear that her journey is going to have people like this, but they’ve got nothing to do with her. Elaina is just a traveler passing through, and this episode cements that fact and instills a sense of wariness in her on first encounters.

Now Elaina’s decision to run as soon as she realized that the flower was like the one in her favorite series was a bit of surprise. It’s understandable considering her mother’s rules for her. Perhaps she considered the magic flower as a very dangerous magical plant and therefore she fled? The ending of the sentry and the group of people enchanted by the flowers certainly clue the audience on that.

Then Elaina’s inaction with Nino’s situation was disappointing. The implications were all there with Nino’s fear of the village chief’s reaction and the village chief’s gaze at Elaina. That moment where she pointed her wand at him had me on the edge of my seat. However, she chooses to fix the broken vase which cuts the tension. Then there’s the scene with the montage of the happiness shown to Nino. It ends up backfiring with Nino crying as a result. The son’s show of kindness could end up with the same result as the story that Elaina read, but we never see it because Elaina moves to her next destination.

Overall the episode sets a shift in the anime’s tone as it goes into darker aspects of people’s lives. Even though this episode might deter people from continuing, it’s a bold shift for the anime to take like that. Therefore I wonder how the anime is going to continue from this unsettling episode.