English Dub Review: Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina “The Land of Mages”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Elaina visits the land of mages as her first stop on her journey. However, after being crashed into by a novice, Elaina gets rejected by the hotels until she enters a shabby hotel with the novice broomstick flier, Saya behind the counter. Then Elaina realizes that she lost her brooch, the only thing distinguishing her as a full-fledged witch. The search is unsuccessful and Saya begs Elaina to train her for the apprentice exams which she agrees only until she can find her brooch. The training focuses on the magic portion of the exam and part of the exam is to be the last apprentice on the broom. Therefore Elaina teaches Saya tricks on the broom and spells for the exam.

While they train during the breaks Elaina goes and searches for her brooch. After talking to the woman who saw the broomstick crash from her window Elaina finds out that Saya took her brooch. After a conversation with Saya on her underhanded method and empathizing with feeling lonely while working to achieve a goal, Elaina gives Saya her spare hat before she leaves the next day. After six months have passed, Elaina is in a country far away from the land of mages where she spots Saya’s face as the apprentice who passed the latest witch exam and awaits the day for them to reunite while continuing her journey.

Our Take:

On this week’s episode of Elania’s journey, we visit the country of mages as Elaina’s first place in her journey. The episode’s conflict was a good start for Elaina’s journey to progress beyond just her sightseeing travels as she interacts with Saya, a novice witch who’s around her age.

The land of mages is a unique country with the preferred transportation to be flying on broomsticks which provides a unique architecture for the country’s buildings to adapt to that transportation. Furthermore, there are people like Saya and the woman who saw the crash that makes up society. There’s also how people are treated based on their status by the hotel staff as Elaina struggled to find a place to stay without her brooch which is in vast contrast to how she was greeted in the beginning by the guards as a witch. On that note, it appears that Elaina still has a lot of that arrogance both as a teenager and as a witch given her thoughts and actions. It’s a trait that I hope she grows out of as a part of character development. There’s the reason for the second rule from her parents which is to literally not to be too arrogant of herself after all.

Elaina breaks down the witch society into three levels: novices, apprentices, and witches. The way to distinguish witches from the rest is the brooch they wear, and it becomes a vital point in this week’s episode as she loses it. Then she explains the two parts of the apprentice exam, the writing portion, and the magic combat portion. She slides over the writing portion because of how she did with a night of cramming and we get to the tricks she used, for example, the wind spell while training Saya. There’s also the parallel between Elaina and Saya as master and student the same way with Elaina and Fran. The two being picky eaters with mushrooms was a good scene, and also the food in this anime looks absolutely amazing.

After finding out that Saya kept her brooch, the conversation after the reveal was heartwarming. Saya did all of that because she felt lonely while trying to pass the exam after many failed attempts, and Elaina makes a good point that you can’t tie someone down to you using underhanded means like that. Furthermore, Saya was suspicious with how quickly she picked up the flying part of their training, and how she and her little sister could fly from the far east where they came from didn’t add up either. Despite the fact that she’ll be going away after that, Elaina comforts Saya with her spare hat to remind her that even though she’s alone she won’t be lonely with people like her and Saya’s sister thinking about her. The scene after that with Saya’s face in the news was a good scene to wrap up the story of the episode as the series moves with Elaina to the next chapter in her journey.

Overall the episode was great with showing details of how the land of mages operates, and the steps to becoming a witch. I look forward to seeing the next place in Elaina’s journey.