Season Review: High Guardian Spice Season One

It’s pretty rare for a series to have so many people rooting for it to fail before it even comes out. Even if it’s more common more recently, it still seems to be an exceptional case with High Guardian Spice, the first intended Crunchyroll Original series. The show was announced as far back as 2018, with a now infamous trailer that showed interviews with the crew working on it in lieu of any completed footage. Said interviews focused on how the show was prioritizing diversity in the creative voices, which while being a good intention that should be welcomed, is probably not the best way to announce the show and get people excited for it. This sparked a lot of controversy, mostly from a lot of bad faith actors, but it set a tone for the proceeding years it was in development that I’m sure is far from what the creative team wanted. As such, now that the first season is finally out for the public, there are many loud voices eager to write it off entirely before even watching it. So, while I wasn’t exactly excited to see this myself, I’m going to do my best to judge High Guardian Spice on its own terms, see what it seems to set out to accomplish, and determine how well it did so.

The show follows four girls, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme (based on the traditional English ballad made popular by Simon and Garfunkel), who begin magic school to become Guardians, which are essentially the wizards/huntsmen/what have you of this world. This is not the most original premise in the world, and it definitely dips into plenty of the expected tropes and cliches, but what matters is the execution, which is…mixed. A consistent theme throughout the season is finding new paths and choices that many of the characters had previously never considered, such as learning new forms of magic or even as simple as making new friends. This is a fluffy, sugary, magical girl kind of show, so love and friendship are going to be all over the place, so that alone understandably won’t be everyone’s bag. But in terms of that core theme, it does show several characters gaining significant development towards the kinds of people they want to be.

Just as that first trailer foretold, this series is most definitely one that aims for lots of diversity in many forms. Diversity in skin color, body type, gender, sexuality, and so on are all given a hefty amount of representation. Most notably is the inclusion of very casually written gay and transgender characters among the main cast. Now, obviously just including that alone is nothing new and is actually becoming much more common even in mainstream kids shows like She-Ra, Voltron, or The Owl House, but it’s still nice to see it now shied away from and even embraced. One character’s arc focuses on them learning more about their need to transition, aided by a mentor figure who is very open about their own journey to understanding that. Unsurprisingly, this mentor is voiced by creator Raye Rodriguez, who is a trans man himself. I don’t fall in any of those categories myself, but I imagine having another series that is willing to see this group is going to guarantee that there will be an audience for this show no matter what.

And along with that level of inclusion, on top of the YA fantasy aesthetic, soundtrack, and designs, I would be willing to call High Guardian Spice an above average kids’ show at the very least, even if the lessons are a bit ham fisted at times. However, we need to bring up a major issue this show has, and that’s its tone. At the beginning of each episode, there is a viewer discretion warning that this show is for mature audiences only, which confused me for most of my first rewatch since the first half is mainly very toothless conflicts and low stakes as the characters get their bearings at the school. Then, around the last third, there is a rather sudden swerve into some pretty jarring violence. One episode in particular mostly centers on a happy and fun adventure where the main four girls turn into mermaids to capture a dragon that’s hunting sealife…and then it ends with one of the girls accidently maiming it and everyone crying while another girl has to put the dragon out of its misery…followed by the peppy light hearted ending theme about friendship and hot coco. That was tonal whiplash so bad I needed a neck brace.

That is probably the most alarming example, but there is a surprising amount of blood and swearing, even among the kids, that feels needlessly edgy and juvenile when it seems to want to be mature. Don’t get me wrong, I am by no means opposed to kids shows making use of violence and mature storytelling when it can serve the story, but the cutesy art style and character designs simply don’t lend themselves well to it. I have seen magical girl shows that can, and this is not one of them. Speaking of the character designs, they’re honestly kinda bland, seeming to have a pretty simple intention and not much else. Rosemary is “pink main character girl”, Sage is “blue best friend girl”, Carroway is “magic teacher”, Olive is “cat girl”, and another teacher I’m blanking on the name of is just “demon teacher”. I know animation is hard, but I really feel like these designs needed another once through so that I would be fine with staring at them for long periods while I’m trying to get through the story.

As for said story, it’s not exactly a home run either. As mentioned, the first half is pretty slow, mainly about introducing characters and getting to know the setting, but the plots are quite boring more often than not. Then the tone gets a bit darker in the second half, but still feels pretty dull and lacking flavor, aside from seeing some character arcs hit their major strides. The finale is thankfully more exciting, but only compared to the rest of the show, with a Disc One End Boss who follows a pretty stock shapeshifter plot and has an even less imaginative design, which is that much more frustrating because he can turn into anyone but chooses “anime high school bully #12”. And so, by the end of the season, I’m at least happy that many of the main characters are growing as people, but the world and upcoming threats just don’t grab me.

As much as I applaud its ambition and good intentions, I honestly highly doubt that High Guardian Spice is going to be the breakthrough hit that Crunchyroll was hoping for. Even putting aside all the undue hate and criticism of it before it was even out, the end product is not really setting me on fire with anticipation for the next season. I’m not against the company making original animated series like with this or Onyx Equinox, but they really need to up their game. Crunchyroll Originals have already been such a mixed bag as it is, among them being Gibiate and Ex-Arm, two complete duds from this and last year, which High Guardian Spice is likely going to be in similar company with. I genuinely like what they’re trying to do and I hope that those who need to feel seen do feel seen by the choices made. We should be getting more programming that is willing to be this inclusive. But in that same token, those groups most certainly deserve better than this.