A busy morning benefited from an early start wherein Matt and I knocked back a spartan breakfast, organised details of the casa with Madeline and settled the very reasonable bill for the casa which included five nights stay and breakfast and evening meals. We were then picked up by Matt's preferred taxi driver, the one who ferried him to and from Cassilda the past few nights who had the added benefit of being remarkably punctual. During the journey to the beach I continued to wrestle with the decision on whether to dive or not: whether to push and give it one last try or to simply resign it to the list of activities I had tried and disliked. I wished for divine intervention to relieve me of having to make the decision but it was to no avail and we arrived at the beach and the dive hut in plenty of time.
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The first thing one notices about Night Wizard is the gradated hair. The second is that it isn't as laughably comical as its name would suggest it to be. Pitching itself as a fantasy romp with school children, the series' first three episodes focus more on slice of life than slicing of life. It has a kind of wide-eyed innocence and refreshing lack of sexuality which makes it an easy and unintrusive show that is sporadically enjoyable and permanently predictable.
animation is serviceable and never flashy while voice acting is fitting and never memorable
Starting each episode with a blood-red tinged fight scene, it is immediately obvious that neither monster design or fight choreography are strong points; even the character designs feel pre-owned, so it is with some trepidation the series presses on. Beginning with a well trodden prologue of transfer student Ellis Shiho discovering she is in possession of not only an ancient and powerful artefact, but also of magic that may help save the world from a currently ongoing hidden war; it is like slipping into a pair of comfortable trousers. The series does little to deviate from this paradigm, its saving grace is the pace it moves at and the energy each character conveys. The terminal do-gooder attitude of Ellis quickly wears thin but is offset by the unexpected frankness of the shrine-maiden, Kureha Akabane, the clumsy sword-wielder Renji Hiiragi and the devious matriarch Anzelotte. They are novel switch-ups of the usual archetypes but the introduction of the token introvert, Akari Himuro (who totes a Bullet Witch style broom), indicates that this is all that is innovative about the series.
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