First Impressions: Little Witch Academia

First Impressions is a line of reviews on my blog that are my first impressions of whatever I'm reviewing. With TV Shows and Anime, they will be my impression of it based off the first episode. First Impressions for movies will be based off the trailer of the movie. For books and such, it will be based on the first few chapters or whatever is appropriate for the media type.

This review will be spoiler free.
This anime is a Netflix original.

So after watching the first episode of Little Witch Academia, I admit I was a bit skeptical after hearing about a certain tsundere from The Familiar of Zero and confusing her to be in this cute little anime.

My First Impression Rating is 4/5.

Let's introduce you to the trio of likely main characters! (I say likely as this review is after seeing only the first episode)

Atsuko 'Akko' Kagari

A perky and cheerful young lady with an upbeat and positive attitude! She's optimistic and may give up sometimes but will still try to find a way to move forward!

Sucy Manbavaran

Sucy Manbavaran is a witch who is your classic occult anime girl. She knows plenty about puppet magic and even poisons. She's reclusive but talkative when she needs or wants to be.

Lotte Yanson

We first meet her as she trips in front of Akko. She's sweet and clumsy (a classic anime trope) but of course, the clumsy trait could be proved wrong as this is the first episode. She's friendly and we don't really find out what she seems to specialize in magic-wise in this episode if she does happen to specialize.

The premise I get from the first episode of this anime is that our main character, Akko, is on her way to the prestigious Luna Nova Witchcraft Academy despite not being from a family of witches. Her reasoning for going to this school despite that? As a little girl, she saw a magic show done by a witch whom Akko now idolizes. This show inspired her to become a witch. Now older, she is trying to find the 'bus stop' to the school but no one in town knows what she's talking about. Finally, after poring over her map, she finds the 'bus stop' which turns out to be a ley line on which a witch may use her broom to fly along to get to a destination. Naturally, our protagonist didn't have a broom let alone know how to fly one. Along the way, she meets a rather gothic looking girl who we later learn is named Sucy and seems to specialize in puppet magic. Sucy doesn't seem to care much about friends but rather her own gain. Unlike some anime characters who act like this, Sucy somehow manages to do it in a somewhat humorous way. After Sucy gets too annoyed with having the excitable Akko following her to the ley line, she tricks Akko into thinking she has snakes on her hands and gets away. Once Akko reaches the ley line, she meets a cute though somewhat clumsy witch on her way to the orientation at the school named Lotte. Akko helps Lotte after she trips and drops all her stuff so Lotte offers a ride to Akko. They go through some turbulence as they travel through the ley line however due to Akko having pickled fruit on her. Lotte explains that ley lines don't like salinity, but it's too late; Lotte loses control of her broomstick and they go flying into Sucy. This knocks all three into a divergence from the ley line and into a forbidden forest full of horrors.

At this point, you're around the middle of the episode with many details left out. That all is just the husk of the peanut. You get the picture though.

For the intended audience, I would assume that it's targeting younger females as shoujos tend to do.

As for the animation and style itself, it feels very smooth and gives a slight underlying hint of Soul Eater with less spooky. It's definitely cute.

I get the vibe that I'm in for some cute slice of life anime at a fancy school. Because of this setting and the societal level, our heroine is at (especially compared to the majority of the students), I feel there will likely be some mishaps regarding her societal status and the fact that she did not come from a magical family. For all those wondering if the dub or sub is better so far: I find them both equal in quality. The magical spells sound better in Japanese to me but the characters all have fitting voices in both the dub and the sub. One can also play this in French, German, and Spanish alongside English and Japanese. As for the subtitles, they are available in English, CC Japanese, Spanish, and both Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

So far, I like this anime a lot. This is one of those anime that doesn't have an opening in the first episode, however, the ending song and credits (in Japanese) plays appropriate and beautiful music and shows stunning (and also appropriate) visuals that go quite nicely with the music. As of this posting, this anime has two seasons, 25 episodes total, counting both seasons.

See you when the next review is up!

-J