Overview

After all the heavy romance, drama and tragedy-esque series that have popped up this season, I thought I'd take the time to look at something a bit easier on the emotional roller coaster - a more or less straight action/humor series by the name of Night Wizard. At first glance, the title seems like it'd tell you everything you need to know about it - there's gonna be magic, there's gonna be explosions, and it's gonna be good vs evil. Eh... not quite so fast, kids. It does have all those things in there, but as with all things that come with the night, there's a lot of shades of gray that pop up. Oh - watch out for falling men...

Review

Renji Hiiragi just wants to go to school - it's not that much to ask for, is it? Unfortunately for Hiiragi, he's a night wizard, one of those charged with protecting the world from the forces of the impending darkness, known as emulators, and his boss is... cute. No, really. Anzelotte fits every usage of the term 'elegant gothic lolita', and Renji is her favorite toy... a toy that she tends to drop. A lot. From considerable distances, hence why Hiiragi has earned the nickname 'The Falling Man'... Trust me, you'll see what I mean within the first fifteen minutes of the series or so. In any event, through the course of the first episode, he meets a young girl named Shiho Elis, who's been 'invited' to join the Astronomy Club run by his childhood friend, Akabane Kureha, on her first day after transferring in.

Anzelotte is something of an interesting character - and what else could somebody be when their favorite line - remember, she's in a position of command here - is "For what I am about to ask you, please respond either, 'Hai', or 'Yes'." She tends to start off pretty much every major order she gives with this line, in fact - and Hiiragi is usually the primary victim, erm, 'volunteer' thereof. The other characters don't seem to get the real meaning behind that phrase... in fact, there is one other character in the series that really understands what it means, beside Hiiragi. That should just about setup Hiiragi and Anzelotte's relationship in and of itself, heh...

They didn't really start out the series to make the characters look like anything particularly special. Actually, they did that with a lot of the plot line - Night Wizard starts off pretty simplistically, and by the end of the series I was convinced that it was entirely intentional - and they did a pretty good job of making it seem coincidental. But, I've also noticed that a lot with some of the recent anime series out there - characters start out as pretty much their stereotyped archetype versions, and then grow into decent characters. At first, I thought it was a good thing - but I'm starting to wonder why more writers aren't just starting out with, y'know... decent characters?

In any case, the effect here is useful, because as I hinted, the storyline itself seems to have been very intentionally written to go from simplistic to complex, an effect that's surprisingly hard to do with as much success as they had here. With the benefit of hindsight, having finished the series, I realize that almost everything they did at the beginning of the series was to setup the last four episodes - you might think that would be obvious, but not on the scale that I'm talking about. Take, for instance, Hiiragi and Kureha's childhood relationship. FinalDragon of TenchiFF is fond of pointing out the order of romantic winners: The tsundere always wins, and if there's no tsundere, then it's the childhood friend... there are no other 'winners' - sadly enough, he's right. Most of the time, that's true... though ef broke that rule BIG TIME. In this case, Kureha is both childhood friend AND tsundere, making her a double threat. This is something built on off and on through the entire series... so it shouldn't have been a surprise that it popped up in the finale too... yet the way in which it is used most certainly is.

Lessie, normally I would get a bit more into the storyline - I've been saying that a lot lately, haven't I? The truth is, a lot of the recent series have surprised me with their depth, especially ones like Night Wizard where they start off simple enough and then build into something considerably more complex. It's not the same level of multi-layered plot, character development, and emotional manipulation that featured in ef, or even Myself; Yourself... instead where Night Wizard excelled was in casually making you not believe were it was going. This is what I've been hinting at so far, folks... the series did an awesome job of showing you exactly where it was going... but making you believe it was going somewhere completely else. It's called foreshadowing, and if you'll allow me to dredge up your memories of Composition 101, it's a tool used by writers to hint at something coming farther along down the storyline... It's also something rarely used to proper effect, as it was here.

The animation is decent, but nothing spectacular, certainly not compared to other recent series. It's fluid enough, and consistent quality, so there's no problems with watchability. How else can I put it, it's decidedly average! That's almost a refreshing change from the torrent of incredible animation quality lately... It's nice being able to watch a series without losing track of what's happening because you're too in awe of how good the animation is. The character designs are nifty, but ultimately forgettable for the main cast; only Elis really stands out, and that not by much. It's a symptom of the fact that they really do start out the series as generics and grow into complete characters - their designs are standard, and more or less stay that way. More interesting are the designs of Lion Gunta and Bell Zephyr, the leaders of the emulators. I should mention at this point that Night Wizard is based on a tabletop RPG of the same name, in which the 72 demons of the Lesser Key of Solomon take the form of young, moe girls... Yes, that's exactly what I just said. Don't believe me? 'Bell Zephyr'. 'Beelzebub'. See the similarity? In any case, I suspect that that is why Bell and Lion seemed better fleshed out than any of the main cast - they were taken pretty much straight out of the game itself.

Voice acting is ok, but also nothing special. Again, I have to give a bit more recognition to Bell and Lion's VA's than the main cast, because they seemed like they were actually getting into their roles. As for Hiragi and the others, I dunno... It was almost like they were in 'business as usual' mode while they were doing their roles. There was nothing that felt particularly inspired in their performances - or maybe it's just that I've been spoiled by recent performances in other series. The series music is pretty good though, and the ending theme is one of the most haunting I've heard in quite some time, Erinyes by BETTA FLASH. Look it up, it's a beautiful song - and it's even more haunting when you listen to the non-vocal version. The op theme is a bit more standard, but still good.

Well, as I mentioned, the series is based on a tabletop RPG, and in hindsight, in some places that really does show through. At the very least, it makes the various dungeon crawl sequences make a lot more sense, and it certainly explains the operation of the emulators. Night Wizard has, at times, a monster of the week feel to it - but that's not the primary focus on the story, so no foul on that one. Instead, it plays off like I'd expect a decent GM with a longer running storyline to play it. Still, I will admit that it would have been nice to see a little more background on the world as a whole for those of us that have never played the table-top... Small request, I know, but it could have been worked in fairly easily.

Overall

It's a good series. There's really no need to dress that one up - it's true. I enjoyed Night Wizard because it's pretty well written with some great twists, and an excellent ability to foreshadow. The character dynamic is also nicely written up, though could have used a little sanding here and there. The characters are simple, but grow, and the animation is good enough. There's some good action, but with one exception, no violence severe enough that I'd be uncomfortable watching it with my Cute Little Sister. It's worth a look if you like swords-n-technosorcery, or just plain enjoy watching one character get all the misery in the world, heh. The ending is solid, but falls a little flat on some points... still, at least it IS an ending. Eh, like I said, it's a good series.