Mashle: Magic and Muscles

Episode 12

Being one of those series with a second season already announced makes my job reviewing this finale for Mashle that much easier. Maybe it helps that the pressure is off to see this episode as anything other than a pausing point in a confirmed to-be-continued story, or maybe this episode was just that much better than the past couple, but I can say that I had fun with this season-ender here. A lot of my concerns about what the plot set up at the end of the last episode wound up unfounded (look, I haven't read the manga for this series, I don't wholly know where it's going) and things find their way back to the main themes and more interesting conceptual hooks of Mashle in a satisfying way. I can say I'm excited for that second season now.

I even found myself more amused by the prolonged round of victory cheers that Mash and pals were indulging in carrying on from last week. Mash is a good boy, and he's found himself some good kids to be friends with, and their resolution to keep and defend Mash's magic-less secret by the end of this episode only further confirms that. It took a whole season of them mostly feeling like loose acquaintances, but the ordeal that Finn, Dot, and Lemon have been through over this arc, and their just-realized understanding of what Mash's situation is, seems like a properly uniting element. The likes of Dot have wholly come to understand that inborn magical power isn't even close to everything in this world, and they just watched The Power Of Friendship turn guys like Abel and Abyss around, so they know any sort of upheaval is possible. It's a simple, silly start to uniting the party, but it also functions as a microcosm of the unique social-reforms magic that Mash might be able to work on in this setting.

That sort of theming is thankfully also present in the big magical shonen-battle dustup that Mashle finishes off with before stepping out for the season. Instead of hard-cutting into a whole new story arc, the appearance of Cell War (have I mentioned how much I love the names in this show?) works more as a preview for what's to come later, while also providing an avenue for the characters of Abel and Abyss to round off their contractually obligated bad-guy-befriending arcs. And there are equal parts irreverent undercutting of scenes and more sincere swerves. I was worried for a moment that Abyss might not make it out of this one, since I kinda like him, but as soon as Cell War imposed a hard thirty-minute time limit to structure this last stretch of the story, I figured he would turn out fine.

Mashle understands that Mash as a character works best when his blunt, uncomplicated approach catalyzes to change the views of others. Maybe he'll move out of his cream-puff-powered goofiness in the future to more consciously come to conclusions about how to change this world, but for now, it's enough that he shocks others already entrenched in the system to realize that said system is stupid, both in its in-universe social limitations and the ones it would put on storytelling were this to play by those rules. Abel's preconceived notions were based not just on a misinterpretation of his mother's call to empathy, but on an assumption that inborn power and abilities were things doomed to remain immobile and uneven. Except now he's witnessed Mash's opposition based on raw physical strength, something that quantifiably can be increased to higher levels through sheer hard work.

It's a realization that redeems even Mashle's more basic genre elements it had previously deployed. Abel's use of his Secondth, in the context of a surprise save for Mash, actually means something now, so I get to be swept up in its spectacle as a major moment. It doesn't matter that the actual fight happening is mostly a trailer for the arc we're going to get up to when Cell War returns with his presumptive mini-boss squad in tow, it still lands because it ties into Abel's kickstarted sense of empathy and his understanding that maybe he could see Abyss as less of a tool and more of a friend (or more!). And hey, it also ends on a great gag of Cell War whipping out some overpowered magic-reflection item that everyone hypes up even as we know Mash is going to be able to kick right through it. I don't care that it's the same joke as with Abyss's evil eye, that's the sort of disregard for the stupidest parts of magical and shonen-power storytelling that Mashle was built for and I think it's funny every time.

It means I am both satisfied with what the show does at the end of the season here, while also just having plenty of fun with it. The anime still looks pretty cool in places (love that world-breaking effect on Cell War's retreat), and the situation at the end feels like a sufficient shake-up for going into a second season. Or it'll get bullshitted out of in the first five minutes of the premiere episode, either would be on-brand for this show. Mostly I'm just glad that after the last couple of episodes were so shaky, that Mashle has found its footing again by the end here. Truly, muscles can power through any obstacle.

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Mashle: Magic and Muscles is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris is keeping busy keeping up with the new anime season and is excited to have you along. You can also find him writing about other stuff over on his blog, as well as spamming fanart retweets on his Twitter, for however much longer that lasts.