I loved the opening minutes of Wizard Barristers -- for one, its doesn't start out introducing the main character as 'an ordinary high school student.' Whee! A protagonist in their twenties! You see Quinn and his pretty boy partner shooting up a Wud (or a non-Muggle or a Wizard in WB-speak), causing a train to derail and then arresting the fuck out of him.
The animation was awesome! The art: lovely! I stopped walking on my elliptical walker just to see what else happens: the Wud was sentenced and his death was pretty gruesome (not bloody, but gruesome in its immediacy and lack of ceremony).
Then, Cecil Sudou happened.
She's 17, a Wizard Barrister -- the youngest ever! Really! everyone is so keen to remark on how young she is and how awesome she is and how brilliant she is. Rinse and repeat until episode 11 and that's the entire series in a nutshell.
Mary-fucking-Sue.
It's a shame, too: I love the art and the quality of the animation, as I mentioned, though you can feel the quality deteriorate mid-way through the series. You see your China-quality animation with distorted eyes and faces and all around lowering of visual quality.
The characters are interesting at first, but it all just went downhill when they became members of the Cecil Sudou fan club.
It could have been quite a good series, too, with the courtroom drama reminiscent of Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney games - you almost expect the barristers to shout "OBJECTION" followed by a series of magic missiles. The world of WB is also quite interesting, with people being overtly anti-magic to the point where the Wuds are considered second-class citizens, with lesser rights and an abbreviated justice system aimed at whacking the judge's hammer at any magic user dumb enough to use their magic.
By episode 8 or 9, I pretty much gave up on the series; so did the animators apparently as evidenced by the aforementioned downhill slide in quality.
As it is, I suggest skipping this series and finding something else to waste your time on.
Verdict: 2/5 Skip it.
TL;DR:
+ Great Art (first half)
+ Great Animation (first half)
+ Interesting character design
+ Metaloids (robots made from magic) are an interesting concept
------ It's all about Cecil Sudou
- Story is hardly coherent: everything is just about Cecil Sudou and how special she is!
-- Such a wasted opportunity, the source material could have been so much better
Genre: Mary Sue, Sci-Fantasy, Mahou-Shoujo sorta
Episodes: 12 (I only saw 11)
Aired: January to March 2014
This was a really great contest and hopefully I can attend the next one. It was alot of fun and I really enjoyed myself.. One Punch Man
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