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"Test"

Going to do some messier writing to encourage more thoughts to be on here.

I’ve been watching through Mashle with family members lately. It’s rather obviously a Harry Potter parody of sorts, but the protagonist seems sort of like a more oblivious ONE protagonist. The protagonist, Mash Burndead, is a teen with no magical powers in a eugenicist society built for magic users. Magic users are born with a prominent line on their face that shows their innate level of magical strength. Might makes right, and the people with the most power (usually having at least two magical lines instead of the standard one line) are at the top, running the country, while those without magic are abandoned or murdered as children. Mash ends up enrolling in a magic school and hiding his lack of powers in an attempt to become the best student in his year and join the ranks of the Bureau of Magic, the government which sets the laws which govern this world. But mostly just cuz someone dared him to or else they’d turn him and his dad in.

Despite the dramatic premise, it’s a very simple comedy romp that’s very clearly parodying Harry Potter, among other popular shonen. Students play not!Quidditch, students are sorted into one of three dorms which suit their personality type (Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff have been combined into Orca House, leaving Adler and Fain as the Gryffindor and Slytherin), and not!Dumbledore has a clear favoritism for the main character, but mysteriously disappears when dramatic story events occur. Each main character is generally built around one cliche which carries their entire personality, and when Mashle isn’t having characters fight, it’s trying to fire off quips about those cliches as fast as possible. It manages to give characters just enough depth to avoid getting annoying. Mashle knows that it is a derivative story, and it uses that to have fun instead of challenging its tropes and trappings.

While simple, I do enjoy the reveal of how Mash manages to solve every single problem with solutions that will stretch the boundaries of belief. My main gripe is really that I wish there were more female characters in the main cast, as the 3 main female characters I can think of so far have mostly been interested in getting people to fall in love with them (out of genuine infatuation or a desire to use them). I find the persistent Amy Rose-esque character, Lemon Irvine trying to win Mash’s affections amusing, but it’s sad that we never get to see her doing anything else so far.

Side note: the voice cast is great in English dub. Aleks Le does a great deadpan voice for Mash that makes every interaction really funny; also recognized Greg Chun, Alex Yu, etc.

Will be finishing the first season tomorrow. I’m not sure if I’ll like the second season or not yet. I would like the story to lean into its interesting ideas more, but I don’t know if it has any interest in doing so.