Rolling Review – Little Witch Academia (08)

Episode Synopsis:

Lotte and Akko arise one morning and find themselves unable to wake Sucy. Believing their roommate’s condition to be the result of an unsanctioned experiment of hers, and fearful that alerting the faculty to the situation may result in their expulsion, the pair attempt to restore normalcy by sending Akko into Sucy’s subconscious to wake her from the inside out.

It doesn’t really work.

Review:

This…

This is a weird one.

I guess I’ll begin by observing that Trigger has done another fantastic job at maintaining story momentum for an entire episode. This is especially impressive with the realization that the episode is built on a relatively small number of major events, and yet every minute involves something new and entertaining happening as we and Akko delve into the nuts and bolts of Sucy’s mind. The dream theater in particular is an amazing use of the Studio’s stylistic range to illustrate Sucy’s character.

Akko and the audience meet numerous facets of Sucy’s subconscious – foremost among them: the classic shoulder-sized angel and devil aspects, complete with the now-familiar twist of their moral directions being somewhat relative.

Further introductions take us down a sub-plot that actually revolves around the process by which Sucy maintains her persona.
The implications of deliberate personality pruning seem like they could lead in any number of interesting directions, but the show really only scratches the surface before using the subject as a jumping-off point for a high-budget chase scene —
— which was still awesome – don’t get me wrong – just not quite what I was hoping for.

I also thought the whiplash ending was kind of anticlimactic, but a show that brings as much weird to the table as this can get away with a lot of things.

Summary:

The theater scene alone makes this a must-watch episode – almost the entire rest of it is mushroom-filled gravy.

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