Mashle: Magic And Muscles

Here's a kickass english cover of the new intro:

Season 2, Episode 3: What a great and intense episode. The atmosphere all throughout was so genuinely oppressive and depressing regarding Mash's fate. I felt the weight of it all much more here than in the manga, the adaptation was masterful.

And next episode sees Mash break dancing, and we get a helpful student who, surprise surprise, doesn't betray Mash and genuinely helps him.

Also, there have been many dance clips to the theme song, but I particularly like this one;

Edited by Dracoblade on Feb 2nd 2024 at 5:13:29 AM

...is there not a Mashle episode this week?

Valentine's Day break.

Season 2, episode 7: Man, comparing this episode to some of the best episodes of season 1, at least in terms of animation it's vastly improved. That's not to say season 1's animation was bad, but it was fairly mediocre most of the time, whereas Mash vs Margarette genuinely looked amazing.

And this was the episode I was looking forward to since S 1 E 1, when I heard the amazing and wild soundtrack and sound design. And it didn't disappoint, this episode was a marvel of music and sound design, it was everything I hoped it would be.

And we get our first look at Lord Zero, er, Innocent Voldemort, I mean Innocent Zero, and his seemingly invincible Time Magic.

The Margarette fight definitely delivered. Mash really proves that there is nothing boring about a character who's power is just being really strong if you just put some creativity in.

Episode 8: Pretty good episode. After last week's banger and the absolute fire that I'm sure is coming up, I was honestly expecting it to be worse, as a cooldown episode for the animators.

Also, we got a music video for the OP song!

The Youtube subs have an official translation, and wow the lyrics are great.

I haven't read/watched this series yet - it's definitely on my Read/Watch Later list - but holy shit, the anime's second (I think?) OP is really as great as people made it out to be!

Along with Golden Wind from Jojo Part 5 anime and Zoltraak from Frieren anime, this is currently one of the most played tracks in my music player.

Episode 9/10: Amazing, fantastic. Love the adapation of 9, love the additions in 10.

Episode 11: Good additions, making the events more consistent and weightier.

Also, they released Volume 2 of the OST!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lPmIR5J_U_6Mjxfhixehi_-Y1wfuNPKrs

Episode 12: Interesting, they took chapter 81 and moved it to right after 73 and 74. It worked really well, but I'm curious what they're going to do with the 3rd arc now. It's only 27 chapters long (well, 26 now that they moved chapter 81), are they going to expand on it a lot to fill 12 episodes, are they going to adapt some of the 4th arc after it, or are they going to make it into a movie?

Hey, you're right. It worked so well, I didn't even realize they moved it up.

It does seems like we're getting more and more movie adaptations of short manga arcs instead of a Non-Serial Movie, so who knows.

My favorite scene of the finale has to be Mash's pupils constricting in shock when he learns that Dot is actually a good student who enjoys studying.

Innocent Zero and all his kids have Autism.

Mashle is about masking.

Mash never masked until he entered Easton, and then he had to mask to pretend to have magic, and he's terrible at it. No experience masking, when pressed he freezes and stammers.

Zero also doesn't mask, because he blames the rest of the world. He says stuff like "I'm the most human". He lashes out at the world instead of masking, saying that everyone else is wrong.

All of Mash's brothers mask in some way because of Zero's abuse. Domina's is really obvious, but that's just because he's the youngest. The older brothers are more set in their ways and resistant to change.