Little Witch Academia (Movies)

Overview

Little Witch Academia is a Trigger original anime series that started out as two movies. The movies were released in 2013 and 2015, but the series did not air until 2017.

As is suggested by the title of this post, I will only be covering the two movies here, although there will most likely be a fair amount of crossover with the eventual post about the series. I currently have the series on hold, only making it through 3/25 episodes.

While these first two entries into the Little Witch Academia world are considered movies, I would only really classify the second one as a movie. The first one, titled Little Witch Academia, is only 26 minutes long and is more like a first episode of a series than a movie.

The second movie, Little Witch Academia: The Enchanted Parade, is 53 minutes long and so on par with the standard for animated movies. This movie also is not simply the first episode, but actually goes on to have a real movie-like plot.

While I do think Trigger is a generally good studio, the thing they have going for them most, in my opinion, is their art style. For me, the art style of Little Witch Academia was the best part of these movies which could be viewed as either a good or a bad thing. I see it as a bad thing.

If you’re making a movie, of course, you want it to look nice, but you probably want the plot to be the major focus as that’s what keeps the viewer’s attention the most. These movies, while they looked very colorful, had bland writing.

Characters

Since this post is solely about the two movies, I’ll only go over the three main characters here and save the rest for a future post about the series.

The protagonist of Little Witch Academia is Akko. She’s a new witch who doesn’t come from a magical family. Her inspiration for wanting to become a witch was a stage-performing witch by the name of Shiny Chariot (almost typed Silver Chariot from JoJo’s).

Lotte is one of Akko’s two friends and roommates at school. She’s the quieter, bookworm type of character who gets dragged into trouble by her roommates, usually Akko. Lotte is also decent at magic, unlike Akko who has no experience.

Sucy is the other friend and roommate. Like Lotte, Sucy has experience with magic, but her real expertise comes in the form of potions. Sucy is always making new concoctions and then testing them out on the unsuspecting Akko.

Conclusion

As I mentioned before, these movies were a bit bland and so I ended up giving them both a 5/10. If not for Trigger’s art style, however, they would have been down at 4.

Despite my criticisms of these movies, there are a lot of people who enjoyed them and then enjoyed the series even more. I think if things such as Harry Potter are what you’re interested in then these movies may be good for you, but I haven’t really been into that stuff for a long time now.

If these movies had come out 10 years earlier, I’m sure my feelings towards them would have been much different.