Series Overview

Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina (Majo no Tabitabi / 魔女の旅々) is a fantasy adventure series with some slice of life aspects thrown into the mix. I enjoyed watching The Journey of Elaina, but this series isn’t going to be for everyone. As I’ll get to later on, there was a lot of controversy surrounding the series.

You wouldn’t really expect this series to be so divisive based on its plot. It’s about a girl who becomes a witch and sets out on a journey all over the world to follow in the footsteps of the protagonist from her favorite childhood book. On her journey, Elaina travels through all sorts of different countries and interacts with the locals she meets there.

Sometimes she simply passes through countries as a traveler, other times she acts more like a tourist, and a few times she even gets involved in the issues plaguing these nations. But regardless of what she does in each country, her primary motive is to gain experiences just like her role model.

It’s at this point that I should bring up the first problem some people might have with The Journey of Elaina. It’s mostly episodic. The only real overarching story is that Elaina is on a journey. There’s no set destination or really an end goal beyond that. And I wouldn’t really say that Elaina’s past experiences influence her future actions.

However, that doesn’t mean it’s a series that can be watched in any order. Elaina’s relationships with the other characters of the series do develop over time, and this is primarily what gives the story structure. Some people have chosen only to watch the controversial episodes, and I don’t recommend that because you’ll miss out on context.

Witches

The second reason The Journey of Elaina isn’t for everyone is because of the Ashen Witch Elaina herself. I actually liked Elaina’s character. But apparently, that’s not a very common opinion. Or at least, the people who don’t like her are much more vocal than those who do, which is pretty common.

Elaina is completely self-centered and arrogant. I guess I can see why that would put people off. But I found it to be pretty entertaining. Every episode either opens or closes with her monologuing about how great and beautiful she is. And it’s not as if she’s joking. She truly believes all the praise she piles on herself.

The other part of Elaina’s character that people don’t like is how passive she is most of the time. Elaina is extremely passive at the start of the series, and even in some of the later episodes. However, there are also many instances in which she does get herself involved. And what I think people forget is that she’s only 18 years old and a stranger in these countries. Even if she did get involved, her involvement often wouldn’t be welcome.

Despite how much I do like Elaina, the Charcoal Witch Saya is my favorite character. Saya is a witch with the Mages’ Association, which is to say that she doesn’t simply wander the world as Elaina does. She gets sent off on assignments. But what I like about Saya is that she’s completely obsessed with Elaina, which often makes her the comedic aspect of episodes.

The other two main witches in the series are the Stardust Witch Fran and the Midnight Witch Sheila, who are the mentors of Elaina and Saya respectively. Fran is extremely laid back while Sheila is effectively a Yakuza witch.

Controversy of Elaina

I’ve already touched on why there was controversy surrounding The Journey of Elaina when I said that people didn’t like her passive nature. Throughout the series, Elaina sometimes finds herself in situations where she has the ability to do the “right” thing but instead chooses to do nothing at all.

Episode 3 was the main episode that people seemed to have issues with. I’m also guessing that most people who had an issue with Elaina’s actions in that episode didn’t continue watching the series, so their views of Elaina are probably a bit skewed.

In episode 3, Elaina finds herself in two situations in which it could be argued that she did the wrong thing. However, I don’t believe Elaina did anything wrong. It’s not her place to intervene in the workings of other countries. Elaina isn’t a hero. She’s a traveler who records the things she sees.

The first situation Elaina encounters is a city that’s plagued by a dangerous plant that can be found on its outskirts. The plant’s flowers contain magic or a drug of some kind that lures victims to its main body. Once victims have been lured there, the plant wraps its vines around them, feeds on them, and turns them into zombie-like creatures.

What Elaina did “wrong” here was she allowed someone to willingly die by this plant after he found his loved one killed by the plant. She could have saved the man, but he wanted to die, so she stood by and watched instead.

The second situation she encounters is a family that owns a slave. Obviously, slavery is bad and Elaina doesn’t condone it. However, she doesn’t help the slave and instead leaves the slave to her fate despite knowing full well that she would likely die.

So how can I possibly defend that inaction? Well, there wasn’t really anything Elaina could do. She can’t take the slave with her. She’s also not going to kill people. So the best she could do is confine the slave owners and let the slave run free. But how long would that really last? She’d be captured and killed. And what if the slave was too afraid to flee? Basically, there’s no winning so Elaina doesn’t get involved.

Conclusion

Overall, I think Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina is a 6/10. I enjoyed it enough and I thought the characters were pretty good. However, I do think it would have benefited from being less episodic. Episodic anime can be great, but I think it’s much harder for them to be because the characters have to do a lot of heavy lifting.

What I will praise The Journey of Elaina for, however, is its OP and ED. I love the OP song and I think the ED visuals may have been the best of the season. I do like a different ED song from this season more, but the visuals of the Elaina ED were great.

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