This was a very comfy start to what seems like a comfy anime. This wasn’t anything groundbreaking, in fact it was a pretty mellow episode. But there’s some charm to it that wants me to give the anime a chance.
The anime’s first episode can be condensed to a single sentence: Tiara gets a tour around the school and meets her group. That’s basically the only thing that happened this episode, however we were able to also see quite a bit of the school and their activities, classes, and how the magic works. Knowing this was going to be a music show with some fantasy elements, I kind of went into this expecting something like Revue Starlight. But in all honesty, this feels way more like Little Witch Academia than anything else. In fact, what with learning a tiny bit about the world and the school, I’m not exactly sure what the future idol stuff will have to do with anything?
We meet Tiara, a girl heading to Flora Girls’ Academy in hopes of being able to study there. She makes the long trip from her home and arrives at the school to be surprised when she’s admitted into the school immediately after making a stone glow. There, she meets up with her childhood friend Rosetta and Chloe, the school’s director, assigns Tiara into Rose’s group. We don’t really know what that entails, but we’ll probably get a proper explanation soon. The rest of the episode is Rose showing Tiara around the school and meeting up with the rest of the girls in their group: Ashley, Lavie, and Lynette. Each girl has their own quirk and they kind of feel a little tropey, but they’re still pretty fun to watch.
The magic in this world is pretty interesting as they have to whistle to activate their magic, as we saw many times where girls shot magic arrows, Tiara healing a flower, and girls flying on some badass looking flying saucers. We got some insight into their world, mainly with the figure Flora. They didn’t mention who she was exactly, but she seems to be incredibly important in this world as this witch/magic academy was named after this figure, and even saying a quick “prayer” before meals or in other occasions. She could be a goddess or simply an important historical figure, I have no idea. Either way, the world itself and the academy all look pretty interesting. And as we learn in the end, there’s a ranking/caste system in place at the school where the girls are separated into three different groups: Noir, Rouge, and Lapis. Lapis is the lowest rank in the school and they get the most discrimination there, and unfortunately that’s where Tiara finds herself in without even knowing.
Rose and the other girls failed their academic tests, and if they don’t improve they can all be expelled from the academy. Tiara didn’t even take a proper test to get into the school, so it was completely on Chloe when she put Tiara in that group, which is kind of shitty. There’s probably a reason for that since it looked like she was anticipating her arrival, and it also looks like Tiara is a little well-known what with her run-in with the black-haired girl. Tiara seems to come from a royal family or something, but we’ll probably get to that later. Tiara herself is pretty sweet and I’d like to learn more about her and her strained relationship with her sister too.
But like I said, my problem lays with the music aspect of this. It’s obvious that I love my idol/music shows, and that was partly why I was excited to check this out. While this episode was decent, it already kind of established what kind of world they live in and what we can expect from the school. They live in a world with magic and they even mentioned that they have magical beasts that attack. We saw girls practice with crossbows and even daggers to deal with these monsters, and it makes me wonder if we’ll even see them. We have this conflict where Tiara’s group could possibly be expelled, and I’m not sure where the music stuff fits in. We saw nothing but magical classes, no music or dance class. So I’m wondering how the music aspect is going to be integrated into the show and the world, and if it’ll even make sense for it. What do these idol groups have to do with anything here?
This was a pretty okay episode, nothing amazing but I still enjoyed it. The show is extremely pretty and I love all the colors and how bright it is. The girls are cute and they have really nice designs, and I love how even the background characters have nice designs too. Another concern is how they’re going to balance all these characters out because this is probably only going to be one cour. Still, this has some potential and I like the twist on the music genre with magic, even though I feel like it’s not needed. Of course, I need to see more and I can be convinced.
Possibility of watching: High
Possibility of blogging: Moderate/High
