The Ancient Magus' Bride — the continuation from fantasy-esque sceneries to downright school-ish nightmares...that as much as its original premise pulls us into its world, the arc that follows thereafter, desperately pushes us out of its world.
It's no secret that famed mangaka Kore Yamazaki's Mahoutsukai no Yome a.k.a The Ancient Magus' Bride, par for the course of the anime, has received mixed feelings with the rather drastic tonal shift from a full-on fantasy quest to the "back to school" elements. As much as is evident from Season 2's split-cours throughout both Spring and now with Fall's continuation of the manga's ever-so-divisive College arc since Volume 10, Part 2 here continues the adaptation from Volume 15 to cover the remainder of the manga right up until the latest Volume 19, before its eventual hiatus earlier this year and the resumption of the manga's serialization just very recently. By all accounts, the entirety of the manga (at this point) has been completely adapted, though not without its glaring flaws.
I, for one, like Humpty Dumpty, have been on the fence about the whole College arc since Spring much earlier in the year, being an anime-only who had not read the manga prior to the end of Season 1 way back in 2018. Not so much regarding Chise's extended growth as she goes back to school to improve her magic craftsmanship, but of the radical shift to the one central character that would help spur her and her classmates' growth: the rather unkempt girl that is Philomela Sargent. Like the prequel where it's all about Chise and her growth from being a slave to a magus's bride, Philomela's showcase of her life has been nothing but nightmares one after the other, which is more pronounced in Part 2 here of her origin story that explains why the relevant people in her life got their karma in one way or another, not as a result of her poor upbringing, but of the amount of shock and torture that she got while growing up, not knowing of the consequences of her presence being a bane. Philomela's story may look and sound like a chore (given Season 2 as a whole), but I'm kind of glad that Kore Yamazaki knew when to pace her story right while weaving Chise, Elias, and the classmates who have journeyed with said "bastard child" to have her redemption story and finally bring this rather long-winded arc to a resounding close. Over time, the "justified" hate that Philomela got, you can't really blame it on said daughter, as it was the people who turned her life upside down, from having the guardian of Alcyone to protect her from harm to Chise and the others finally getting the facts onto her head that she is no longer isolated from her issues alone and has friends to keep her accounted. That is the magic that the series has been known for for six years now since the start of the anime, and I'm FINALLY glad to see it executed here.
Alas, the studio shift from Wit Studio to Studio Kafka, barring The Boy from the West and the Knight of the Blue Storm OAD series, despite having a majority of the original staff team join the "replacement" studio, it still looks good, but doesn't quite have the finesse that Wit Studio has been known for, the studio that is now a shadow of its former self. It's not necessarily the fault of director Kazuaki Terasawa's staff team since the OAD series to maintain its consistent quality, but you can tell that the level of passion when comparing against Season 1 and 2 (plus the OAD series) has definitely waned over time, losing its original magical wonder that made the premiere season a near-perfect masterpiece.
On the music side, JUNNA has (nearly) always been a mainstay of the series, and her latest OP song, I would say, is great, but it will never top her very own OP song for the 1st cour of Season 1. The number of emotions and expressions presented here is part of why JUNNA's songs make sense, and for the assumption finale here, it's always a very good job. Sadly, I've cared even less for the ending song for it to not be notable and just a pure skip, something that Part 1 actually did quite well.
As a whole, I'm so goddamn relieved that Kore Yamazaki's series has finally got its complete-but-incomplete adaptation, because while the manga isn't by any means perfect, so is the anime, with the entirety of Season 2 being a slogfest, Mahoutsukai no Yome a.k.a The Ancient Magus' Bride is a fantasy story to be had, though she took some stumbles with the College arc that, for all its complex and convoluted intents and purposes, gave the series a bit of a bad rep. It's no doubt one of the most engrossing fantasy stories of the modern age, but your mileage will vary.
It'll take years for yet another season to come out, and for now, the anime is as close to the imperfect adaptation of the series as yet. Yet, if I have to judge the College arc as a whole, it was kind of disappointing from a narrative standpoint. It's not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but a decent chunk for the other side of the half.
