Wistoria: Wand and Sword Episode 11

Wistoria: Wand and Sword Episode 11

Wistoria: Wand and Sword episode 11 delivered some heat this week. What more could you ask for from an action fantasy series? Wonderful animation on top of a suspenseful script gave the fans the best climax of the season possible. This is one of those episodes where if you’re talking about its flaws, it’s because you were looking for them from the very beginning.

An Epic Climax to the Climax

When an episode is even marketed on social media as the “climax” episode of the season, you’re, naturally, anticipating some great things to be in store from a story perspective, character perspective, production perspective—everything. So, of course, my expectations for this week were already mounting to anything they were beforehand. Well, Episode 11 of Wistoria undoubtedly checked off every single box imaginable.

The moment Will got back on his feet, albeit an interesting way of doing so, I just knew that this is where the episode either hits a walk-off home run or flies out to deep left to end it all. Luckily for me, and everyone that watched the episode, it was knocked out of the park.

The quick, mysterious moment of both wand and sword becoming one leading to Will’s new Idris look backed by Colette’s emotional outburst and the best placement of the soundtrack from the entire season brought me back to the days of watching Asta overcoming his adversity in Black Clover. It’s something as an action anime fan you just know that when the main character hits a transformation, the music changes, some flashback occurs, and one or more characters’ voice actor/actress just pours their all into an emotional performance, that everything is about to be dialed up to 11.

Call it standard action anime tropes, it doesn’t matter. It’s a formula that works exceptionally well when executed correctly like it was in this episode. It almost made me feel as if Will was some child of prophecy who would bridge the gap between wand and sword, adding more exciting lore to the story we haven’t seen before. Any criticism I’ve had about previous episodes and their pacing just went right out the window after this week.

It finally feels like Wistoria is ready to take that next step in its story. With character building between everyone, except for (maybe) Julius, it’s like a boulder was lifted off of the story’s shoulders too. That there’s no more doubting Will as a person or a magicless mage. He showed his true strength, and potential, in front of all of the academy’s strongest students and defeated a monster the story set up as one they had zero business defeating, one that even made Workner and Edward afraid.

He bridged the gap not just between an elf and a mage, he did it between an elf and a magicless mage. Seeing Wagnall and Lihanna standing up for him gave me goosebumps and the production team did a marvelous job with their action sequences. It made me want to see more of Lihanna in action than I already did.

I cannot begin to express the wonderful work by episode directors Masahiro Takada and Kentarou Mizuno this week with Hironori Tanaka storyboarding everything. Under Tatsuya Yoshihara’s direction, it all came together in grand fashion.

Looking Ahead

There is so much more for Wistoria fans to look forward to after this episode and that’s not just accounting for next week’s finale. When are we going to see more of the villains? What’s life going to be for Will at the academy now? Who is Rosti really? What will the Magia Vender do about the barrier falling apart? What will the teachers’ reactions be to everything that occurred? How much stronger can Will become?

There’s just so much more to be explored when it comes to Wistoria: Wand and Sword from here on out. It feels like the story has left breadcrumbs for what can come down the road but didn’t necessarily give us a clear map either. This will either lead to the series taking that next step in the future or it will do the opposite. But I have hope it will be the former scenario.