I’m hesitant to keep watching Jaadugar: A Witch’s Life in Mongol for a couple reasons. First, I’m relatively clueless about both 13th century Persian and Mongolian culture. Is that a real problem? Kinda…? We’re taking real things, then filtering it through the lens of anime. I feel like I need to be less ignorant about the real things so I can judge whether or not the anime is portraying them correctly. After all, fiction — especially fiction about another culture — will always take some forms of artistic liberty. Going into this blind makes me feel rather uneasy. It’s hard to lock into a piece of media when you don’t know where the real history ends and the artistic liberties begin.
Second, despite my relative ignorance, I do know what ultimately awaits Sitara, i.e. the historical figure that this show is based on. The synopsis for the anime suggests that she will plot her revenge on the Mongols, but let’s just say she does not exactly pass away peacefully in her old age. Witches can rarely afford such a privilege. More importantly, however, I just haven’t been in the mood for anything depressing for the past couple of years, and that’s not changing anytime soon. Unfortunately, this isn’t exactly your bread-and-butter happy-go-lucky slice-of-life, nor are we going to get some Hollywood ending where Sitara takes over Mongolia and meets her true love.
The first episode is all about Sitara’s youth leading up to the start of the Mongol invasion. A scholarly family takes her in and educates her, but she’s still a slave who has recently lost her mother. The second episode sees Sitara’s life fall apart as her master/mistress/mother is slain before her very eyes. She is then taken prisoner, and on the long trek back to Mongolia, she is helpless as she watches everyone she ever cared about die before her very eyes. Sitara was even going to commit suicide before a boy talks her out of it. So begins the revenge plot, I suppose. But if the first two episodes are any indication — and knowing what I already know about the fate of the historical figure — this is likely not going to be a pleasant anime series. If there’s any silver lining, however, I suppose the anime adaptation likely won’t have time to cover the entirety of Sitara’s life — not unless the pacing significantly picks up. But yeah, I dunno. Maybe I’ll follow it for a bit in the “Everything else” posts.
On the plus side, the art direction is very novel.
On that note, let’s keep sticking with shows that have female protagonists. So next up is The Ogre’s Bride, and the title of the show alone already sets off alarm bells in my head. Why? It’s not exactly difficult to figure out. There are only two important words in that title: “ogre” and “bride.” Essentially, our heroine is a possession, and her value lies in the fact that she’s a bride. I’m reading too much into it? Nah. As you watch the first episode, all you hear over and over is how special it is to marry a demon. Oooh, my younger sister is engaged to a fox spirit! My bestie is engaged to cat spirit! But sitting at the top of the hierarchy are ogres, and they’re the bestest hubby a girl could ever dream for! Unfortunately, poor ol’ Yuzu only has a plain-ass, vanilla human boyfriend. Not only that, he dumps her because he fell in love with her younger sister, who, again, already has a fiance.
As you might have guessed, younger sis Karin is the golden child, so she’s spoiled rotten. Everyone dotes on her while comically neglecting Yuzu. It’s ridiculous. Our heroine gets slapped just for visiting her grandparents. Things come to a head, however, when Karin tries to take Yuzu’s birthday present — a dress from their grandparents — for herself. In the scuffle, the dress gets torn, Yuzu slaps Karin out of anger, so the fox fiance goes and literally burns Yuzu’s right arm. Yuzu proceeds to run away in tears. She’s all alone in this world, her parents hate her, her boyfriend loves someone else, she’s hit rock bottom, so on and so forth. Oh, what is a poor girl to do in this alternate universe where all women pine for hot demon boys? Are you sympathies engaged yet?
This is when a guy in a three-piece suit suddenly walks up to Yuzu, calls her his bride, and embraces her. Not only that, he’s an ogre! That means he outranks that fox asshole! Jackpot! But let’s take a step back and assess. Do you guys really find this sort of thing romantic? As far as Yuzu knows, they’re complete strangers. He doesn’t know shit about her, but he loves her? Now, we’ll probably find out episodes later that they had met as kids and are childhood friends or some nonsense like that. Or maybe he was hungry, and she gave him a fucking rice ball, so he’s been in love with her ever since. I mean, this ain’t my first rodeo. I know how these dumbass romances go. Even then, however, it doesn’t change the fact that they’re relative strangers, and that’s not the least bit romantic. Yuzu’s just a pretty face to him. This whole show so far has been all about finding some rich ass demon to marry. Even Yuzu’s abuse is framed as needing to escape just to find some man to love her. Become independent? Get yourself a career and live your best life? Nay, perish the thought. We must marry! But it cuts both ways, because Yuzu can’t possibly value this guy for who he is either. After all, she doesn’t know who he is! But what she does know is that he’s an ogre — have I mentioned he’s an ogre?! — from one of the top families! Even if she won’t do it, viewers who live vicariously through Yuzu and daydream about rubbing their good fortune in their enemies’ faces! And that’s all this hot ogre man is to her at the moment! Ultimately, all I see here is a sad, unromantic story full of losers obsessed with status and rank.
Alright, let’s keep the train rollin’. Since we’re already on the subject of marriages, let’s talk arranged marriages. As such, the last show on the docket is The Duke’s Son Claims He Won’t Love Me yet Showers Me with Adoration. What a mouthful. The first thing that strikes me about this show, however, is just how visually boring it is. I mean, look at this shot. This is the first episode. You’re supposed to try and wow me. Unfortunately, this has not been an auspicious start. Then you have this bizarro shot where the orphan kids look as though they’re just as tall as our heroine. But they’re not — they definitely are not the same height as Elsa or each other. But I don’t want to belabor the point. Animation quality is important, but what I’m primarily here for is the story. So how does it stack up? Eh…
Elsa is from fallen noble house in the boonies. To survive out here, she needs a heart of gold, and boy does she have one! When she isn’t helping out at the nearby orphanage, she’s picking vegetables by hand and laying traps for game meat. She is even seriously considering a marriage proposal from a man her father’s age if only to help support her brother’s studies. Oh dear, how much more sacrificial can you get? Luckily, just like every other basic ass romance series, a hot noble — a duke’s eldest son, in fact — falls right into her lap. Elsa happily accepts the proposal if only to help her family out. Look, I totally agree that the previous guy is probably a creep who just wants to take advantage of a girl young enough to be his daughter. But why are we assuming that this Julius fellow will be any better? Where is this girl’s survival instincts? She goes from a potential predatory marriage with an old man straight into a binding political contract with a powerful, high-ranking stranger from a duke’s house, and her baseline reaction is just, “Welp, sounds good, hope my family gets that check!” So it should come to no surprise when Julius starts treating Elsa coldly once they’re behind closed doors. Thankfully, he’s not cruel about it. He’s just all business. Dude, if you simply needed a beard, you should’ve just said so!
Elsa being the indefatigable sunshine that she is, however, reacts to this revelation with a smile. Her justification is that she was already planning on being a good, dutiful wife, so no biggie! Man, is this girl unflappable or what? Ultimately, we learn that Elsa carries the blood of two kingdoms. As a result, Julius only married her to prevent schemers from using her as a figurehead to overthrow the current rulers. Uh, sure… but Elsa has a brother. Can’t these treasonous folks just use him instead? What if her parents have more kids? Ah, don’t worry about it! The point is, Julius might be apathetic to Elsa now, but she’ll win her over with her incorruptible purity! And along the way, they might have to navigate a few political pitfalls. It’s a rather straightforward premise, so there’s nothing here to really get excited about. Elsa is so good-natured, she’s plain boring. Maybe that’s why the visuals are just as drab. You know how french vanilla ice cream will have black flecks in it to trick you into thinking that you’re eating the premium stuff? Well? Where are my flecks, bro?