War Witches, Part Final - Luminous Witches

WAR WITCHES

~part final~

Luminous Witches

Produced by SHAFT for the Summer 2022 season

When I started this writing project six months ago, it had been nearly four years since the last World Witches anime was produced. Four years isn't such a long time in relativity. Some people have to wait decades for a proper continuation to a series they love. But in the context of this franchise, even four years is like an eternity. For over a decade, the World Witches series was consistently producing anime projects without a single gap between them exceeding two years. From 2007 to 2022, they pumped out five standard length seasons of television anime, two seasons of half length shorts, half a dozen OVA episodes, and a feature film. Nearly forty hours of animated media has been painstakingly crafted for an entirely original multimedia project that was the brainchild of a single artist. To sit at the dining table after devouring the feast and complain about hunger is an exercise in gluttony. Many original projects never get more than a single cour of TV anime. Plenty of adaptations settle for even less. Rewatching this entire series has made me realize how good we had it. We were living like kings for the entirety of the 2010s and got nothing short of a grand farewell. When you're standing on the precipice, you might as well turn around and take in the view. Spend some time to reflect on the path that brought you here. There comes a point where the music has to stop. The dishes have to be placed in the sink. Everybody goes home as you take the trash out, turn the lights off, and crawl into bed. Echoes of voices fade to silence in the pale white haze of moonlight. It's a statement that's understood without being spoken out loud. Good times never last. The party's over.

Renmei Kuugun Koukuu Mahou Ongakutai Luminous Witches (League of Nations Air Force Aviation Magic Band Luminous Witches) was the last animated project of several announced during the franchise's tenth anniversary celebration. Fittingly enough, it was also the final one to air. Produced by the critically acclaimed Japanese animation studio SHAFT, it seemed like a spinoff with its stars fully aligned. Veteran animator Shouji Saeki, who had recently reconnected with the studio and directed Assault Lily: Bouquet in 2020, was already tapped to head the Luminous Witches anime project. It seemed like a match made in heaven. He got his start in the industry joining studio Gainax in the '90s and worked as an in-between animator on Shinseiki Evangelion. He would later become acquainted with SHAFT when the two studios collaborated on Mahoromatic. He frequently did freelance work to assist on other projects, but when Gainax started to collapse under the weight of the 2010s exodus that gave rise to Studio Khara and Studio Trigger, he was called back in to keep the ship upright. He was embroiled in a juggling act where he had to direct, storyboard, and write the script for multiple projects including both seasons of Medaka Box and the Subaru sponsored Houkago no Pleiades. None of these would save Gainax from its inevitable downfall, forcing the studio to go dormant in the face of a long legal battle that would end with Hideaki Anno landing the killing blow. Saeki then returned to freelance work, boarding several episodes for the second season of Sangatsu no Lion in late 2017. As if it were fate, SHAFT was about to have an exodus of its own. Many known names who had long been with the studio departed in the following years for greener pastures. The veterans who stayed behind were trapped on projects that were struggling to reach the finish line. This began a period of seismic unrest that shook the studio for nearly the entire first half of the 2020s, only beginning to subside in 2024 with the long awaited continuation of the Monogatari anime series, Off & Monster Season.

Saeki was enlisted alongside SHAFT veterans Yukihiro Miyamoto (Madoka Magica series director), Kenjirou Okada (Sangatsu no Lion series director), and Hajime Ootani (frequent storyboard artist and episode director) to hold the fort down while the studio got back on its feet. This led to Saeki's involvement in directing Assault Lily, but he also had a prior engagement lined up. When Luminous Witches was announced in 2018, his name was already attached to the project as director and lead scriptwriter. This wasn't a coincidence; Saeki actually boarded, directed, and wrote the script for multiple Strike Witches episodes during its first two seasons. In that regard, he was the perfect man for the job. At the time, no animation studio was lined up and many of the project details were still vague. It wasn't until early 2020 that SHAFT was confirmed to produce the anime. In a period where the studio was desperate for projects to fill its increasingly vacant schedule, Luminous Witches was a saving throw and Saeki was the bridge that allowed it to happen. Unfortunately, it was not quite smooth sailing from there. After over a year in production, the anime had to be delayed to 2022 due to internal turbulence at the studio and the loss of several voice actors who had to be replaced. A five minute extended preview is all they had to show for their work at the time. It wasn't until the end of March 2022 that a preview video announcing the anime's premiere date would be shown. This was barely three months before the first episode aired. It's a journey that tells the story of a production riddled with setbacks and last minute decisions. Saeki has not directed any anime or worked on another SHAFT production since. Storyboards for a single episode of Cygames' Apocalypse Hotel is the only new credit he's received in the last four years. I don't want to assign causality I can't prove, but I wouldn't be surprised if these events were connected.

 

Our main trio: Ginny, Inori, and Milasha with their familiars

I wrote about Luminous Witches while it was airing for my Summer 2022 edition of Seasonals of the Abyss. Skimming my words makes it evident that I had no clue how to express my feelings toward it at the time. Albeit, the show had yet to conclude and my thoughts on it were nowhere near settled. Now that I've rewatched the anime and delved into the circumstances behind its creation, I find myself even more at a loss than I was back then. Of course, I didn't have the benefit nor the curse of foresight at my disposal. Road to Berlin wasn't even two years old yet and the World Witches comedy spinoff had just aired the year prior. My parting thoughts with the anime were predicated on the idea that this was simply an odd curveball and that the next animated project for the series would get things back on track. I had no way of knowing about the drought that was coming; the drought that is now the status quo for the franchise. Without the veil of optimism and the comfort of blissful ignorance, parsing Luminous Witches as an experience is more difficult than ever. It's tempting to give in to feelings of resentment toward it for being the potential end point for the World Witches anime series as a whole. The show is an outlier that expects its audience to accept blatant deviations from the established formula yet still tries to be faithful at seemingly random intervals. Luminous Witches is a harbinger. It's a means to an end. My perspective on it eludes the dichotomy of love and hate. This anime is an object of fascination that is better examined through a microscope. Otherwise, I'd be lost in a spiral of confusion and an avalanche of questions that begin with "why". It's a battle on two fronts regarding my love for the World Witches series and my endless respect for SHAFT as a studio that has produced some of my favorite animated works of all time.

On paper, the idea of an idol-themed witches group is not so far fetched. It's actually a very reasonable concept in isolation. Over a dozen hours of World Witches related music has been produced in the franchise's lifetime. Every single ending theme has a solo version sung by each member of the cast. If you voice a witch, you are going to sing at some point. This is a non-negotiable part of the deal. It's natural that the stewards at Kadokawa would see the potential vector of cashing in on this aspect, especially since they have their own music production wing. My first question was, why so late? Luminous Witches seems like it should've existed years earlier when the 2010s idol boom was still in full swing. This was the era of The Idolmaster and Love Live achieving massive cultural success and courting imitators across the industry. Idol culture isn't exactly dead in the present, but it has been firmly supplanted by the rise of all-girls rock bands. The legwork that K-ON! did with Houkago Tea Time at the end of the '00s gave way to Bushiroad's creation of the BanG Dream! franchise in 2015, which in turn went through a slow gestation period that wildly transformed in the early days of the Reiwa period. To put it into perspective, Luminous Witches aired mere months before CloverWorks debuted its explosive adaptation of Bocchi the Rock! to the world. Now we have giants like Toei Animation investing an ungodly amount of resources and effort into works like Girls Band Cry. Jun Maeda must be feeling awfully vindicated right about now. Sadly, rock music was a post-WWII invention and couldn't be allowed to tarnish the historical particulars of the World Witches series. I still think they could've pulled this off a little closer to when Brave Witches aired, but that's not how things panned out. In the pursuit of coming up with a cheeky analog to military bands during the WWII period, idol witches is what they decided on.

In the process of investigating the early details of the Ongakutai Witches project, I discovered a critical piece of context that I'd overlooked. It's something that was obvious to longtime fans who followed the series closely, yet slipped under the radar for deadbeats who only periodically checked in such as myself. The creation of the Luminous Witches anime was simply a byproduct of a greater initiative. Kadokawa's intent from the very start was to form a brand new idol group and they were using the World Witches franchise as a thematic anchor to accomplish this. Yes, the Luminous Witches are quite real. Even in my 2022 writing, I acknowledged that many of the characters were voiced by newbie seiyuu who had no track record to speak of in the industry. Hindsight has provided me the full clarity to understand this was not a coincidence. These were young idols joining a group that required them to cosplay as fictional characters tethered to an already existing property. They were not gunning for a voice acting career. This is made more evident by looking at their track records four years later - only three of the nine core members pursued seiyuu roles in anime after Luminous Witches aired. Even their combined credits wouldn't make up a notable output; just bit parts and minor character portrayals. The idol group itself was the goal all along. Knowing this has completely changed the way I look at this anime. In fact, it's almost impossible to pass fair judgment on Luminous Witches without knowing this in the first place! To address this show as a mere World Witches spinoff is deeply burying the lede. This is animated exposition for a real life idol group. It's lore for idol fans and kibble for franchise fanatics. There is an internal conflict being waged during every minute of runtime as the anime is forced to be two things at once. The writers are trying to expand the history of this world and sell concert tickets in the same, laborious breath.

 

Everyone wants to know what Moffy is listening to

Luminous Witches tells a story that runs parallel to the first season of Strike Witches. In March 1944, six months before the 501st Joint Fighter Wing changed history by destroying the Neuroi nest over Gallia, humanity was struggling to remain hopeful. Major Grace Maitland Steward, a retired witch from the Liberion Army, insists to the top brass at the League of Nations the necessity of a specialized squadron focused on music to help restore morale at home and near the front lines. Her plea is disregarded as leadership considers any witch squadron that isn't focused on fighting the Neuroi to be functionally useless. She finds a political ally in Felicia Louisa Gresley, a woman whose grandchild was saved by Grace during the evacuation from Dunkirk years earlier. She insists that Grace needs to provide justification for her proposal by demonstrating proof that a music squadron would be worth the investment. Meanwhile, in the heart of Britannia, three witches meet by chance at a fountain square in London. They are the main trio of this anime: Britannian country girl Virginia "Ginny" Robertson, Fuso musician Inori Shibuya, and the Orussian poet Lyudmila "Milasha" Andreyevna Ruslanova. Inori and Milasha are underachievers in the military who are looking for an escape from their respective assignments, while Ginny has spent most of her life in the rural countryside blissfully unaware of her status as a night witch. As the two enlisted witches are lamenting their circumstances, Ginny's bubbly optimism compels her to demonstrate the power of music to her new friends. She unleashes a public performance of Not Quite Amazing Grace which attracts the attention of Grace (what a coincidence) who was riding back from headquarters on a London double-decker bus. This inspires her to distribute recruitment fliers using her League of Nations connections, hoping to attract other witches to her cause. Our trio parts ways after the performance, but it isn't long before Inori and Milasha discover Grace's fliers at their respective bases and decide to take a chance on joining the musical band. Several other witches make the same decision, and at least one of them is forcibly transferred over. Thus begins the magnetizing force that will bring the Luminous Witches together.

There are three notable deviations from the World Witches formula in this anime which have largely contributed to its polarizing reputation. The first is the most simple - a noticeable lack of ecchi content. As someone who is not an expert on idol media, I can only speak from the research I've done. My understanding is that most idol shows generally avoid erotic visuals across the board. Idol fanatics are obsessed with the concept of purity in regards to the performers they so passionately engage with. They require an illusion that prevents them from realizing their fantasy is unobtainable. Infamous industry pariah Yamakan basically dissected this concept when directing Wake Up, Girls! in 2014. Girls who flaunt their butts and breasts run contrary to the concept of purity, but we're talking about a world where that's completely normal! However, there's an unavoidable real world connection here. The actual Luminous Witches who perform in our flesh-and-blood reality have to dress as their characters, which meant that the official designs couldn't be revealing. Even the five minute preview from 2021 had established all the girls would be wearing pants. There are rare scenes where some of the characters are depicted in their underwear, but the body emphasis that is typical in ecchi works has been completely removed. For a series that was marketed on its "war on pants", the concession is a little funny even if it makes sense. The second change is pretty self-explanatory. As a spinoff that focuses on a cast of witches who can't fight, there is very little action to be seen here. Other than a couple sparse flashbacks and a brief scene where the gang helps a squadron locate a rogue Neuroi unit, combat has been completely removed from the equation. Slice of life antics, character drama, and the group's idol activities are the three pillars of this experience from front to back. The premise alone gives that away, but those who enjoy watching witches engage in air combat are being completely deprived of their fix in this show.

From my perspective, the most baffling change lies with the decision to bring back the animal familiars. This is a facet of the World Witches series I've talked very little about, and there's a simple reason why - the anime completely ignores them. In the earliest light novel and illustration concepts, the magic system in Strike Witches borrowed magical familiars from the mahou shoujo playbook who served as animal companions for each character. This was briefly depicted in the 2007 concept OVA. In the process of producing the first TV anime season, Humikane and his collaborators at Gonzo agreed that animating the familiars would be too costly. Not only would they take up screen time, but it would increase the amount of work the animators had to do when drafting cuts. They became assumed parts of the anime canon represented by the ears and tails appearing on a witch who has activated her magic. They aren't acknowledged by the narrative or the characters at any point in time, not even when concepts regarding the system itself are discussed. This was a fundamental part of the Strike Witches playbook that all World Witches anime releases were consistent about. I fail to understand why Luminous Witches is the exception. Is it to add more wholesome appeal? To sell the purity aspect? Maybe it really is the simplest explanation that's correct. It still doesn't explain why the execution is so half-hearted. One would think the familiars would have more of a role in each character's story, but that is only true for two out of the nine idols. The rest are only ever on screen for light slapstick and to sit in the corner as a group for a conveniently drawn frame. If they were going to risk the dissonance of reintroducing the familiars, then it's all or nothing. You couldn't pay me to remember all of their names. It retroactively justifies Gonzo's choice to exclude them in the first place because they actually do take time away from the characters themselves. An ensemble cast with a secondary ensemble of animal friends is too much overhead for me.

 

The whole crew is trapped on the couch with their pile of magic animals

The show tries to ramp up a lot of drama and weepy character moments pretty early in this one. A duo of singing witches, Suomus war veteran Aila Paivikki Linnamaa and Gallian army nurse Eleonore "Ellie" Giovanna Gassion, serve as Grace's judges as they audition prospective members for the Music Squadron. Milasha auditions because she's obsessed with Aila after being healed by her music years earlier. Inori auditions to nominate Ginny who nobody knows how to contact because she lives in the middle of nowhere (i.e. Scotland). Silvie Cariello, a noble daughter from Romagna, is transferred directly to the Music Squadron. The rest of the prospective candidates consist of Karlsland sleep fiend Maria Magdalene Dietrich, the restless genki girl Manaia "Mana" Matawhaura Hato from New Zeiland, and New York child laborer Joanna "Jo" Elizabeth Stafford. Grace lets them all stay overnight at the mansion they're operating from, but Inori grows impatient. She wants to see Ginny now! Ellie finds this amusing and suggests they take their newly acquired Striker Units out for a spin. They all launch into the night sky and start yelling Ginny's name. When that doesn't work then they spontaneously begin singing the Almost Amazing Grace song which wakes Ginny up. She climbs onto the roof with her night witch antenna deployed and realizes they're trying to find her. Without a way to contact them, their reunion seems hopeless. But then her cool night witch headphones suddenly glow brighter than a camping flashlight that can blind someone and attracts the entire squad to her location. They capture Ginny and haul her back to home base so they can convince her to join the military in the name of music. Naturally, she agrees because she wants to be the first Britannian protagonist in World Witches history. Also because she loves music, loves singing, and loves her friends. And she has a weird bird familiar and his name is Moffy. Ginny won't let the viewer forget that, so don't worry about trying to remember it.

From here, the still unnamed idol group of witches has to go through the growing pains to be capable of performing together. The first cracks start to show with the character writing and the writer's attempts to stage drama. Aila is still bitter about being sacked from the front lines and takes it out on Maria and her number one fan Milasha, causing the former to pass out and crash from exhaustion. Aila then breaks down and asks, "Am I the bad guy?" while sad music plays. Everyone else cries in a room together as the band threatens to break up two days after forming. The innocent being that is Ginny returns from completing her enlistment and smiles, forcing the girls to try and salvage the status quo. Ellie then escorts them into town so they can endure the attention of the general public in anticipation of their first performance. The conflict then resolves itself. Most episodes of Luminous Witches play out this way. Too much of the cast feels like the idea of a World Witches character that isn't completely formed. Ginny is a pure soul and she's cute, teasing the audience with potential tragedy as she keeps proclaiming that she'll return Moffy to nature. Inori is the most plain bootleg Idolmaster character possible and her only personality trait is being sad. Milasha yells "AIRA-SAMAAAAAAA" fifty times per episode because of her sick obsession. It makes first season Perrine seem reasonable. Silvie is a decent character design with negative presence even in her own episode. Aila's personality changes at least three times while serving as a tug-of-war object between Milasha and Ellie. I enjoyed seeing Ellie's backstory but she doesn't do all that much until the final stretch. Grace is fine but they should've written her an episode even though she isn't one of the idols. That leaves the three characters I do care about! Maria and Mana share an episode and are generally the most entertaining witches in the group. Jo has a distinct design and personality which earned her one of the best character stories in the whole batch.

For an idol show, there aren't very many performances to speak of. The viewer knows when a real performance is coming because all the characters swap to their stylized 3D models. These models appear in the OP, but they're only used three times in the actual show. The first time is in the fourth episode where they perform their debut concert in the village. A bunch of kids who saw them practicing the previous day show up with a group sign that spells "LUMINOUS" because the witches were so shiny and dazzling and that's how they get their name. Grace earns the budget and resources to take the idols on a world tour using a Britannian heavy bomber as their tour bus. This international adventure is simply a pretense for the character development episodes to take place, with the live performances heavily skimmed over or entirely implied as off-screen events. The only exception to this is Jo's episode where the gang hits up New York with a bombastic air show, marking the first return for the 3D rendered cast. If anything, the writers are attempting to adhere to the traditional World Witches anime structure by shrugging off the overarching plotline in the middle stretch to let the characters run the show. I'm not that beat up about the idol experience taking the backseat. The issue is that it's a real mixed bag. Silvie's episode is a bizarrely manufactured conflict where she gets cold feet after returning to her home country of Romagna and starts having a complex over supposedly lying to everyone by not telling them she's royalty. She also wants to avoid performing live in front of her dad but they only have one scene together and the whole thing feels weirdly devoid of meaningful drama. Then it hits the upswing with the Maria and Mana power (half) hour as they train to do crazy aerial stunts during a stopover in Greece. Maria is the one drafting the aerial maneuvers but she sucks at flying and has terminal impostor syndrome. Mana just wants to have fun. She's a restless fireball that bounces all over the walls with her kiwi familiar Kyuu-chan. These two initially quarrel before realizing they make up for each other's weaknesses and Mana helps Maria perform all the cool stunts she came up with.

 

Mana cheers Maria up with the "no thoughts, head empty" approach

Director Saeki wrote and boarded Eila and Sanya's episode in both seasons of Strike Witches, so it's unsurprising that the dedicated cameo episode in Luminous Witches references its first season counterpart. The squad touches down in Milasha's home turf and witnesses Orussian life near the Neuroi front only to meet two displaced parents who are trying to reunite with their night witch daughter. That's right, it's Sanya's parents! At the end of "We're the Same" in the first season of Strike Witches, Sanya has to take down a Neuroi on her birthday along with Eila and Yoshika (who also shares the same birthday) and miraculously hears her father's piano playing through her magic antenna. This turns out to be the work of a stray animal spirit that helps broadcast his performance even after the power was disabled at the broadcast station. Ellie inadvertently introduces the spirit to Sanya's parents, unaware that it would be able to project the song for them. This is the most explicit attempt to enshrine Luminous Witches into the series canon, but it would be dishonest for me to act like it's not a clever setup. Oh, and I guess Ginny has to take her stupid bird Moffy to the Spirit Animal Veterinarian because it's not feeling so good. Yes, animal familiars have to go to the Witch Vet. This is because of the specific in-universe rules surrounding these creatures. A non-witch human is incapable of perceiving them because they're essentially tied to the source of magic itself. Plus, they're not exactly flesh and blood animals so they can't be healed by traditional means. Moffy just lies on his back on a healing pedestal, swathed in cloth until he feels better. Also, the vet is Sanya's mom, so that's how this entire plot thread gets kicked off. This episode also features the first anime appearance from the Typhoon Witches who make up the mythical 503rd Joint Fighter Wing. It's a group dominated by witches out of Orussia and Ostmark (the latter of which had no representation in the 501st or 502nd) along with a couple stray Karlslanders and a proud force-of-nature straight out of Fuso. They make a few more cameos later on in the show because it's probably the only screen time they'll ever have.

Inori's episode gets completely hijacked by the vicious triangle of Milasha, Aila, and Ellie - a decision I'm not exactly fond of. If anything, Inori desperately needed some character building that wasn't her being the dedicated cinnamon roll who cries when the writers need to farm the drama. At most, it at least provided some context and expression toward her abilities as a musician while the group stays at her grandmother's place. Unfortunately, it's stuck in the less prioritized side plot while Milasha embarrasses herself trying to defeat Ellie in a series of challenges to prove her worth to Aila. Haven't they milked this trio enough already? It tries to expand on Milasha's reason for having such strong feelings toward Aila but failed to convince me it was worth the trouble. The concept of being saved by music is not lost on me, and I'm quite empathetic about it. I don't think it justifies how annoying Milasha is as a character. It's a wash, I'm afraid. Aila and Milasha getting the duet at the end was cute but not nearly as satisfying as it should've been. It's a valley that gets shored up with the final stop on the tour - New York - which focuses on the humble life of Jo and her expansive family in the big city. I already mentioned the climactic performance in this episode, but I did also enjoy the early stretch as the group gets to hit the city in a limousine and spends some time taking in the nightlife. They spend the days playing around below the skyscrapers and preparing for their big concert before running into Jo's family. I think what really benefits this episode in particular is how it spends more time trying to be a fun experience than looking for a conflict that isn't present. They tease the drama a little in regards to Jo's lower income family not being able to afford the price of entry, but the group simply decides to make the show so big and involved with the city of New York that it would be impossible for them to miss it. Simple and clean.

As the group is heading back to base in Britannia, the news breaks that the 501st has liberated Gallia by being the first humans to take down a Neuroi nest. This allows Ellie to finally get her own exposition as the lone Gallian member of the outfit as she wanders the rubble strewn roads of her home country. At this point, it's pretty obvious that the climactic final performance from the group is going to be centered around this location. I'm glad that Ellie actually gets the lion's share of her own episode to expand on her history with Aila and her upbringing in Gallia before the fall. However, it also sets the stage for the big dramatic wellspring in the final act of this show. As I mentioned before, one of Ginny's primary motivations is to return her familiar Moffy to its family. The bird fell out of the sky as a baby into the fields of Scotland where a young Ginny took care of it, sealing their pact and allowing her to wield the magic of a night witch. However, Ginny believes she robbed her familiar of the chance to be with its true family and hoped to find them during her international exploits. Well, it turns out that Moffy's family is a group of black swans who rarely stay in one place very long. By the miracle of narrative convenience, Ellie finds a group of magic swan familiars inhabiting Gallia that react to a stray Moffy feather she had in her possession. This topples the first domino in a chain of events that surrounds Ginny and her potential removal from the Music Squadron. They lay this one on a little too thick. It wasn't enough to tease the obvious consequence of Ginny losing her role as a witch if she relinquishes her familiar. The writers doubled down and put her in a catch-22 situation involving a forced transfer into an actual combat unit after she instinctively used her magic to help reveal a Neuroi unit in an earlier episode. She's damned no matter what happens, so she keeps true to her word and returns Moffy so it can migrate with the other birds. Ginny loses her status as a witch and becomes discharged in a tearful goodbye, missing the chance to participate in the performance of a lifetime.

 

Ellie pouts strongly at Aila while Grace watches from a distance

 

It's not the first, second, third, or even fourth rodeo at this juncture for a World Witches anime plotline. Obviously, Ginny is going to make it to the concert somehow. Despite this only being a two episode affair, the writers really drag the weepy feels bait over a bed of nails. It seems like our protagonist is content with going back home to the rural outskirts of civilization and living a modest life with her family. She goes around saying her goodbyes and accepting the choice that she's made. Too bad, because Inori won't stop wailing over the injustice of Ginny being excluded from the group and how they can't perform without everyone being present. They milk this one until the very end, with Inori boarding the bus back home right as the idols are prepping for takeoff to reach their venue in Gallia. Ginny steps onto the bus and it spontaneously explodes into song, causing her to break down in tears and immediately regret everything she has done in the preceding two episodes. The power of music brings her to her knees, but thankfully she's able to hitch a ride to the airfield to beg for her spot back on the team. That's all well and good, but how is she going to perform in a witch idol group as a normal human being? Naturally, the entire Moffy subplot resolves itself in a feels-no-jutsu miracle during the final performance. It's not much of a surprise, but it does call into question why this had to happen in the first place. Ginny's transfer to the front lines is completely swept under the rug and never brought up again. I guess the emotional significance is supposed to resonate from Moffy choosing Ginny over staying with its family, but I didn't feel much of that come through on the receiving end. It's more like the relief of Ginny being a witch again so she can keep being a part of the group and the familiar being representative of that, but that's giving this anime more credit than it deserves. The writers needed to stoke the fire so there was something to extinguish when the stakes were raised. It just wasn't all that compelling.

The 3D animators, choreographers, and the effects department used up most of their power reserves to pull off the New York concert and had little left to spare for the final show. You'd think they'd save some energy for the Gallian finale, but they ended up fudging it quite a bit at the finish line. The first part of the performance is cut off at the first minute to focus on Ginny reclaiming her magic power. She properly rejoins the group right as the first number ends. This segues to an intermission where the concert is broadcast outside of the venue and Major Grace addresses the wide audience with her own solo rendition of Basically Amazing Grace. Then, right as the second half of the performance is starting, the viewer is immediately assaulted with a three minute reused animation montage with almost no new footage of the concert other than the group posing at the end. They either ran out of time or gave up in advance. Either way, they had to highly compress the climax in order to fit the epilogue in the slot where the ED usually goes. We see one more scene of the character dynamics at play before the group gets a final shot together. The sentiment left behind is that the Luminous Witches will keep performing to help the world heal from the pain and struggle of their daily lives. In some ways, that's technically true. If you can believe it, the real life Luminous Witches group still performs to this day. They had a concert as recently as four months ago. For whatever it's worth, Kadokawa has kept them afloat and allowed them to continue performing over the last half-decade even as the franchise itself has slowed to an uncertain crawl. I don't know if there's any greater significance to all this, but it's worth admitting that this anime was successful at accomplishing at least one of its goals. The tickets were sold. The seiyuu cosplayed and got on stage to perform their songs. There's no denying the outcome. It's ironic that Luminous Witches is more representative of the remaining lifeblood in the World Witches series than even the works that created it.

Luminous Witches is an experience that isn't bad enough to inspire hatred nor good enough to be worth defending. It's firmly wedged in the middle as a show that rarely excels at executing its ideas. This anime is a murky echo of World Witches media that periodically attains enough clarity to channel the proper qualities of this series, but those moments are few and fleeting. The characters are too simplistic and feel limited by their intent. Reintroducing the animal familiars was a detriment to the experience that the writers attempt to justify by hitching a single one of them to the plot to over inflate their importance. I couldn't emotionally immerse myself in the experience. This is a problem that even Brave Witches doesn't have. SHAFT being attached to this project did virtually nothing for the quality; a statement that is rarely true for most of their productions. It was a consequence of having to rely on freelance talent over their core staff which was stretched thin at the time. The only episode that even vaguely exhibits the studio's trademark style is the one where the group visits Fuso. This is thanks to Yukihiro Miyamoto stepping in to help direct the episode while wrapping up production on Magia Record. As one of the true disciples of Akiyuki Shinbo, it's undeniable that Miyamoto has inherited the vision that made SHAFT a known name in the modern anime landscape. It's just a shame more of that energy couldn't be spared for this show. The OP and ED are great, but that's true of most entries in this anime franchise so it's not exactly a standout quality. Obvious production issues are present throughout the experience, albeit somewhat smoothed out in the BD release as is typical with SHAFT works. A single cour anime with a recap episode is always a dire sign of trouble under the hood. It was a multi-layered struggle that tested both the franchise itself and the limits of SHAFT as producers of Japanese animation. The studio nearly drifted into stasis immediately following the conclusion of Luminous Witches. A pair of OVA episodes based on the 5-toubun no Hanayome (The Quintessential Quintuplets) manga series was their only sign of life in 2023.

 

Silvie, Jo, and Maria forgot to tell Mana this was a pajama party

Perhaps my biggest disappointment is that I didn't get to see a World Witches anime from SHAFT at their peak strength. Even the quality of their recent output would've been preferable. It's not the worst of their missteps - Dance in the Vampire Bund keeps that floor awfully low to the ground - but it's a major opportunity loss. Even if it was Brave Witches 2 or a show covering one of the other JFWs that hasn't been in the spotlight, I'd be content if it was a proper representation of the studio's work. In a way, my initial resentment for Luminous Witches spawned from the feeling that I'd been robbed of that outcome. It's an awful place for a long running franchise to stall out. At the same time, it's the kind of anime that is capable of being the end point. By manipulating the DNA of World Witches as a concept and playing around with its established lore, one could see this as the final act of a story that is no longer worried about maintaining consistency on account of its impending demise. There's no way to prove how much foresight the producers had while Luminous Witches was being thrown together, but perhaps Kadokawa saw it as convenient out to passively sustain the franchise's existence on low power. In the years that have passed since this anime concluded, there has been very little extended material of note. Planned manga releases such as the Hasshin Shimasu! spinoff covering Road for Berlin were quietly cancelled and disposed of after only a few chapters. Side stories and spinoff novels became a relic of the past. Drama CDs and music releases slowed to a halt after the OST for Luminous Witches was released in 2023. Humikane periodically offers up new illustrations to be used for physical merchandise, but has notoriously pivoted to making money from Fantia subscriptions by drawing erotic art of his own characters. There are still infrequently held live events that aren't just live music, but fans are growing more aware by the year that these are meant to placate them despite the lack of major announcements.

The last notable venture to come out of this franchise was a mobile game - World Witches Cross - that launched in late 2025 and was unceremoniously put out to pasture three months ago. It failed to reach its first year anniversary. Extreme lack of faith in the project led to the game's producer putting forced advertisements in the application on top of an unsavory monetization structure. Plagued by dated game design for a mobile release, there weren't enough alternate costumes in the world to keep this behemoth from plunging toward the ocean floor. It pisses me off that they wasted the amazing design of Lynne wearing a bomber jacket on a doomed project instead of letting her wear it in the anime. None of this is representative of a thriving franchise. Kadokawa relocated the World Witches series to the ICU and one of these days the noise from the life support monitor will fall silent. They ceded the entire domain of the military moe empire to Bandai Namco, whose Filmworks division owns studio Actas of Girls und Panzer fame. Bamco certainly aren't saints, but they've attempted to preserve some of the old otaku spirit in the industry of today. Kadokawa Corporation takes notes from its overlords at Sony, one of the most incompetent media conglomerates in modern history whose impact on the industry has been trending in the negatives since the dawn of the Reiwa era. Like the other creative arms that have been tainted by Sony's influence, Kadokawa will continue chasing the white whale of massive franchise success through proven vectors like modern isekai fodder and Narou-kei adaptations. They are almost certainly a major roadblock in the production of original anime works this decade - an epidemic that has thankfully been kept at bay by studios like P.A. Works and GoHands that have managed to secure funding for non-adaptation projects; a comforting reality that some producers still listen to the creative heartbeat of the medium.

I'm a dreamer, but I'm also a realist. There's a place in my heart that will continue to believe in the microscopic chance of this franchise securing a meaningful future. At the same time, I know all great creative ventures have to end at some point. Nothing in the space of art should persist indefinitely. To love something is to allow it to bow out when the time comes. This belief and my desire for more World Witches anime are not at conflict with each other. Ultimately, I've decided to give my naive hope an expiration date. If the year 2028 - the 20th anniversary of Strike Witches - ends without a single announcement of intent to produce further World Witches anime, then the series is done for. At that point, I wouldn't bother wasting the emotional suspense on something that is clearly not destined to happen. So much of this writing project has been a grieving process for me. There's no constructive meaning to be gained from anger toward Kadokawa and their decision to twist the knife. If this is really the end, then I wanted to look back on everything and feel glad I took this journey in the first place. There needed to be a joy that wasn't conditionally tied to the expectation of further sequels and expansions. Yesterday's party is today's afterglow. I truly appreciate that the World Witches experience is so broad and varied despite its relatively brief existence. There is so much material to revisit; so many memories to bask in and appreciate. So many works of passion to relight a flame long dormant. Luminous Witches may be the end, but it was also the beginning of a greater appreciation for what this series has provided me over the years. A franchise I once wrote off as a guilty pleasure (a term I have grown to loathe over time) and a strange fascination of mine has become a pillar of my investment in the medium which I proudly stand behind. The proof is all here, isn't it? Much of writing about anime has been my way of letting these works become a part of my personal story. The dead weight of shame has no place in that process. With one little gesture, the end has no end. We carry it with us. The party is never truly over.

 

The Luminous Witches are still flying to this day...

Thank you for reading War Witches. This is the first writing project I've done in quite some time. The last six months have been a rollercoaster that was somewhat derailed by the demanding Summer 2026 anime season, but I'm glad to have concluded what I set out to do over half a year ago. Always revisit the works of art that have touched you, moved you, or stuck with you inexplicably over time. Decoding meaning and finding new appreciation in old experiences has been a highlight of my relationship with art as someone who is at the point in my life where I'm only getting older. As a medium I got into as a young teenager, there are many anime that I'm seeing for the first time all over again. The way we perceive expression and digest art changes so dramatically with age as one's brain continues to grow and harden. A childhood memory can be a completely different experience than how we view something as adults. This has allowed me to perceive elements of my favorite works that were inexplicable to me as a younger person. Rediscovering my influences has become a ritual that harmonizes well with my pursuit of art I've yet to experience. Nostalgia is truly powerful when wielded as a tool to appreciate the present rather than be constrained in a web of resentment toward the changing landscape. Most importantly, we exist a conduit for passion that has plenty of fulfilling outputs. Find a creative venture of your own inspired by those experiences. Illustrate or write something that serves as tribute. Put that energy back into the world and inspire those around you. That's the one piece of advice I can offer. Passive exposure is not enough. Move with what moves you. The rest will follow.

In the future, perhaps I'll do an extra series to cover some of the non-anime material in the World Witches franchise. There's an entire wealth of releases outside the animated canon that have their own intrigue, but I kept the scope constrained to the anime with this project because it was the part I was most familiar with. It's funny to think that part of this was originally an excuse for me to finally watch Sky Girls and a convenient pretense to write about it. It's worth reiterating that Sky Girls and Strike Witches are distinctly different takes on a very similar premise. Both are worth experiencing for their own strengths and weaknesses. The extra World Witches material provides a lot of expanded lore and history and I could see that being quite enjoyable to me now that I have the events of the anime so fresh in my mind. It's an assignment for another time. For now, I gotta hang up the belt for a while so I can go back to writing about other things. I've got some material in the pipeline for the near future and another writing project I may commit to between seasonal posts. I'll be picking at my backlog again as well, so the second issue of Backlog Marathon may show up in the near future. Only time and my indecisiveness will determine which one of these will materialize first. As a parting shot, I'd like to believe that one day I can come back and edit this post to be "part 6" instead of the final entry. Perhaps if the stars align.

The World Witches will continue their fight. Until then, stay moe, friends.