Arusu was an ordinary Japanese preteen who had enjoyed an average ordinary upbringing. The only particularly strange detail about her life was that her father raised her to believe in magic and witches which would become her obsession... And he also gave her a large elaborate book of magical spells that would become her most prized possession. One day while attempting to retrieve her book from the hands of two of her classmates that she had been messing around with she starts to receive strange visions and is instantly transported to a real genuine magical world However society in this world isnt anything like her fantasies. Witches warlocks and wizards live in strict opposition to each other poorly performing witches get banished to the human world fairies are captured and exploited for their magic power and it turns out her book is some crazy magical artifact that holds the key to world domination With two new friends at her side Arusu sets out to not only survive this world but to change it. Tweeny Witches was produced by Studio 4C and if Im being perfectly honest Im not a big fan of theirs. Theyre probably one of my least favorite Japanese animation studios. You know that effect some anime sometimes use called the runny eggs technique where the animators temporarily give up on consistent character model framing and turn a character into some kind of broken twisted monstrosity to heighten their articulation and/or emotional resonance without spending any extra money? Sword Art Online and Toradora are good examples of this in fact it was my one complaint about Toradora particularly. Yeah Studio 4C basically built their resume on this style and I want to be clear about this it IS a style. Its a very deliberate artistic choice to utilize this aesthetic its not necessarily an issue of budget or quality. Some anime will dip into this technique in short bursts for various reasons but other anime... Particularly anime produced by Studio 4C... Will use it as their main auteurist aesthetic once again for various reasons. Because it is its own distinct style your take on it will be entirely personal. You cant really assign a specific level of objective quality to it you can only go off of your own personal tastes and Ill stop burying the lede I hate it. Im not saying youre wrong for liking it or that my sense of taste is better than yours but I really do not like this style. I think it looks ugly as fucking get out. I dont like the angles it uses I dont like how it makes characters look and on an even more personal note I dont like that its always being done on purpose by people who could very well draw and animate far more visually pleasing characters if they wanted to. Granted its not always bad... Certain anime like Mind Games have deliberately leaned into how uncanny it looks to hit a certain bizarre mood with their stories which I do support... And I havent seen Memories which I think also uses it but Ive heard good things so maybe thats an exception as well. Either way any anime using this style is fighting an uphill battle with me. Tweeny Witches uses this style and yeah no surprise it looks ugly as fuck. Its also really poorly directed during these sequences with some truly laughable closeups and genuinely questionable cinematography choices. Thankfully it doesnt always do this. It can slow down and look like a normal anime sometimes especially during more tense or dramatic moments which is a blessing because at least they knew better than to undermine the material that they wanted us to actually take seriously. The runny eggs technique mostly pops up during action scenes and in comedic scenes where Arusu is interacting with her friends and certain other people. A lot of these shots happen during lengthy conversations which is kind of similar to the way Akiyuki Shinbos style is sometimes used. Theres also CG animation peppered throughout but it is not integrated very well and it looks jarring as fuck more often than not especially when its used to animate actual characters flying. I should add when the story actually WANTS to look cool it usually does succeed. With more dynamic visuals like Arusus visions and the unspoken episode previews at the end of the creditswhich I do not recommend skipping the visuals are far more striking and dynamic especially in the ways theyre lit and shaded. Part of this is due to the fact that behind all the messy animation the actual design work in this show is pretty badass. Every single environment from the more traditional fantasy aesthetic of the witch kingdom to the more futuristic look of the warlock realm to the suffocating expanse of the wasteland inbetween them and especially the occasional ruins look amazing. Even the forests deep and dark and bordering on unnatural never feel even slightly generic. Granted only a handful of characters really stand out visually and a few of those stand out for the wrong reasonsI enthusiastically dislike the design of Lennon and I didnt care for how the interior of each characters hair is shaded green. Still the fairies look cool and diverse. I dont usually talk about music anymore but I did have a few comments to share about the opening and ending themes of this show. The opening is well not great. The song is okay it sounds like a perfectly pleasant minor instrumental tune that you might find on one of those celtic CDs they used to sell in the candle aisle at Walmart but the accompanying visuals are just randomly chopped up and sewn together clips from the show and this is by no means the only anime Ive ever seen do that but I dont remember ever seeing it done this badly. The clips arent even mostly good looking clips and they dont flow together at all especially not in time with the music. The ending theme is a little better its just shots of the girls flying accompanying a pretty little Japanese cover of a fairly common ballet ballad. Still I found myself skipping both of these while watching most of the episodes. The English dub was produced by Animax for a southeastern Asian release prior to its stateside distribution and Im kind of torn because sometimes it damn well feels like an anime that wasnt specifically dubbed for native English speakers. There are names in this cast that Ive never heard of before or since and a few of them dont make a great case for themselves in general. On the other hand the main three protagonists are played by some genuinely talented voice actors who were veterans at the time and are still working today. I mainly know Julie Maddalena from Battle Athletes Victory and Monster High and she imbues Arusu with enough strength and passion to sell her as an earnest beacon of hope rather than letting her idealistic platitudes make her sound annoying. Cindy Robinson has to go to some dark places as Sheila the loyal follower who has to face tough realities about the people and system she believed in and Mela Lee... I mean shes a good actor in general but sometimes she does this high pitched young girl voice that hits my ears like artificial sweetener... Think Rena Ryuuguu but without the psychotic duality to make it interesting... I dont like it but it could be worse. One final note about the dub is that anime really seems to like naming characters after the titular protagonist of Alice in Wonderland which is unfortunate because they always fuck up the pronunciation and more often than not the resulting English dub winds up carrying that burden. Thus Alice becomes Arusu in both languages and I really wish this particular anime had taken the initiative to fix this problem and just called her Alice. In any case its a mixed bag of a dub but its serviceable enough. If you couldnt tell from my comments on the opening this show does not make a very good first impression. Before we even get to the story itself we have to look at the amount of shit you have to swim through to even watch an episode proper. You start by panning over this weird mural that Im sure had some deeper meaning to the story but I never got it and I enjoyed the story just fine. After that you get a previous episode recap and the opening. That doesnt sound too bad right? Well its not except for in the most important area possible: The first episode. The first episode you have to go through all this and if youre wondering how they give a previous episode recap before youve even seen the first episode dont worry they found a way. Before youve even met Arusu as a character or seen her journey you have a narrator telling you about her and how she got isekaid. Then after the opening credits we catch up with her in the other world SHE tells you who she is and how she got there. And then halfway through the episode you finally get to see how she got there. That is the exact order all of that happens in. Instead of just starting the damn episode by showing us Arusus origin you have it explained to you twice before its shown to you. This isnt just getting off on the wrong foot this is hopping up and down on the wrong foot while chanting Drop me drop me drop me Which is a real damn shame because once you get over this little speed bump thats parked right outside of the gate Tweeny Witches is actually really good. Im sorry to drop that assessment on you so early in the review but this is a show with a very complex and intricate plot that I cant say too much about without getting into some pretty heavy spoilers. What I can say is that the actual plot setup is a fairly familiar one. Its your basic fish out of water story where a newcomer in a strange land has to both adapt to their surroundings and bring about some necessary changes to their world in the process. Granted this sort of story doesnt always work... Theres a line of cultural disrespect that is far too easy to cross and it can sometimes come off like the world was made unbelievably stupid or dysfunctional so the main character can come in and fix it which can wind up feeling idiotically naive at best and condescending at worst. This happens in basically any story where a normal person suddenly becomes royalty its the basic plot of Idiocracy Ive seen more than one isekai anime where the protagonist uses knowledge from the internet to teach people how to do basic things they should have figured out generations ago like sustainable farming techniques. There is a way to make this work though and I wish I could be more straightforward and specific with this but you have to find some way to make the world the protagonist is entering make sense at least to the people who live there. People who have to be told they dont have to eat rocks might as well just keep on eating rocks. Thankfully Tweeny Witches does find a way to pull this off. There are a lot of problems with the magical world but every single detail of it is intricately woven together into a technically functional but by no means ideal society. The first issue that Arusu notices is the subjugation of fairies which she strongly opposes because she believes they should be free. According to this society fairies are the source of magic that witches draw upon so letting them go free would cause their society to gradually collapse so you understand WHY their society is like this but Arusus point is still valid as not only is slavery wrong but their usage is a disturbing taint on what her father taught her about magic making people happy. This creates a highly nuanced situation where you as the viewer have no idea what the right answer is but youre encouraged to have faith that somehow some way Arusu will be the force of hope who finds it. And of course the plot thickens from there as Arusus actions however noble set off a chain reaction that threatens a possible armageddon of the magical world as secrets about the true nature of the world come to light and multiple different factions with drastically different outlooks and goals engage in a conflict against one another that keeps getting worse and worse the stakes keep getting higher and higher and Arusu and her friends are constantly involved in all of it and never in ways that feel forced or unnatural. They grow and change as the plot challenges them and their beliefs. They make mistakes and sometimes they make the wrong choices and the situation keeps unraveling in the most chaotic but more or less logical ways possible. I guess you could say that the plot can get a little convoluted and overly complicated at times and if youre not paying attention its easy to get lost in multiple spots. This is not the kind of anime you want to watch while browsing on your phone. The pace moves very quickly the narrative does not hold your hand and make sure youre paying attention and admittedly this can make it a little hard to follow at times which is especially unfortunate because aside from that one detail Tweeny Witches would probably work best as a childrens show. Personally I could see myself liking the animation and art style a lot more if I were watching it as a kid I also just generally paid a lot more attention to what I was watching back then. Actually Ive noticed that Little Witch Academia seems to have taken some influence from this series and it wouldnt be unfair to call that show the fully realized version of Tweeny Witches. Still I do recommend this series if youre looking for a hidden gem to add to your spooky october watchlist. Tweeny Witches is out of print from Media Blasters but its very easy to find a cheap copy on Ebay. Honestly the old box set is designed to look like Arusus book and it looks pretty cool. A six episode OVA is also included in most releases. Tweeny Witches is not a terribly deep or meaningful anime. What it is though is thoroughly well written and executed. The plot is engaging and constantly developing and the story never gets boring or stale. The characters who matter are likeable the ones who dont are largely forgettable and while there are a few specifically intended antagonists its hard to say any character is entirely in the wrong as their motivations make sense and everyone is reacting to the threat to their world in their own believable ways. That threat by the way is taken exactly as seriously as it deserves in a story that thoroughly understands its own stakes and it gives you plenty of reasons to care about it as well. The visual style isnt really my thing so I do have to knock off a point for that but your experience may vary so I do think its worth checking this show out and seeing if it casts a spell on you. I give Tweeny Witches a 7/10