Mashle: Magic and Muscles Season 2

Episode 16

Given that physical strength is his whole thing, you'd think putting Mash Burnedead into a tournament arc would be akin to dropping a fish straight back into the water. Of course, that assumption operates on the idea that Mashle has played by conventional storytelling rules. Mash has been breaking the magical tiers of this world over his finely toned legs since day one. So while the opening stage of the Divine Visionary exam at first appears like the organization inadvertently handed Mash an easy win, particularly against "Deadervants" who are immune to the magic of all the other students, this episode has a fair amount of complexities waiting in the wings.

Those are complexities, not necessarily surprises. Anyone familiar with the shonen battle playbook, especially stuff in the more Hunter X Hunter direction, will be able to guess the same thing the characters in Mashle do: This exam isn't about straight combat, but instead testing other abilities. Putting the magical students into a kind of Kobayashi Maru situation, where they can't defeat their opponents, forces them to consider methods of escape and avoidance instead. It's an exercise all about further encouraging wizards to be wimpy nerds! This episode also (somewhat surprisingly) adopts Mash himself into the conditions of the test by revealing that the Deadervants can tank physical attacks almost as well as magical ones. Truly, the proctors on this exam thought of everything.

This is great for the pacing and material of this episode since it means Mashle doesn't default to its usual one-joke method of having Mash punch his way to success in a given situation. Instead, much humor is mined from the overall absurd unfairness of the test, and the reactions of some like Finn who doesn't want to be there. A lot is going on overall in this episode, but I don't want to underplay how funny it is alongside everything. Our muscle-headed main character isn't prepared for all the rules being detailed as his series shifts into a thinking man's shonen, so mash.exe encountering an error becomes a gag that works multiple times. On the flip side, an entire crowd getting to do the incredulous reaction thing to Mash's outlandish maneuvers like inflating a balloon using break-dancing also turns out to be a strong comic bit.

Meanwhile, the more serious elements of the episode get to play just a bit differently from what I was expecting as well. The arrival of nondescript upperclassman Max and his teaming up with Mash had me preparing for an eventual betrayal. It's a genre staple, after all, and it's not like so many of the Easton students have made a habit of not trying to undermine our lovable muggle at every turn. But instead, the truth about Max turns out to be as simple as the answers he espoused—he was just a guy impressed by what Mash stood for, and wanted to watch out for him as an upperclassman. It's just nice, in a way that shows the positive effects Mash's presence can have on this world apart from forcefully changing the more closed minds of his opponents. And there's no shortage of those, what with Max getting taken out by Carpaccio, the latest dirtbag from Orca, and setting up a more conventional conflict to come.

Carpaccio's strength-based worldview is nothing new, nor is Mash's egalitarian response to it. But it continues carrying the themes of the series nonetheless. The idea is that magical power cannot and should not be the sole defining fact of "strength" in this society, that as Mash says, "the definition of strength differs from person to person." Of course, this being Mash, his protein-addled brain quickly loses focus and goes on an existential tangent about what even defines strength, but that too is in the spirit of Mashle. It's a blend of goofs and good-spirited ideals, and this episode was a fine demonstration of more different ways the show could go about doing that.

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Mashle: Magic and Muscles Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris is still the reviewer for Mashle, and wizards are still nerds. Get some reps in with him over on his Twitter, or peruse the magical back catalog of his blog.