Anime I like, but haven’t talked about yet: Maria the Virgin Witch

Just like Strain, this is also a series that came completely out of nowhere for me. In a slightly different way though. Unlike Strain, I didn’t buy this one on DVD out of nowhere to watch it. Instead, this is one of a few series I’ve watched legally on Funimation’s youtube channel from a friend’s recommendation. What came is finding my current third favorite series from a certain director that I really like, Goro Taniguchi. Like, what? This seemed completely out of the realm of his mecha and science fiction series, but I think that’s what worked about it. For a fantasy series, Maria the Virgin Witch has a strong since of reality behind it.

Maria the Virgin Witch is a series centered around the One Hundred Years War in France. During some battles between the English and the French, the young witch Maria constantly interrupts battles with her magical abilities. She also uses her succubus and an incubus familiars to manipulate both sides of the conflict to push for peace a bit longer. Maria is constantly trying to find a way to break out peace between the two sides. She also is a teenage witch who is told from the Archangel Michael she will lose her power if she loses her Virginity. There is a lot of actually good sexual based comedy by Maria constantly getting frustrated by the Succubus who has laid down with tons of people at this point. As an older teenager, her getting interested in it is a part of the story of this anime too.

So that’s the two parts which build conflict into the show. Maria upsetting the balance of the human world, the human world starting to work together to fight against her, and the angels of god getting upset at her for being stubborn. All while she gains an interest in one certain Englishman named Joseph. So yeah, this is also a story with some Mary and Joseph christian symbol stuff in it too. Don’t worry, the two actually connect with each other. How this show goes about all of this themes and storytelling is pretty unique and I haven’t seen a lot of other series, besides Ikuhara anime and some other shows that came out recently, do the same thing sorts of things or explore the sexuality of a teenage girl as much. For the time, this felt like a once in a life time sort of anime series.

The visuals are something that top the scales for me in terms of how interesting this show is. Ok, the CG is pretty bad. That’s fair. At the same time, there was a lot of research done into how actual fights happened during this time period. I’m not just talking about army vs army combat and siege combat. I’m also talking about duels with different sorts of medieval weaponry. There is a slowness to the combat which makes each hit and deflection have some weight to them. Contrast that against Maria’s reality bending magic and Maria really does feel like an outside element to all of this. It’s a very well-crafted show that needs to be talked about more. I think it was forgotten in the seasonal landscape way back then. I suppose that happens with a lot of shows.

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