Mashle: Magic and Muscles

Review:

Recommended by Detrezo and my Coworker

I really enjoyed this one. For being a OPM clone, this show did pretty well. I like how the story has a sort-of purpose to it (even tho the whole lackmagic shit is stupid and reminds me of the racism in aot). However I don't think the arcs are quite as good as OPM because a lot of it reminds me of MHA (even tho this is much better than MHA's school arcs and whatnot), and I think Saitama is just a better MC than Mash.

 I will say it's very interesting that Mash does get injured, even if it doesn't faze him. He does some ridiculous stuff, but I feel like he struggles a bit more than Saitama in the fights. The supporting cast is very goofy, the entire show is pretty goofy actually. This show doesn't really take itself seriously most of the time, which I like, but then sometimes it tries to mix in serious moments and cool fighting, and it kinda works, but not as good as OPM. This show is just too corny to pass OPM for me, but it's still really good.

Anyways, the supporting cast didn't come off as THAT funny to me. Dot is stupid (but at least his power is cool), Lemon is stupid (and literally does nothing), Finn is a pussy and does nothing until that one reverse damage guy, the Bamboo guy is stupid, and Lance is weird but hes cool when he needs to be. I'm more interested in the enemies honestly. I wanna see the strong guys under Innocent Zero that are apparently on Wahlburg levels of strength.

My favorite fight was the Abyss fight. The way he just destroys him is so satisfying, combined with the music, it just works so well. The weird piano guy fight in the tournament is a close second, it looked really good, and his "theme" was really cool and complimented the fight, but the choreography and overall hype doesn't match the Abyss fight for me.

The visuals and music in this show are outstanding. I only noticed a few parts of s2 that looked semi-rushed, but the animation otherwise was better than s1. There was just so much cooler looking stuff happening with Wahlburg, the Piano guy, just everything had so much color to it. I think the music is really really unique, incorporating a lot of different types of music that I don't hear in anime often. They reuse a lot of tracks, but it's totally justified because they're good. I mean AOT does this too. The reason Demon Slayer is the best soundtrack IMO is because it sounds good and they hardly ever reuse tracks, they just remix them, so you always have something unique every episode. Speaking of Demon Slayer, theres this one epic track they always play when Mash is doing something cool, and it sounds so good that I would put it on par with some of Demon Slayer's best tracks.

Overall I enjoyed this show! Its main weaknesses are the story and supporting cast being kinda dumb, but the fights and the audio and visuals to compliment them are really quite good.