In this magical world, one is easily identified as having magical abilities by a distinctive mark on their face. Those unable to practice magic are swiftly exterminated to maintain the magical integrity of society. However, deep within a forest lies an anomaly in Mash Burnedead, who can be found pumping iron with one arm and lifting a cream puff with the other. This aloof boy with superhuman strength—but no magical abilities—leads a quiet life with his father, far removed from society.
Mash's peace is soon disturbed when the authorities discover his lack of magical powers. They issue him an ultimatum: compete to become a Divine Visionary, which would force everyone to accept him, or be persecuted forever. To protect his family, he enrolls in the prestigious Easton Magic Academy, which only the most elite and gifted students are allowed to attend. Now, Mash must overcome his shortcomings as a magic-less being and surpass the other students—relying solely on his muscles.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
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Comentários
SpRayquaza11
Borrow but improvise , is the best way to describe mashle, and In my opinion most fantasy/isekai should learn from this example. It's been a while since we got a good parody anime with a good setting which was able to distinguish itself rather than try to cash in on a particular type, we have had wannabe konosuba clones and wannabe one punch man clones but they teen to forget that even if they are able to feed off of a starved for content audience they will inevitably be forgotten since there is already something similar which is in the store. Mashle by all means iskind of a mixed bag of knockoffs , and its quite plain to see.
We have mash who is clearly an inspiration and closely resembles saitama in his unassuming demeanor and lack of emotions. We also have a very clearly harry potter inspired magic school setting with a very standard shounen power level defining scale with the number of face lines defining the amount of magic power/mana but the potency of the same can be honed with other methods this allows for a fairly nuanced and open ended battles with some surprising upsets also being possible. And a relatable oddball story which is loosely black clover inspired which makes for interesting and hilarious outcomes due to mash being severely underestimated.
There are several examples of anime that do this , but not many examples of anime that manage to do them ALL in a well balanced and entertaining way , most which try , make themselves over complicated or fail the parody and comedy aspect quite hard.
Plot (7/10)
Well , the start of the series is quite straightforward , there is an unusual kid in a world where your magical prowess determines everything to the point that those who cant use magic are deemed as good as dead. mash is unable to use said magic and hence has been secretly raised up by his adoptive grandpa in a remote forest in a way that ensured that he trained with muscles and physical strength enough so that he may fend for himself. Now this made him quite the emotionless and dumb guy due to his lack of human interaction and understanding the room or any of the fancy social stuff. This is basically the first two eps , now circumstances ofc lead to the academy being introduced into the mix with him requiring to earn some gold coins (you know accomplish feats means good boi coins kinda thing).now this is standard shounen story with a well defined route and endgame but it also manages to squeeze a good amount of comedy and parody of the same here . Then we get the very obvious Harry Potter inspired personality based house sorting system after which we go full steam ahead with a first major villain arc with some minor pens along the route with hints of a “mysterious third faction”. The flow of the plot is good , interaction of characters is also minimal with a mostly infodumps approach for system explanation but some comedy and parody hidden here and there to keep entertainment value fairly up.
Characters (7/10)
Mash and his gang have a bunch of nice and quirky yet unique in a way kids. They do have trope inducing kinks like the obsessed girl , the siscon , the wanna be cool mc guy and the scaredy mfer, but most of them are used for parody effect and probably designed in such a way intentionally and are able to fit their comedic roles nicely. Mash is the saiatama clone with straight face and often blunt response to standard villain jargons, however he is much of a nice and innocent figure due to his righteous and hermit like lifestyle. The characters do manage to mesh together well , individually they dont emit much of an aura and its only fun when they are horsing around / interacting with others. Villains are also slightly better than your standard punching back goon , but usually have shallow / predictable backstory with a nakama approach of changing to good from evil.
Sound and VA (9/10)
The OP and ED are both fuckin amazing and the OST is also quite the banger with mash getting quite the spotlight due to the BGMN during his cool scenes. The VA is alright with only the red hair guy being a bit of a standout.
Art and animation (8/10)
It has amazing art and background design which drive home the amazing magic school feeling which doesnt feel like a cheap harry potter imitation, the background and setting art does the heavy work for this purpose , and i am also satisfied with the uniform / house designs. The animation is really good as well with amazing sakuga for action scenes. The only problem is the usually dull and uninspiring monster designs.
This is a must watch for comedy/ parody fans who miss one punch / saiki kusou type of plot line. If you like magic school and harry potter type stories too it would be easily pleasing for you.
I can also recommend watching the first two for understanding if the comedy works for you even if you are generally not interested in this genre.
oponent
I dunno how this anime got so popular on release. So basically you have a OnePunchMan protagonist but with a brain size of a pea in a Harry Potter setting (you have your typical characters of Ron, Dumbledore, Draco and Lucius Malfoy, ect... your broom flying lesson, the house selection hat, quiddich, Hogwarts and everything else that's not original). This kind of concept already failed with Black Clover, having a protagonist being OP besides having "no magic", but somehow it fails even harder here, despite having to pass tests that require magic, the MC just breaks the laws of physics (which contradicts the challenge the anime impossedon him, which is the whole point of the anime) and passes them anyway by brute force. In the topic of the MC it's really unbearable having one being so dumb, he doesn't even follow orders or rules, and gets off scott free thanks to Dumbledore being too nice.
It fails as a shonen offering no challenge to the MC both when it comes to fighting or following the rules of the school/world, and it fails as a comedy by having the same ol' repetitive jokes on how the MC can punch through everything. It serves only as a parody not worth watching
DeliaMain
Spoiler-free review So... Mashle isn't the worst comedy-focused shonen I've seen. That's the highest praise I can give it honestly. The anime is fine... the humor is OK for the most part (many jokes miss though). It's the same repetitive gag over and over and over though about how ridiculously strong he is and about how he shocks everyone constantly. Which makes the show kinda one-note in my opinion. Nothing is shocking or surprising or keeps me guessing, which is why this show felt kind of dull for me. The qualities that had the potential to save this show for me are the pacing (it's veryfast paced... thank god for that) and the memeability of the protagonist, Mash. He makes many faces that can be used as reaction images, and that's honestly the main draw for me. Which isn't great for a tv show, which has the goal of entertaining you and making you want to watch more.
Okay, I've been beating around the bush. There's one major glaring issue with this show that I feel is not talked about nearly as much as it should, and that's the absolute flop that is every female character. This author either hates women, or does not know how to write them. There is one female character that is a part of the main group, and her whole purpose of being there is to have a crush on our beloved stale af MC. Yep. She is there to fangirl. That's it. As a female viewer, it's honestly insulting to see. I'm waiting for the day that female characters are written as people and their own unique individuals, that aren't tethered to the MC. Just... why??? It's very infuriating and actually made me want to drop the show (I probably should have, but alas, the sunk time fallacy strikes again).
Another thing that's really unfunny and out of place is one of the side characters having an obsession with his little sister. It's really offputting and just... weird. I know this is a common gag in anime, but when can it end? It's not funny, it's not endearing, and the author basically just wrote this character into a gag that he's going to be repeating over and over indefinitely. I get that humor is subjective and someone may find this funny, but even if this is supposed to be funny, the sheer repetitiveness ruins any potential humor in it.
The OP and ED are good, if you care about that (I do). The VAs are great. But these qualities aren't enough to save the show. This anime is meant to parody the generic-ness of the shonen genre, that's pretty clear by how in-your-face it is. But there's a point where it stops being a parody and actually becomes what it was trying to parody. That's what I think happened here. I watched the first two episodes of season 2 out of curiosity, and it hasn't gotten better. It's majorly disappointing.
TLDR: Go in with low expectations if you want to watch it, but I don't recommend you watch it anyway. There's much better shonen you can watch. This anime treats female characters like props and the jokes flop a majority of the time.
ZeroMajor12
In this round of Spring, A-1 Pictures only has a single competitor against some of the hyped anime, fighting the likes of Oshi no Ko, Jigokuraku, Demon Slayer, and Production I.G's fantastic apocalyptic anime, Tengoku Daimakyou. So, when you hear that they're adapting a gag humor about a buff boi enrolling in a magic academy, your first thoughts are "This is just One Punch Man infused with Harry Potter lore." Welcome to Mashle, a magical action about a boy brute-forcing through every adversity being launched in the most absurd way possible. Enter Mash Burnedead, the main protagonist of this 'comedy' story, as he initially was forcedto enroll in an academy where he's always at risk of being exposed as a human without magic, he would later put himself on the line to fight back against the world's limitless bigotry and cruelty towards the lower-class and those of without talent. Watch him shed blood and tears to fool every single person in the magical universe they live in. When you look back, this is a good premise and can make for a thrilling story where he has to think hard on how to successfully blend into the world of magic, almost like an escapist trying to prevent the death sentence after running away from prison. Unfortunately, any kind of mental effort would be unexistent as it is replaced with years of physical training that made him so strong he is somehow not bald. Because all of his life before the magic academy arc is just physical exercise after another, he has made minimal effort for his academics and critical thinking; Otherwise, how could you explain this man being able to read, talk, or even comprehend simple words? Instead of jokes centering around Mash struggling to fool the world, it's more interested in the actions of Mash that just defy the logic of physics and reality. It's not that I don't hate the physical jokes, they can be pretty amusing to watch, but it's disappointing the fact this potential was not tapped and would have added more diversity to the jokes other than its gag humor.
Let's talk about the other main characters. They have a Siscon, a loud simp, a female simp, and a certified nobody. These characters only play one trope and never expand beyond their initial stand. Their dialogues are so obnoxious, that even the voice actors can't save these pathetic one-note characters. There's nothing else to add other than what I have just described to you. Of course, we all know the saying 'Comedy is subjective.', but these characters are just painful to watch. Not only that, they also exist to purely explain what kind of bullshit Mash has managed to pull off at the challenge of being absurdly impossible. Should I also mention every other character also act this way? It's better to let them shut up and let their actions do the talking, which fortunately does happen in this anime.
As a product of A-1 Pictures, the animation is solid and serviceable to a degree, especially when it's Mash's turn to take the spotlight. Some of the action scenes are good and satisfying, so rest assured. It's not as visually impressive as some of its other competitors, but it's consistent enough to draw your attention with the wacky bullcrap this anime subjects you to.
The most stinky part of this anime is the villains in this anime, and almost every character initially starts on this route. In every second, you are subjected to an exposition of their thoughts about 'being stronger and throwing away the weak.', boast about their high prowess in said skill and comment unnecessarily about their powerful skills, only to get backfired at the end. If they reappear again, they usually end up being a pawn to the bigger plot this anime heavily implies. It's very predictable and the execution is very poor, so it makes for mostly bland battles with zero stakes, to pursue the absurdity in the action for the sake of comedy.
In the end, you can watch this if you want:
- Dumb fun.
- Good animation.
- A catchy ED.
Avoid this if you:
- Think this is a shameless rip-off.
- Hate one-note characters.
- Predictable plot.
- The clichè shit you'll find in every episode of this nonsense.
mariyunni
To start this madness, we are introduced to a world where all human beings are born with the gift of magic, but this changes when a child without this ability emerges, Mash Burnedead, a teenager full of muscles but devoid of magic. Considered an aberration, Mash takes refuge in the forest until one day he is caught and forced to attend a magic school a la Hogwarts. "Mashle" combines references to Western works with situations and key concepts seen in other successful anime, many of them like One Punch Man. Similar to the protagonist Saitama, Mash was born without any special ability and achieves strength thatsurpasses any magic through training. What limits him is his nonchalance, another established element that "Mashle" adapts in its pastiche; Mash's monumental disinterest makes everything extremely comical in the anime. Whether it's his compulsion for profiteroles, his ability to work out in any situation, or his poor performance in mathematics, everything is a pretext for a punchline.
The series doesn't make much effort to invest in suspension of disbelief and presents the most absurd climaxes and outcomes possible. Initially, we see Mash dealing with his problems in the Saitama style: with just one punch. As the episodes progress, the character's life becomes more challenging, and he needs to rely on other muscles to overcome his obstacles. The commitment with which the series embraces satire and the ridiculous surpasses the lack of complexity. It's already one of the best surprises among the anime premieres this year, an unpretentious entertainment that only a good underdog can sometimes provide.
KANLen09
In the realm of endless AniManga content that we've been consuming over the last 20 odd years or so, certain series have stood out for one reason or another. Take mangaka Tatsuki Fujimoto's Chainsaw Man for example: it's grotesque; it's full-on intense action; and above it, we all simp the hell out of Makima for the woof effects. Now we switch gears to mangaka Shuhei Miyazaki's Boku to Roboko a.k.a Me and Roboco, which is a parody manga that makes fun of all of the IPs that it can get its hands on. And have you ever posed this question in your mind: "Hmm, ifthere is an abridged version of the two Weekly Shonen Jump works, what will that end result end up looking like?" And boy, have I got the answer for you! It's yet another Weekly Shonen Jump work called Mashle: Magic and Muscles, made by mangaka Hajime Komoto, and while the manga is recently coming to a close, the anime adaptation...is alright, courtesy of the always-missing director Tomoya Tanaka.
This is the story of Mash Burnedead, the character most likened to Mob Psycho 100's Mob and One Punch Man's Saitama for being indifferent with a deadpan expression. However, in a world where magic is always at the centre/forefront, like Black Clover's Asta, who was born without magic (which is signified by the Harry Potter scar-ish mark on everybody's faces), it's all about the muscles and excessive training, pumping weights, and not giving a damn about his surroundings every day, 24/7. Oh, and all he cares about is his cream puff, which is his sanity item. Mash is just a young man who wants to live life to the fullest, with peace like a river overflowing deep within the recesses of his heart. He's a pure soul. But trouble comes lurking at his door with enemies threatening to kill his adoptive father Regro, and to save both him and his peaceful life, the deal is that he has to go to the region's magic school: Easton Magic Academy, to become a Divine Visionary by hook or by crook, and that says the story for the magicless young man to enter and make his way through to survive, and to make a bold statement that muscles can trounce magic.
Right away, ask anybody who has seen this show, and try summing it up in a short sentence, they will give you this clear and concise answer: "One Punch Man meets Harry Potter". Because other than Easton Magic Academy almost being a blatant rip-off of Hogwarts, down to the various Houses (Adler, Lang, and Orca, as opposed to Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Huddlepuff), and even the Quidditch matches (which are dubbed Duelo), clearly there are lots of Shonen works released every year, especially if it's one that comes from the juggernaut that is Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump, the crème-de-la-crème of Shonen works. So then, instead of just copying the once meme material that was Yuki Tabata's Black Clover, Hajime Komoto opted to go for a full fantasy showing, stating that when drawing manga, he pays attention to the size of the letters and the number of lines, and for the picture, it is important to "first include an overall picture that shows the positional relationship of the characters". In action scenes especially, he tries to capture images so that "within a single picture, the perspective is tight from the front to the back". And since Komoto himself prefers "bad" characters, he also takes the dialogue of the characters in the manga to the extreme and draws them to be "bad people for the time being" (because bad people can be good as well). In the expression phase, he even goes to the gym to relax and recover his energy, so you know that he's built for the destiny of creating the parody work that Mashle is now. Heck, his influential points were from both One Punch Man and Kimetsu no Yaiba a.k.a Demon Slayer, with the former being made very obviously clear, and with the latter, items and motifs based on the character design. Hajime Komoto is no mere simpleton, he's a certified gag parody author.
The characters in Mashle are a fun bunch, though they are not without their quirks and features, which make them stand out. As mentioned earlier, Mash Burnedead is basically Black Clover's Asta, the magicless young man who has a knack for all things physical and is kind and selfless. However, unlike Asta, who desires to fit in with everybody else, Mash is just an easygoing boy who just wants to do his very own thing: eat cream puffs all day. His "magic" fighting style is dubbed "Muscle Magic", using physical power to perform unpredictable moves.
Mash's crew of friends consists of:
- Finn Ames, the roommate of Mash. Finn always plays the straight man and is a nervous wreck all the time, on top of his cowardly self, who is frightened rather easily but is extremely loyal to his friends and goes to great lengths to take care of them. Unfortunately, he's not very close with his older brother Rayne (who is the current Easton Magic Academy's exceptional Divine Visionary student) and has little patience of toleration. His magic is teleportation, being able to swap the positions of people and objects.
- Lance Crown, Mash's first "certified" rival. Lance is a somewhat uncommon case of a double-liner magic user, in which the more lines a person has, the greater the magic the user can wield. His condition isn't anything special, but like Finn, he has a reason to fight as well, being a siscon because his sister would worry about him getting into fights and protecting the bullied, until his sister's death, which vowed him to, like Mash, become a Divine Visionary. His magic is gravity, in pure manipulation.
- Dot Barrett, Mash's self-proclaimed rival. With spiky red hair and red-brown eyes, Dot is an extremely hot-blooded and easily irritated person with a superiority complex but is actually a good person at heart, despite being hit hard by the harsh sensitivity of falling in love and getting rejected. His magic is generating explosions, and together with the cross on his forehead, that exponentially increases his magic power.
- Lemon Irvine, Mash's self-proclaimed fiancée. Being one to gawk at Mash's unkempt appearance at the start, her testing became one of connivance to one of love from the moment he assisted her in Easton's entrance exam. As compared to her outward appearance from the start, Lemon is a somewhat soft-spoken and kooky girl, but she's a honest-to-goodness person and seems incapable of betraying others, though like Finn, she gets scared very easily and tends to exaggerate in the conversations she has with other people. Her magic is Creation, allowing her to create cuffs and other sorts of binding equipment such as chains and manacles.
Together with the Professor Dumbledore rip-off of Headmaster Wahlberg Baigan, Easton Magic Academy has never seen magic levels this lively and feisty, all because of an outlier in the most righteous of Houses (House Adler) that faces enemies from the likes of House Lang's Magia Lupus to unseen ones lurking behind the scenes. Mash is in for a ridiculously good time being Saitama in a Hogwarts setting.
Remember when I said that the anime adaptation of the manga was okay? Yes, it sure does and feels like such, which for a Shonen series that has moderate popularity in Japan, helmed by such a famous and high-calibre studio as A-1 Pictures (along with Aniplex for that matter), really doesn't look the best when compared to the manga. Even though this was a 1-to-1 translation, there wasn't much of an improvement, or anything that made the anime stand out despite being a moderate hit. It's just a shame that there is so much talent that ended up being unused, or rather, not utilised, which could pump up sales for the manga, but nope. For that reason, I can't quite justify giving the anime a high rating.
The music...is rather so-so, to be honest. Taiiku Okazaki's OP "Knock Out" gets lost in a myriad of similar songs composed for the oversaturated Shonen market, and as you've probably guessed, it just sounds as averagely Shonen as it could. But what I can praise is Philosophy no Dance's ED "Shuu Cream Funk", which is much better, lively, and engaging, because it was intentionally composed for the anime if you watched the girl group's YouTube MV and referenced it back to the anime's ED visuals, shot by shot. This is definitely a song that is on my radar as one of the best EDs of the season, bar none.
All in all, almost every other Shonen series can be justified for a sequel season nowadays, and Mashle is no exception to that rule. But how well the anime will perform depends on its staff team. And in the long run, I've got to tell you that Hajime Komoto's story will be the only thing holding the anime adaptation together, everything else is up for debate.
It's good, but the manga is still the superior version. See you in Winter next year for Season 2.
czarekdupa
I actually don't understand how this series became as popular as it is. Is it bad? NO. Is it Great? NO. It is barely above mediocre? The main protagonist doesn't really have any personality, his character traits are that he is strong and he likes cream puffs. The side characters are diverse in personality, but overall kind of generic. There are some giggle worthy moments between them, but nothing that had me dying of laughter or anything. The story is just so uninteresting, the main protagonist is just OP, and he needs to pass magic school as the Valedictorian to prove to the world he isOP. If you think well one punch man is op and does the same thing... this is not One Punch Man, in one punch man there are character moments that make you cry and feel like the fight between the sea king and mumen rider.There are never moment's of suspense when it comes to a fight. The villains just call him weak because he doesn't use magic or he doesn't have two magic lines and then they get punched in the face. He never has to train or anything to win a fight. There is absolutely no character development at all. The main character just kind of uses a "muscle magic" move and is able to win because plot armor. There was kind of some suspense and creativity in him trying to hide the fact he cant use magic like the broom flying episode, which I actually kind of liked. But, it doesn't last.
Idk why I watched it all, because of its popularity I thought maybe it'd get better, but it is just the same jokes, the same villains, the same contrived plot.
Boring 4/10
Halalex
One Punch Man x Harry Potter, almost to the point where it could be labeled as a ripoff. That’s just about where the concept for this show ends. The show really is just the bare minimum you’d expect from an idea like this. There’s absolutely nothing interesting going on, and no sign of anything interesting happening in the future. It’s a gag anime through and through, which is fine, but it was made abundantly clear in the first episode that I wasn’t the target audience. If you’re actually one of the few who’ll stick around for the story and not the lackluster comedy, however, expectnew concepts and pieces of world-building being introduced simply as the author pleases, non-existent character arcs, antagonists and other obstacles that’re all overcome in the same uncreative way, and a main character who’s just Saitama but without the charm and humanity that makes him compelling. The show's not even particularly bad, just very, very monotonous.
The animation was okay I guess…
4 / 10, first few episodes are kinda fun, but the episodic formula gets really tiresome really quickly.
DawkMemo
Overall a really mid series. Pretty much every single character is one dimensional and it gets pretty old when most of the significant characters are the same stoic type. This series feels like a magic/fantasy version of Saiki K but Saiki K does it's characters and humor better. It also feels like this series can't decide if it wants to commit to being a gag anime or being serious so I was left not knowing how to approach it. The female characters are a joke, I don't even know why they're present in the series. Each character has their own "personal magic" and the onlyfemale character we have on the mc side is so insignificant we never even know what her personal magic is. Even the mc's roommate/friend who is just one step above insignificance to the female character gets his personal magic revealed later in the series. The female antagonists? Also just as embarrassing. We don't get many female antags but the ones that we do get have their abilities or personalities rotate solely around male characters. It's really bad.
You get backstories to certain characters but it feels shoehorned in and half the time I felt like I really didn't care about this character enough to care about their backstory.
Oh, and we get another character with a thing for his little sister. Disgusting. You could've had a completely normal character with a normal love for his little sister without making it weird, but instead for some reason the author decided "you know what would be funny? A siscon gag!" It's not funny, it's never going to be funny, incest is not funny.
That being said the series was alright. Far from anything that will change your brain chemistry but it's something that will pass the time. Also I quite liked Mash, even if he's just another Saiki- I mean Saitama- I mean Mob. Yeah his character has been done before (and better) but I still liked him regardless and he had some entertaining moments. I'm also a sucker for the extremely strong mc trope, but I understand it's not everyone's cup of tea. Truthfully if you don't like that trope I would avoid the series cause it doesn't have much else going for it in my opinion. Lastly Mash is 100% autistic.
Autism rules!!
Drakestalker
Approximately 5-6 years ago, some unnamed individual wrote a post on Facebook. It read thusly: “There are no buff wizards in Harry Potter, no gym in Hogwarts, no one does a push up at any point. I could crack Ron Weasley’s spine like a glowstick.” Hajime Koumoto-sensei must have read this one day and thought to himself, yo, hold my magic wand! Every fiber of my being is permeated by the conviction that this is the exact post that inspired him to write Mashle. You cannot change my mind. Point and case, that’s literally the concept of the story – a gymbro enters a wizards’ schooland beats up magic nerds with the power of muscles and bench pressing. It’s Harry Spotter: The Boy Who Lifted!
The premise is that every member of this fictional world is born with the ability to perform magic. Said natural magical aptitude is evidenced by a distinctive scar on their faces. It is in such a world that we find an anomaly, our aloof protagonist, Mash Burnedead. Being born with 0 magical ability in his veins, his father raised him deep within the forest, hidden, completely isolated from the rest of society, for fear that if he were to be discovered, he would be culled. Apparently, the bright and colorful magical world we are presented hides a sinister dark side. The reason magic has flourished and every member of society is a witch or wizard is because non-magical individuals have been routinely exterminated and their genes were therefore not allowed to reproduce. Now, full disclosure, this is a bit ambiguous, for a character later claims that the non-magical people are merely ostracized and removed from society, so it’s not clear to me if we’re talking about a Hitler-like 'final solution'-type deal or a KKK-like ‘separate, but equal’-type deal. In any case, Mash’s inevitable discovery puts him in the difficult position of having to enroll in the Easton Magic Academy and prove his worth. How could a non-magical person cope inside a magical school? Watch to find out!
Mind you, the Harry Potter reference isn’t just a low hanging fruit joke I'm making simply because it’s the best known franchise about magic and wizards. Mashle openly satirizes Harry Potter. It’s not even subtle. I swear, if the show could wink at you and nudge your elbow, it would. It all but breaks the 4th wall.
To begin with, the name of every single episode follows the naming conventions of Harry Potter volumes, such as Mash Burnedead and the Divine Visionary, or Mash Burnedead and the Magic of Iron, or Mash Burnedead and the Baleful Bully. Accordingly, magic in this universe is performed through the use of short wooden rods called wands and the specific material said wand is made of has some form of significance. Furthermore, Easton Magic Academy is made to be as identical to Hogwarts as humanly possible without getting one’s self sued for copyright infringement. There is a maze with magical traps and such that contains a sphinx who will only let the characters pass if they solve its riddle. The school has an insanely powerful, but wise, if somewhat eccentric old headmaster with glasses, a long snowy beard, and a long Germanic name. Said headmaster is shown to be routinely in conflict with the decisions of the governmental magical authorities and elects to run his school the way he sees fit. Once enrolled, there is a sentient magical device that can read a student’s thoughts upon physical contact and sort them into their appropriate houses – it is said this device has fulfilled this duty for centuries. Each house has an animal emblem. The houses are Adler, who value courage and conviction, Orca, who value wisdom and kindness, and Lang, who value talent and ambition. All of the protagonists belong to Adler. No one relevant belongs to Orca. Naturally, all the villains belong to Lang. The locations of the various houses’ dorms are secret and only known to the students belonging to each respective house. There is a publicly-tracked point system that encourages competition between the fou- excuse me, three houses. For Christ’s sake, they even have a wizards’ sport with a weird name that is played on broomsticks where the point is to throw a ball through a hoop goalpost located on the opponent’s side of the field – and yes, the Lang players cheat. The similarities do not even come close to ending there.
Probably my favorite element of this whole parody fiesta is the existence of the Orca house. Koumoto-sensei obviously realized that Ravenclaw, the wisdom house, and Hufflepuff, the kindness house, were never actually relevant in the Harry Potter story, so rather than put the nerds in one house and the dorks in another, he figured he might as well meld them together and put all the nameless, faceless losers into one house – what an absolute madlad! Why have 2 irrelevant houses when you can have just one, amirite?
Rest assured, the disrespect does not end there. You might be laboring under the delusion that me calling them irrelevant is simply my own interpretation because I’m a mean asshole – fair guess – but it’s not! It’s really not! The narrative states it explicitly. When the plot proper is on the verge of kicking in, one of the main characters will draw the others’ attention to the house points scoreboard thingamabob and point out that Slyther- excuse me, Lang is winning, and she states that since Orca students are always too immersed in their studies and research to implicate themselves in such sordid affairs, it’s up to them, Gryff- excuse me, Adler, to prevent Lang from winning this universe’s counterpart of the House Cup. I can’t put into words what joy this brings me. Rather than indirectly by way of not including them in anything important, like Joanne did, Koumoto-sensei unequivocally describes Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw as peripheral window dressing that you do not need to give a shit about. In so many words, he outright tells you that if you belong to Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff, you are too much of a nerd and a dork to matter. L + RIP bozo + ratio + touch grass + hoes mad + don’t care + who asked + smol pp + skill issue + stay mad + cry about it + mald + seethe + dilate + cope harder.
This was unironically my favorite part of the anime. Absolutely cold-blooded! Gryffindor are the only ones who matter! Everybody else sucks! Just as God intended!
It’s an enormously hilarious show that’s surprisingly animated by A-1 Pictures. Mind you, I don’t say it’s surprising because hurr, durr, A-1 bad, and I’m surprised they put out something that doesn't suck, look at how original and cynical I am! I mean that it’s surprising because it has a very distinct visual identity from other A-1 shows. Mashle looks and feels like a Bones show. It comes across as My Wizard Academia, all with the exception of the protagonist himself, who is basically just Muggle Psycho 100.
In particular, I want to emphasize the final boss of the main arc. This dude has one of the best designs I have ever seen in anime. Since the concept of Mashle is evidently a rip-off of the formula ONE used for One Punch Man and Mob Psycho 100, I have grown accustomed to the fact that the protagonist will dispatch most villains fairly quickly and with relative ease. As such, since Saitama and Mob instantly delete most of their antagonists, putting a huge amount of effort into their designs feels somewhat counter-productive, which is why most of them look goofy, and even among the ones whose designs look appealing, very few actually tell a story. The same cannot be said for Abel. Everything about this dude is just *chef’s kiss*, everything, from his face, to his eyes, to his clothing, to his hair color, to his hair style, to his voice actor, to his ideology, to his motivations, all the way down to his powers, it all flows and fits together so well, that you can tell exactly what this dude is about just by looking at him, and that is the essence of good character design. He is perfect. Given the short amount of time he has to be built up and developed, he is one of the best overdog, arrogant, superior, above-it-all Aizen villains in the medium.
If I had any complaints, they would be three-fold, and they all stem from the attempt to inexpertly fuse a gag manga with a bona-fide serious battle manga. It can be done, ONE proved it, but there is a right way and a wrong way to go about it, and Koumoto-sensei is no ONE.
Number one, the move sets of the various characters are extremely limited. They can all pretty much just do one thing and one thing only and their entire toolkit seems to amount to endlessly spamming that one thing when fighting. Since I don’t want to spoil any of the cast, let me paint you a picture of a hypothetical Mashle character. Say you have a wizard who is described as having ice powers and you see him call out “Frostnado!”, which summons an ice tornado. Welp, that’s most likely all the development you’ll see out of him for the entire show. Whenever he's fighting, he’ll just cast “Frostnado! Frostnado! Frostnado!” over and over again and that’s all she wrote. This is true both for our heroes and the villains. There are only 3 exceptions to this, and they’re all villains that Mash faces himself, one of which is arguably the most interesting and terrifying, but he gets written off as a meme (a hilarious one at that, but a shame nonetheless), one of which is the main villain of the final arc, and the last of which is my favorite character.
Number two, just like there is no blood in Fairy Tail, Mashle has a similar problem. It shows no injuries. To be sure, there is blood in Mashle, just no actual visible injuries ever. Characters will get beat up, cut up, slashed up, blood flies everywhere in showers that would give Bleach a run for its money, but none of it ever leaves any actual marks on their bodies or even clothing. There is one scene in which a character gets stabbed cleanly through the abdomen – the sword goes right through, you can see it come out of his back – but then continues to fight as though it never happened, and as soon as said fight is over, he keeps going to face his next challenge seemingly completely fresh and unharmed.
Probably the most ridiculous instance of this is when a character gets stabbed in the gut by a giant fat earth spike – may have been metal, can’t remember – that, again, goes right through him, and while he’s dripping and coughing all kinds of blood all over the place, his shirt and robe are completely intact. There is no trace of an actual injury. While not a huge deal, I suppose, it was weird to witness and kind of took away the consequences of each battle.
Number three, and this one is perhaps what bothered me the most, is Koumoto-sensei’s insistence to portray Mash as both a stupid meathead who is completely disinterested in the nerdy magic bullshit for comic relief, but simultaneously also a super serious and invested edgelord whenever the plot needs him to be so. He is seen to repeatedly express no interest in his school mates, and it’s always played as gag – quite successfully I might add, I’m not saying it’s not funny – but when one of them gets kidnapped, we’re supposed to take it at face value that he cares about them so much that the mere suggestion that he should not care about them and mind his own business fills him with bloodlust.
There is no better evidence of this than when, out of absolutely nowhere, he hits some poor motherfucker with this line: “Just like you can expel me at any time, I can bury you at any time. Throw me in prison, cut my body in half, even if I have to crawl, I will bury you.” Whoa, holy shit! Slow your roll, Frank Castle! Those are some crazy dark bars! Where the fuck did that come from? It’s just such an unlikely vibe coming from a guy whose entire personality is that he doesn’t have much bandwidth in his brain for anything other than eating cream puffs.
I’m not saying I don’t believe that he cares about his school mates or that I don’t like his based moments. All I’m saying is that none of those aspects of his character were set up in any meaningful way, and if anything, all of his actual character development actively points towards them being out of character. They just lack verisimilitude.
If we look at kindred characters with a better design philosophy behind them, we see that Saitama is at no point described as stupid. It’s not that he doesn’t understand the minutia of what is being said around him. It is simply the case that he is of such a transcendent nature, that such minutia literally makes no difference to him. Additionally, we get shown from the very beginning that he does in fact care for humanity on an instinctual level, because that is the very thing that triggered his hero’s journey. He is simply a loner in the present day because his power level makes it hard for him to interface with other people, and for all of his bitching and moaning about Genos, we get consistent evidence of his increasing attachment to him. As such, Saitama’s reaction to Garou’s treatment of Genos is 100% believable.
Something similar can be said about Oda-sensei’s rubber boy. Luffy is incessantly described as stupid, but he is also just as incessantly described as deeply attached to all of his crewmates. That is all done so as to make his intense reactions sink in whenever they are in danger or in pain, and boy, do they ever sink in.
Still, none of these are significant problems that detract from what Mashle actually is, dumb fun – and if that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll get it in spades! I’m just saying this out of concern for the long run, because the manga has 160 chapters, which is not a huge amount for shounen standards, but those could easily amount to 100 episodes, which is basically the length of Yuu Yuu Hakusho, so these problems could become increasingly irritating over time, but I will reiterate: No matter what problems this anime might have in the future, this first season is nothing short of fantastic!
All told, Mashle made 4 hours feels like 30 minutes. It's short and sweet. Additionally, a second season has been confirmed, and since the manga it adapts has already concluded, the adaptation was very positively received, and A-1 is a content machine, Mashle stands a good to fair chance to receive a full anime adaptation. There is no reason for you to not treat yourself to this absolute joy!
Kranst
Mashle: Magic and Muscles is a combination of deriving concepts from various media while attempting to capitalize on action and parody. Unfortunately, ideas explored beyond the initial premise are only surface-level. Some areas do succeed, such as the quick pacing and the amazingly ambitious soundtrack. However, cracks in the foundation start to form with generic character archetypes and formulaic backstories, uninteresting and repetitive conflict resolutions, and the commitment to questionable traits simply to be used as a gag. Moreover, the female cast is written one-dimensionally to fit a role rather than as unique individuals. The overall production quality is fine, but the writing feels uninspired.
Orion911
Not So Magical, But Definitely Muscular So, I finished binge-watching Mashle: Magic and Muscles, and honestly, my brain feels like it just did a hundred push-ups in a magical gym. It's like that friend who pumps iron while quoting Nietzsche - confusing, hilarious, and weirdly entertaining. Let's get the obvious out of the way: Mashle is about as subtle as a brick to the face. Our protagonist, Mashle, punches problems instead of casting spells, uses muscles bigger than his vocabulary, and has about as much emotional depth as a puddle. But hey, sometimes you just want a dude who solves everything with biceps and deadpan quips, right? Theanimation is, well, let's say it has its "moments." Sometimes it's crisp and action-packed, and then you get scenes where everyone looks like they were drawn by a kindergartener who just discovered anime. But hey, it adds to the charm, like watching a dog try to walk on its hind legs - clumsy, but strangely endearing.
The story? Eh, it's there. Mashle gets kicked out of his magic-obsessed village for, you guessed it, not having magic. Then he goes to a magic school, mostly so he can eat free food and beat up arrogant classmates. There's some world-building thrown in, some wacky teachers, and even a couple of decent twists. But let's be honest, you're here for the fistfights and ridiculous humor, not Tolstoy.
Speaking of humor, it's like a banana peel in a sock drawer - unexpected and kind of gross, but you can't help but giggle. Mashle throws out puns like confetti at a party, and the slapstick is about as subtle as a mime with a megaphone. It's not gonna win any awards, but it'll definitely make you snort milk out your nose at least once.
So, overall, Mashle: Magic and Muscles is like a protein bar dipped in candy - not exactly gourmet, but it hits the spot when you need a quick, dumb burst of energy. If you're looking for something deep and meaningful, go read Shakespeare. But if you want to see a dude punch a talking cactus in the face while making a pun about photosynthesis, grab some popcorn and buckle up. This magical, muscular mayhem is definitely worth a watch.
Pros:
Hilarious, low-brow humor
Action-packed fight scenes
Surprisingly endearing characters
Theme song so catchy it'll haunt your dreams (in a good way)
Cons:
Animation can be inconsistent
Story is pretty basic
Mashle's emotional range is about as flat as a pancake
You might feel slightly dumber after watching it
Final Verdict: 6 out of 10 protein bars. It's not perfect, but it's a fun, dumb ride that'll leave you with a smile and a sore face from laughing.
gabu_rieru
Because it is an anime that adapts a weekly Shounen Jump manga, I was very encouraged to give it a chance and watch it, after all, I am a big fan of Battle-Shounen anime, but the disappointment and disgust when watching this anime was one of the biggest I had in a long time. It seemed to me that the author wanted to do a kind of "speedrun" of the genre and just threw stereotypes and extremely generic and well-known narratives. Nothing here is unique. This anime has nothing original. The characters are extremely shallow and uninteresting with weak interactions and nothing stimulating in addition to non-existentmotivations and backgrounds.
Action and world-building that feels like it was designed by a beginner.
And a horrible technical part. Definitely one of the worst anime from A-1 Pictures.
Anyway, there's not much more to talk about, because as I said, here in this anime everything is so simple and shallow that there's almost nothing to evaluate.
Sad that there is such a bad anime in this amazing new batch of new battle-shounens.
Schzzy
Mashle is decidedly average in every aspect. Its characters? We’ve seen them a million times. Over-exaggerated comedy? We have that too. Plagiarism disguised as parody? ALL OVER THE PLACE. But I gotta give credit where credit is due: the animation is alright. :) That’s it. Really. There is nothing more to praise Mashle for. So now, let’s talk about the bad:The character design has no distinct quality. The OST is uninspired. The characters are shallow. The jokes get saturated and are predictable. The narrative is a textbook shounen replica. And the parody… well, let’s go into details first…
Mashle plays the parody card by not taking certain story elements seriously, but without subverting any expectations or using these elements in any meaningful or intelligent way. The parody “events” are just that: events. They are barely even attached to the main story because the show plays out as any other mediocre shounen and takes that part seriously. Okay, so, maybe the main character is a subversion of the shounen genre, when we put him against average narrative tropes… And sure, that might be the point. But that’s just a cop-out from One-Punch Man.
What about the Harry Potter parallels then, you might wonder? “I betchu that’s great parody material!”, you might say. Well, no. They hardly have any relation to the story, aside from the simplistic overarching parallel of the story taking place in a magic school with different groups inside (the rest of the elements taken from HP are simply used for gags).
Okay then, what about the gags? “They have to be good right? Look at the score on this show, something must be capturing the audience’s hearts!” Well, again, no. The gags can be summed up to: exaggerated character quirk put against a “straight man” and/or the simple saturation of character quirks (e.g.: Mash is so strong he can’t open doors, he breaks them; Mash loves cream puffs, so he thinks of/eats them in unusual moments; Red haired guy takes himself too seriously, as if he were the main character; Blonde girl is a pervert; White haired dude is a hardcore siscon; etc…). All characters can be summed up to one characteristic or two, which are played for laughs AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN, to the point of exhaustion. That is, except when the story is busy trying to SERIOUSLY justify that single characteristic in a long monologue/flashback in the middle of a fight due to enemy provocations which then provoke the well-known transformations and rage fueled power spikes.
Taking it all into consideration I still can’t say Mashle is BAD… it’s an okay, inoffensive show. I’m not that critical about my anime, after all, entertainment is entertainment, and being COMPLETELY cliché and predictable doesn’t necessarily take away from the enjoyment. For that reason, Mashle is perfectly average and perfectly enjoyable, if it suits your tastes.
HOWEVER,
I did not rate it 5 (an average score for an average anime, duh). And you might be wondering why. Or not? Anyway… it is because I have a beef with the main character.
Dude… at the end of (almost) every fight Mash sympathizes with the villain and forgives their behavior and the evil-doer (which up until that moment was nothing short of a psychopath) suddenly has a flashback that “justifies” his actions and comes to the realization Mash is Jesus and repents for his sins. PLUS, Mash is always fighting to defend the weak and oppressed. It’s the wet dream of a bullied kid. We get to watch Mash watching someone get humiliated for half an episode, so that then he can take action and his violence be justified because he is Sanctity incarnate. Rinse and repeat.
proxy_chaska
I really did want to enjoy it, the initial setup for it was interesting enough, however Mashle is way to focused on giant fights and comedy to be anything but that. Its world building is pretty much non-existent, the characters are mostly one note, theres very little time to work on any establishing factors or even just the world itself. Within the first 12 episodes the power scaling has already gone above and out of the 'school' level, we've seen like 5 different ex-machina's that are meant to make a character cool and unique and the rules for the world, its magic and all thesystems in place have never once been touched on. So if you want to watch Saitama goes to isekai bogwarts then this may be the show for you, however I couldnt get invested in the few dozen characters shown to me, especially when im being told how cool they are meant to be by a peanut gallery.
AeroGunz
“Mashle: Magic and Muscles” is what happens when You want to write a parody but have no sense of comedy. We follow Mash (not the awesome series from 1972… unfortunately; yes I know it was M*A*S*H but cut me some slack, that is still one of the best series ever created, with one of the best writing in television history, and I won’t waste a chance to mention it) a Young boy who can’t use magic in a world where it’s everything. After being blackmailed into becoming an exceptional student in a magic school, he has no choice but to climb the ladder and getas much recognition as he can… without magic… in a magic school. On top of keeping his special circumstances a secret at all times. Yeah… it actually sounds more awesome than it is.
This type of show doesn’t rely heavily on its plot, instead its blood is the characters and their interactions. It’s a shit show on that front. Everyone and I do mean everyone is a one trick pony with one characteristic turned into a personality. Mash is a simple, honest boy borderlining on benign a dunderhead. Lance is a cool, collected intelligent boy with a sister complex. Dot is a firecracker. Lemon is lovestruck and Finn is… just there… for some reason. Seriously, why is he in his coterie? The dude contributes nothing. If You’re hoping the villains (and I use this term loosely) would fare better… yeah… not really. They’re in the same boat as the main nakama.
The plot is… everywhere and nowhere to be honest. The glooming shadow of his blackmail is always hanging and is sometimes referenced but all in all means little to the plot itself. The show is a bit like “Trouble of the week”. Despite being denser than a neutron star Mash is trying not to get expelled but always seems to draw someone's attention. Which results in that person trying to eff with him and getting their ass handed to him on a silver platter by Mash. It’s all very reactive.
Ok, listen, I get that this is supposed to be a parody show. That’s why You get Hogward school mashed with Naruto style battles (even a bootleg talk-no-justu) but there is a line between an homage and a ripoff. This one is in the latter category.
After just two episodes You are introduced to everything this show has to offer in terms of comedy. It gets stale pretty fast and even before the half way mark You’ll stop even noticing that You are supposed to laugh. It’s a really boring slapstick comedy and once in a while a witty dialog (not many, don’t get Your hopes up).
If You’re hoping that at least the battles would be a highlight, after all we have a character that relies on his body to combat magic users, You’ll be very, VERY disappointed. Despite being practically a monk vs sorcerer from D&D battles they play out like in most anime. That is: Start frame - some lights and effects that are there to distract You from the fact that the animators aren’t getting paid enough to do their job on a level that’s not a shaking still image - end frame. I think that’s what got me the most. They had all this possibility to create amazing, well thought out and animated battles and instead we got the same shit we get in every lame ass, OP MC isekai on the market (at least this one isn’t an isekai but that’s hardly a satisfaction).
All in all this show is bad. It’s just a bunch of colourful effects, amalgamation of ideas You already saw with just the minimal amount of writing to make You think You care about what’s going on.
Also… the least they could do is give us the damn recipe for the cream puffs!
ShibaTatsuya20
Mashle is a feel-good gag-humour anime with an over-powered Saitama (One-Punch man) style hero. Setting aside the comedic part, you'll be surprised to know that the anime has a more-than-decent story which touches aspects like NATURE vs NURTURE, Eugenics, Racism etc. I mean the story premise itself is that protagonist Mash Burnedead is a muscle-guy in a magic-dominated world where people are discriminated based on their magical capacity and our hero has to change this system for his own "peaceful life". Now, then, coming to character depiction, each character adds something to the story and have some backstory. We've all types of anime tropes. Also, if youobserve carefully, the anime is a parody of Harry Potter it seems.The world-building is also amazing.
The anime is so good that I binge-watched it in a night. In just 12 episodes, the anime makers made a solid anime by creatively telling a backstory after every fight.
Characters are colorful and the artists did a good job there. But the animation is mediocre. Yet, with a solid story plus the slapstick comedy and our can't-read-the-room heroes, they delivered a good anime.👏🏻
I give it a 9/10.🎯
Potatobanana
Comedy is subjective based on who you ask about it. Mashle quite possibly embodies that statement as it throws everything it has on its comedic aspects whilst lacking in all the others. As such, the watcher’s enjoyment of the show in contingent to whether or not the comedy will hit right or whether it ends up cringey and miss miserably. The story of the series is the very epitome of mediocre and generic. Magic in itself is a very overused trope in not only the anime or manga mediums, but in all sci fi mediums in general. Mashle follows the usual shonen formulaic story progression whereMash faces an opponent, defeats the opponent in a satisfying fashion then either befriends them or never speaks to them again. This story formula has been used countless times in shonen but in Mashle’s case, it is quite literally all that it amounts to. However, the end of the season shows signs that the story will pick up in the subsequent seasons which is certainly a good sign but at the point of the first season, the story was certainly mediocre at best and the build up was quite unbearably slow.
The characters of the series were extremely monotonous and repetitive. Which for a comedy anime, isn’t necessarily always a bad thing. To some extent, repeating the same jokes again and again may start to make you feel attached or even nostalgic for each character and their unique quirks and tropes. However, in the case of Mashle, it treads more on the safe, overused and trope-filled side of humor through their characters. The series sacrifices character writing for the sake of comedy but even the comedy is something you see in various other series before it. Its main characters can be simplified into the dense main character, the simp character, the female character whose entire character is to love the main character, the badass character with a weird side and the cowardly character. All of these descriptions have been used countless times in various other series out there, while Mashle decides to stick by these tropes rather than develop them properly or even shift to a different style of character comedy.
Mashle is a series that some may enjoy because it unabashedly uses the comedy and tropes employed in various other shonens. It’s a satirical series that makes fun of these tropes in the same way One Punch Man and Gintama do. However, it treads the fine line between making fun of these tropes and becoming the very series that relies on these tropes. Those who enjoy the style of humor in Mashle, will very likely enjoy the very same humor in other series that execute it better.
Twinkie125
While there is definitely some pretty funny moments, this story seems to be stuck when trying to decide if it wants to be a semi-serious action series or just straight up gag anime. The concept of essentially a Harry Potter parody is interesting, but the actual stories in this series are basically all condensed down to single episodes and nothing is ever really fleshed out. There's definitely way too many characters in the main group, as basically only two characters actually get major screentime and the MC's story is just a One Punch Man copy where nothing the MC does is serious. The restof the cast is at best a one-dimensional trope and at worst just annoying whenever they're on the screen.
The music is FIRE tho.
