While Chise is adapting well to her new life as a student at The College, it seems that there are many things about the world of alchemists that she never knew about before. There are ancient families, taboos, and hidden histories that Chise needs to get up to speed on quickly.
And it’s not just Chise who is interested in learning more — it seems like more and more people are taking an interest in her and Elias too.
While Kore Yamazaki may not have originally intended to keep the story going for this long, in our second volume of the “college arc” Yamazaki seems perfectly comfortable in introducing a boatload of new characters, concepts, and conflicts for both Chise and Elias to traverse. I do worry that the magic/alchemical system that Yamazaki has created is starting to get too bloated however. I still find the differences between mages and alchemists to be more nit-picky than anything else (especially with characters like Alice who seems to have magical potential but no ability to use it, somehow) and the introduction of demi-humans in this volume made me feel that Yamazaki has possibly tossed in too many cool ideas into her world.
Again, not that this has stopped Yamazaki from setting up a half dozen, tantalizing, future plot points in this volume alone. In addition to having Chise and Elias interact more with their new classmates/colleagues respectively, and setting up what might possibly be some very bad news for Chise’s muggle friend Stella, volume 11 of The Ancient Magus Bride continues on a cliffhanger from volume 10 and we get an unexpected look into Simon, the local priest/Elias’ watchdog’s, past.
There’s yet another new magical phenomenon introduced, and there is a brief bit of information revealed about the Church (who I suspect will have an antagonistic role in the near future), but what caught my eye was the young, dark-haired boy who accosts Simon and is then too heavily hypnotized to give his name — was that Chise’s younger brother?! We know that Chise’s brother, like her father, appeared to have dark hair and an inborn tendency to repel spirits, the opposite of the Sleight Beggy magic that Chise and her mother had, and there was something about the way this character was presented, and his abilities were described once he was knocked out, which makes me think he might be significant later on. My only concrete wish for Ancient Magus’ Bride right now is for Chise to somehow find her missing father and brother and we might get that after all!
This wasn’t the most exciting volume of Ancient Magus Bride but at one point the difference between alchemy and magic reminded me of a similar conversation in the very first volume so I went back to re-read one or two scenes and I noticed something interesting. One of the major focuses of the series is how Chise is teaching Elias how to be “human,” mostly in the sense that she’s explaining human emotions, reactions, relationships etc to him. The story is quick to remind you of this every volume, either through a particularly strange actIon of Elias or through outright conversation (like the conversation Chise had with Elias’ teacher at the start of this volume).
But the Elias of volume 1 feels like a bit of a different character. In his interactions with humans, like with Angelica, Elias appears to either have more knowledge of human body language, empathy, and emotions, be able to fake them really well, or he actually has all of these human qualities that aren’t present later-on; he’s able to fake being human far easier in volume 1 than he’s able to as an actual teacher to humans who are unaware of his true nature in volume 11. This got me thinking about how we the readers know for sure some of the ways this story has changed from when Yamazaki was beginning to write it and I’m wondering if she was still figuring out Elias’ character for the first volume or so. Perhaps she intended for the story to be a more traditional “beauty and the beast” tale (which usually involve the “beast” character being pretty human after all) and it was only later that she decided to really lean into the inhuman nature of Elias.
There’s no way to be sure of this theory, well unless a very skilled interviewer was able to get a truthful answer. But I think this helps highlights why I’ve never been as fond of Elias as I am of Chise and why it’s Chise who always carries the story for me. It’s true that Chise, not Elias, is the titular character, but it’s Chise’s struggles, growth, and bad choices that follow a more recognizable and ultimately sympathetic path for me while Elias continues to feel a bit more like a concept than an actual character at times.