Wandering Witch: Elaina's Tonal U-Turns Make PERFECT Sense

Episode 9 of Wandering Witch is one of the more controversial anime episodes in recent years, the main reason being its sudden tonal shift from a slice of life travel anime to a bloody, gory horror story. While many would agree this shift is not necessary, it does not mean this is necessarily a bad thing. Given the series’ episodic structure, there is more freedom for the creators to tell various kinds of stories within a single series.

Wandering Witch gave hints about its somewhat dark nature earlier in the series, particularly in Episode 3. The first half of the episode tells the story of a cannibalistic flower field, and the second half is about an abused and depressed slave girl. The themes portrayed in Episode 9 are arguably not much darker than those in Episode 3; rather, it is the gruesome presentation and the gloomy atmosphere of the episode that leaves a long-lasting impression on its viewers. It is especially jarring when contrasting this episode with previous more light-hearted ones, too.

But this type of genre-shifting storytelling is not unprecedented in episodic series, even within those that involve world-traveling. Most notably, Kino’s Journey, which has a lot of similarities with Wandering Witch, takes place in a similarly vast and unknown world with diverse cultures and customs. In both series, the main protagonists are travelers who act more as bystanders to events rather than active participants in them.

Kino’s Journey features even darker storylines than Wandering Witch does, involving oppression, deception, murder and a lot of destruction. But the series also has hopeful tales about the importance of kindness and love.

Compared to other traveling series such as Girls’ Last Tour and Mushishi, Wandering Witch does take genre-mixing to an extreme end, even within Episode 9, the tone drastically changes from the rather comical and heartwarming first half to the gory violent horror of the second half. The purpose of such a genre change may just be to convey a sense of realism so that the viewers can experience the same type of shock as its characters. After all, in the real world, shocking and tragic events often happen without warning, disrupting any happiness one could be experiencing just a moment before.

Realism is the thread that connects all world-traveling series, and the purpose of episodic storytelling is to present human stories by placing realistic human conditions against fantastical backdrops. The stories become more memorable as a result. Episodic plots are not necessarily shallow; in fact, many episodic stories are more philosophical and thought-provoking than some much longer series. The stories are able to be told efficiently because they connect to more universal themes.

As previously mentioned, the protagonists of world-traveling series are usually not the main characters in these episodic stories, they are simply witnesses, allowing the viewers to experience their world through their eyes. When these travelers do not get to chose whether they will experience happiness or sadness, neither do the viewers. The stories may not always be conventionally satisfying but they are all a part of the authentic travel experience.

The tagline of Kino’s Journey is “The world is not beautiful. Therefore, it is.” This quote perfectly captures the melancholic essence of the world-traveling genre: the protagonists are merely passersby -- therefore they cannot and should not be able to change the world in any fundamental way. Instead, they just appreciate the good, the bad and the ugly from everything they encounter along the way. This is why the mixed-genre approach of Wandering Witch is not actually a major departure from its episodic structure; rather, it's an innate feature of it.