Maria the Virgin Witch Ep. 2: No one cares about familiars…

Um…

– Artemis is doing what she does best, and I suppose there’s something to this. Y’know, make love, not war. People see when I criticize fanservice in harem anime, so they think that I’m against sex or something. I still think Artemis’s character design is unfortunate, but sex and fanservice are not exactly one and the same. Most of the time, there’s hardly any sex in fanservice. The latter is usually just onanistic, but even then, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that either. The problem is that it is selfishly onanistic; fanservice usually comes at some female character’s expense. On the other hand, sex is presumably a union between two willing participants. Presumably…

– Thanks to Artemis’s hard work, I guess most of the English army is retreating.

– Case in point, we have Maria sleeping naked in bed, but she sneezes and complains that it’s cold. If it’s so cold, why would you be naked and uncovered? ‘Cause fanservice…

– Ann shows up to give her thanks. After all, Maria had saved the little girl’s father. The girl then talks about her favorite saints, which is a sore subject for the witch. She feels that the heavens and the angels don’t do anything for humans that they’ve created.

– Maria could be a cool character, but half the time, she’s too busy blushing like a schoolgirl. Sure, she’s virginal, but virginal does not mean she has to be this lame.

– Her familiar finally returns to deliver her report or whatever. Artemis managed to get to everyone except on English leader. Why? Well, as you can see from the screenshot above…

– As a result, the familiar encourages Maria to create an incubus, i.e. a male demon. This way, they can also seduce homosexual leaders. Unfortunately, Maria’s hesitant, and Artemis thinks it’s because the witch is a virgin, so she has never seen a penis before. As a result, it might be a bit difficult to create a male familiar. Um, I don’t think you need to have sex to have seen male genitalia, though. I suppose it’s possible that they’ve never seen Greek statues, but hey, Maria’s a witch. She can just use her magic to see a penis or whatever. What’s the big deal?

– Oh right, right… she finds it embarrassing. The all-powerful witch blushes at the thought of simply seeing a dong in the wild. Meh. Again, Maria could have been a cool character, but at the moment, she feels too much like a generic shoujo.

– In any case, they try to turn this owl into an incubus. And this is the result. I don’t get it. Why do we have Artemis looking like this, and Priapus has to look like this? Even Joseph doesn’t look like that. And oh yeah, because Maria has never seen a penis before, Priapus lacks one.

– So the homosexual English leader is still on the move with his army, which forces Maria to take matters into her own hands.

– Priapus still wants to prove his worth, but the problem is, he’s not even homosexual himself.

So when they send him into a room to seduce some commander’s lover, our familiar is not exactly enthusiastic about getting down with some male stranger. But despite his pleas, neither Maria nor Artemis seem to care very much. Haha, just man up and, uh, get raped?

– Eventually, Artemis shoves Maria into the room as well, and now Maria decides to do something about it. Unfortunately, a warning sign comes raining down from the heavens. It seems that the angels are not pleased.

– Still, Maria can’t exactly turn it in for the day. Marauders are attacking the very same village that has been kind to her, so she just has to do something. After all, the marauders are threatening to rape the women. Check that. They’re not just threatening. They were going to do it, but of course, this time, Maria steps in.

– Maria saves everyone, and this really, really pisses Michael off. He descends from the heavens, and knocks Maria around. They share some words, and Maria tries to resist, but it’s really no use. I’m not sure how strong witches are supposed to be compared to an angel, but it seems that the answer is “not very.”

– It boils down to this, basically: Maria doesn’t understand why the angels would allow humanity to suffer, but Michael implies that Maria’s a hypocrite because she can’t possibly save the entire world. Also, she’s arrogant if she thinks she can stop all conflicts? I don’t think Michael’s argument is very convincing, but then again, Maria is heroine of the story. So y’know, I don’t expect the story to be very sympathetic of Michael and his position.

– Anyway, Michael intends to rid Maria of her powers, but Joseph tries to save her. I’m sure he doesn’t realize that he just shot an angel in the back, though. The episode ends there, so I’ll just have to wait and see how everything plays out.

– All in all, most of the episode was kind of entertaining, but I’m not keen on the characters’ blase attitude towards Priapus potentially getting raped. That’s just fucked up, man. She bemoans the fact that God created humanity, then left it to its own dark devices, but on the other hand, she created Priapus… so what’s her excuse? It makes it even worse when you consider the fact that this scene was supposed to be humorous.

– This seems relevant.