Review: Aerial Magic Season 1, by walkingnorth
Russ Allbery
eagle at eyrie.org
Tue Jan 15 20:03:42 PST 2019
Aerial Magic Season 1
by walkingnorth
Series: Aerial Magic #1
Publisher: LINE WEBTOON
Copyright: 2018
Format: Online graphic novel
Pages: 156
Aerial Magic is a graphic novel published on the LINE WEBTOON platform
by the same author as the wonderful Always Human, originally in weekly
episodes. It is readable for free, starting with the prologue. I was
going to wait until all seasons were complete and then review the
entire work, like I did with Always Human, but apparently there are
going to be five seasons and I don't want to wait that long. This is a
review of the first season, which is now complete in 25 episodes plus a
prologue.
As with Always Human, the pages metadata in the sidebar is a bit of a
lie: a very rough guess on how many pages this would be if it were
published as a traditional graphic novel (six times the number of
episodes, since each episode seems a bit longer than in Always Human).
A lot of the artwork is large panels, so it may be an underestimate.
Consider it only a rough guide to how long it might take to read.
Wisteria Kemp is an apprentice witch. This is an unusual thing to be —
not the witch part, which is very common in a society that appears to
use magic in much the way that we use technology, but the apprentice
part. Most people training for a career in magic go to university, but
school doesn't agree with Wisteria. There are several reasons for that,
but one is that she's textblind and relies on a familiar (a crow-like
bird named Puppy) to read for her. Her dream is to be accredited to do
aerial magic, but her high-school work was... not good, and she's very
afraid she'll be sent home after her ten-day trial period.
Magister Cecily Moon owns a magical item repair shop in the large city
of Vectum and agreed to take Wisteria on as an apprentice, something
that most magisters no longer do. She's an outgoing woman with a rather
suspicious seven-year-old, two other employees, and a warm heart. She
doesn't seem to have the same pessimism Wisteria has about her future;
she instead is more concerned with whether Wisteria will want to stay
after her trial period. This doesn't reassure Wisteria, nor do her
initial test exercises, all of which go poorly.
I found the beginning of this story a bit more painful than Always
Human. Wisteria has such a deep crisis of self-confidence, and I found
Cecily's lack of awareness of it quite frustrating. This is not
unrealistic — Cecily is clearly as new to having an apprentice as
Wisteria is to being one, and is struggling to calibrate her style —
but it's somewhat hard reading since at least some of Wisteria's
unhappiness is avoidable. I wish Cecily had shown a bit more awareness
of how much harder she made things for Wisteria by not explaining more
of what she was seeing. But it does set up a highly effective pivot in
tone, and the last few episodes were truly lovely. Now I'm nearly as
excited for more Aerial Magic as I would be for more Always Human.
walkingnorth's art style is much the same as that in Always Human, but
with more large background panels showing the city of Vectum and the
sky above it. Her faces are still exceptional: expressive, unique, and
so very good at showing character emotion. She occasionally uses an
exaggerated chibi style for some emotions, but I feel like she's
leaning more on subtlety of expression in this series and doing a
wonderful job with it. Wisteria's happy expressions are a delight to
look at. The backgrounds are not generally that detailed, but I think
they're better than Always Human. They feature a lot of beautiful sky,
clouds, and sunrise and sunset moments, which are perfect for
walkingnorth's pastel palette.
The magical system underlying this story doesn't appear in much detail,
at least yet, but what is shown has an interesting animist feel and
seems focused on the emotions and memories of objects. Spells appear to
be standardized symbolism that is known to be effective, which makes
magic something like cooking: most people use recipes that are known to
work, but a recipe is not strictly required. I like the feel of it and
the way that magic is woven into everyday life (personal broom
transport is common), and am looking forward to learning more in future
seasons.
As with Always Human, this is a world full of fundamentally good
people. The conflict comes primarily from typical interpersonal
conflicts and inner struggles rather than any true villain. Also as
with Always Human, the world features a wide variety of unremarked
family arrangements, although since it's not a romance the
relationships aren't quite as central. It makes for relaxing and
welcoming reading.
Also as in Always Human, each episode features its own soundtrack,
composed by the author. I am again not reviewing those because I'm a
poor music reviewer and because I tend to read online comics in places
and at times where I don't want the audio, but if you like that sort of
thing, the tracks I listened to were enjoyable, fit the emotions of the
scene, and were unobtrusive to listen to while reading.
This is an online comic on a for-profit publishing platform, so you'll
have to deal with some amount of JavaScript and modern web gunk. I at
least (using up-to-date Chrome on Linux with UMatrix) had fewer
technical problems with delayed and partly-loaded panels than I had
with Always Human.
I didn't like this first season quite as well as Always Human, but
that's a high bar, and it took some time for Always Human to build up
to its emotional impact as well. What there is so far is a charming,
gentle, and empathetic story, full of likable characters (even the ones
who don't seem that likable at first) and a fascinating world
background. This is an excellent start, and I will certainly be reading
(and reviewing) later seasons as they're published.
walkingnorth has a Patreon, which, in addition to letting you support
the artist directly, has various supporting material such as larger
artwork and downloadable versions of the music.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Reviewed: 2019-01-15
--
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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