Who would win: a nine-foot-tall hulking troll, or some samurai girl with a katana?
Japanese Title: 入学式 セレモニーtrans.
Director: Shuuji Miyazaki
Writer: Shogo Yasukawa
First aired: 7 July 2023
Adapts: Volume 1, Chapters 1-2
Director: Shuuji Miyazaki
Writer: Shogo Yasukawa
First aired: 7 July 2023
Adapts: Volume 1, Chapters 1-2
It's the beginning of spring in the year 1532 of the Great Calendar, and six freshmen at Yelgland's elite Wizarding School Kimberly Magic Academy are brought together by a twist of fate involving a rampaging troll.
Tropes:
- Adapted Out: The novels' prologue, depicting Chloe Halford's murder by Esmeralda, is cut from this episode.
- Adaptational Early Appearance:
- Richard Andrews is depicted in the crowd to set up his grudge against the Sword Roses for subsequent episodes.
- Teresa Carste is introduced here much earlier than in the original novels: she appears to Oliver in the garden outside the dorms after he wakes up early on the first day of class and has a brief conversation with him, in order to establish that there's much more to Oliver's presence at Kimberly than is immediately apparent.
- Big Eater: Nanao grabs an entire slab of roast beef for herself, claiming she's hungry enough to eat the whole thing. Oliver has to explain to her that the platter is meant to serve six people and makes her a plate himself—then gets stuck doing the same thing for Katie, much to Guy's amusement.
- Commonality Connection: Invoked by Oliver, who tries to get Pete to open up to the group by engaging him in a conversation about the book he's reading: a crash-course on basic magic for mages from nonmagical families, which Oliver, though born a mage, enjoyed reading because of the amusing stories between the chapters.
- Covered with Scars: While trying not to look at the topless Nanao, Oliver notices that the exposed skin has a lot of scars on it. She explains they're war wounds.
- Dare to Be Badass: Headmistress Esmeralda's opening remarks to the new students warn them that 20% of students who enroll will be "consumed by the spell" in Magic Misfire incidents before they graduate in seven years, and abjures them to leave something worthwhile behind, as a tiger leaves behind its pelt.
- Early-Bird Cameo:
- During the troll incident, the camera passes over a red-haired, green-eyed male student in the crowd looking on while the Sword Roses rescue Katie. This is Richard Andrews in an Adaptational Early Appearance, who will become more important in subsequent episodes.
- Sword Arts instructor Luther Garland acts as the announcer for Esmeralda without being introduced.
- Establishing Character Moment: The troll scene is a big one for Oliver and Nanao, and to a lesser extent Katie.
- Oliver rushes in and develops the plan to defeat the troll, establishing his instinct to protect people from danger, his coolness under pressure, and his abilities as a strategist.
- Nanao establishes her skills as a fighter and her utter fearlessness in the face of mortal danger.
- When this chaos breaks out, Katie is in the middle of arguing with Guy about the relative merits of trolls, which starts to establish her credentials as a Zombie Advocate.
- Everything's Better with Samurai: Lampshaded: the nascent Sword Roses are all rather mystified by the appearance of Nanao in hakama and a Samurai Ponytail with a katana strapped to her waist. A samurai in Yelgland? What?
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The episode gives a quick overview by means of an original-to-the-anime Fantasy World Map: Yelgland, where four out of the six main cast members are from, is England, Katie's homeland Farnland is Finland, and Nanao is from Yamatsukuni (Sengoku Period Japan) in the eastern continent of Azia (Asia).
- Fantasy World Map: Chela gets one out to show the other main cast members where she's from. It's clearly based on Earth, though Africa is missing for some reason.
- Flashback Echo: While looking at the topless Nanao, Oliver gets a brief mental image of a similarly unclad mystery blonde woman telling him, "Look all you like, Noll, this is the time for that." Process of elimination with the credits indicates this is Chloe Halford, but the episode doesn't explain her significance.
- Foreign Language Title: "セレモニー", a phonetic spelling of the English "Ceremony", with the definitional kanji 入学式 nyūgakushiki literally meaning "school entrance ceremony".
- Foreshadowing:
- Oliver reacts strongly in his Internal Monologue to his first sight of Nanao in The Teaser, and later offers her his outer robe after she realizes she forgot a towel when she went to bathe in the fountain, hinting at their future relationship.
- Oliver, though friendly, is more on guard than you would expect from a high school freshman on his first day at boarding school, and has a covert meeting with a "covert operative" named Teresa Carste, sent by his brother. There's also the Flashback Echo to bathing with a mysterious blonde woman he has when looking on the nude Nanao.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: The new students are watching a parade of magifauna put on by the school, when a troll marching in the parade suddenly goes berserk and advances on them, and curbstomps two wargs that try to stop it. At the same time, a girl in the crowd casts a spell on Katie to make her run towards the parade, nearly getting her trampled. Only the swift intervention of Oliver, Nanao, Chela, Pete, and Guy saves Katie's life.
- Gratuitous English: The opening narration is written in English, though narrated by Esmeralda in the dub language.
- Gravity Master: After delivering her opening remarks, Esmeralda inverts the gravity in the auditorium with a snap of her fingers, sending the freshman class to dine upside-down on the ceiling.
- Hand-or-Object Underwear: During the fountain scene, the topless Nanao turns to face the camera, but our view is blocked first by Oliver's hand in the foreground, then by Nanao putting her arm across her chest when Oliver turns to face her.
- Her Boyfriend's Jacket: Played with: when Nanao realizes she forgot to bring a towel with her to the fountain, Oliver quickly shucks his school uniform's outer robe and gives it to her, which she wraps around herself. It's a more figurative example of the trope than most, used more to foreshadow their relationship than to depict it.
- Homage: A group of friends at a magic boarding school brought together by fighting off a troll? Are we talking about Nanatsuma or Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone? Well, both, actually: Bokuto Uno has cited Harry Potter as a major inspiration for the series.
- Incoming Ham: Rather than enter through a door, Esmeralda takes the podium in a flash of lightning.
- Innocent Fanservice Girl: The morning before class, Oliver walks in on Nanao bathing her upper half in a fountain that happens to be located in full view of the men's dormitory. She's baffled by his protest that she shouldn't go topless in public, explaining that she's ritually cleansing herself of the blood she shed in her last war.
- Mage Born of Muggles: Pete explains that he was born to a nonmagical family and had to pass an admission exam, and gets a little grumpy when he finds out that Nanao didn't have to: she was appointed to Kimberly on the say-so of Chela's father Theodore, a guest lecturer at the school.
- Make Some Noise: Oliver has Chela, Guy, and Pete cast Impetus behind the troll's back, then manipulates it with Tibia to imitate the sound of a dragon—a troll's natural predator—in order to distract it.
- No-Sell: Chela tries to drive the troll away from Katie with a casting of Tonitrus, but the troll is completely unfazed.
- Ojou Ringlets: Discussed: they're a Hereditary Hairstyle of the McFarlane family. Guy pokes fun at her, wondering if they're the result of some kind of curse on the family, and Chela jokingly retorts that it's considered polite to faint at the sheer beauty of them.
- Opening Narration: Before the opening scene, a voiceover from Headmistress Esmeralda reiterates the statistic that one-fifth of students who enroll at Kimberly will not survive to graduation.
- Plant Person: The main cast gets taunted by the pride plants along the approach to Kimberly. One flower has a brief conversation with Oliver about the "terrible future" that awaits him, while another leaves in a huff after Chela warns Pete not to step on her stem, lest he get the mother of all Reason You Suck Speeches. Guy explains that the personalities of magiflora are affected by the quality of the magical particles they absorb from the ground—which is a pretty early sign of what life at Kimberly is going to be like.
- Power Dyes Your Hair: Nanao's hair turns white when she attacks the troll, which Oliver recognizes as "Innocent Color"—a rare magical trait caused by a crystalline hair structure that allows magical particles to easily flow, indicating that the mage has extremely good internal magical circulation and therefore has an excess of natural talent.
- Stupid Question Bait: After delivering her Dare to Be Badass speech, Esmeralda offers to take questions from the students... to which Nanao immediately pipes up by suggesting a remedy for the headache the headmistress seems to be having, to the chagrin of Oliver.
