Despite volume 7’s surprising cliffhanger, The Ancient Magus’ Bride volume 8 begins with life almost as usual for Chise. All of her friends are rather concerned by her enlarged arm, especially once it becomes apparent that it’s a potentially fatal curse passed onto her from the dragonet she saved. But Chise’s quiet fatalism means that she continues to take everything in stride.
Except Chise has begun to change.
Slowly, but noticeably to the reader, she’s begun to realize that her life has value too. Not all readers would call her brash but Chise essentially admits that she’s been as such to Elias in this volume. In some ways she reminds me of someone awakening from a long depression, when you’re in the state that you begin to recognize what’s behind you and struggle even harder to escape the depression as it threatens to pull you back in.
I’m still a bit cautious with how Kore Yamazaki portrays her main character — after all she’s brought together several delicate topics to create Chise — but I am glad that the Chise we met at the beginning of the series does not seem to be the same young woman that we will end with. Many readers have remarked on how Chise and Elias’s positions seem to be reversed by this point, with Chise the “wiser,” more mature character and Elias prone to acting more impulsively, and I wonder if Elias will go through as much character development as her by the end (since he really has remained almost unchanged eight volumes in).
As benefiting Chise’s changing nature, I’ve been happy to see that this and the previous volume have been spending more time on the human side of the magical world. The fae are all interesting but, while they might consider her one of them, Chise is still human first and foremost and not the first Sleigh Beggy so it’s fun to see what other positions humans have in this fantasy setting. I also personally prefer fantasy stories with large, complex world-building behind their settings and Yamazaki seems to be thinking the same way. There aren’t stark, black and white difference between humans and the fae so much as there are shades a difference between humans and other humans, fae and other fae.
Seeing these differences is what makes worldbuilding fun I think. I enjoyed meeting the witches in this volume and it starts to give both the reader and Chise an idea that she might end up in a position like that, something that hasn’t been suggested to her yet but that is still waiting out there. Like the last volume, this one ends on a cliffhanger and I’m tempted to go and watch the end of the anime since it goes just slightly farther than this volume. Otherwise, September isn’t that far off and I’m eager to see more of Chise’s world and her growth.