Well, when talking about witch shows, this is one that seems prudent to tackle. Though released in 2015, Maria the Virgin Witch is one of two war-time witch outings that tend to come up. I guess it has been over ten years now, but the show feels older than it is in a good way, like it impacted public consciousness. That said, I at least didn’t know much about it other than that it existed before digging in, so with this minimal preamble, let us do just that.
Maria the Virgin Witch is set in the tail end of the Hundred Years War (explicitly after the death of Jeanne D’Arc, seeing as Maria references that incident in the first episode), in some sort of alternate timeline where witches are real, sort of weird free agents because of their status on the fringe of society.
Maria in particular is a dogged pacifist, who uses her magical powers to break up battles whenever she can. If that sounds incredibly naive, like it’s not addressing the root of any sort of conflict… it is, but I give this a bit of a pass because Maria is explicitly a naive character. We’re never told how old she is, and it’s fairly clear from the first episode that she’s a virgin because she simply has no relevant life experience, not because she has deliberately held on to that trait.
In fact, despite having a succubus in her employ, she seems completely clueless regarding the mechanics of the matter, so I’ll spot her that international politics are probably way over her head.
In our opening episode, we see that Maria is one of a few witches manipulating the state of affairs, but that the others seem to be a mix of patriots and mercenaries while Maria and her astounding power of doing things like conjuring dragons is on her own side. Though, that isn’t to say that she lacks stakes; both a man from a family that’s good to her and a boy she knows and seem to have a crush on (named Joseph) have been conscripted into the French army, and she clearly wants to keep those she cares about safe, a feat that she largely manages
After making an Incubus familiar (with perpetual censor fog, because she didn’t know what to look for in the crotch area) and continuing to interfere with war and banditry, Maria is paid a visit by the Archangel Michael. He is not particularly pleased with her existence, or her interference with the world, and seeks to strip away Maria’s powers or kill her. Her protest that she’s done nothing wrong, and Joseph coming in to shoot an angel with a crossbow in order to protect her starts a chain of events that convinces Michael to commute Maria’s sentence: she’ll lose her powers if she loses her virginity, and Michael intends to kill her if she keeps using magic in big flashy displays that by his reckoning upset the order of the world.
He leaves behind a lesser angel, Ezekiel (Who has a dove alternate form that Maria’s owl-based familiars love to pick on), to monitor Maria in his place, but she’s rather easy to give the slip to and unwilling to pull the trigger if she didn’t see the moment of magic with her own eyes.
Now, a lot of what happens in this show is a mass of character arcs, so I suppose I should call on the characters. We have Maria, who I have introduced, her succubus Artemis, and her non-endowed incubus Priapus. Plus Ezekiel, that’s sort of the core of Maria and the gang
Then, of course, there’s Joseph. I’ll be honest, he skews milquetoast and is basically just a nice guy who likes Maria, but that’s rather fine for the role he’s in. He has a soldier friend named Galfa, who is rude, crude, and kind of a nasty piece of work all things considered.
Meanwhile, shortly after being cursed, Maria is approached by a scheming priest called Bernard, who at first wants her to accept baptism and to leave her witchcraft behind. When she doesn’t bite, he pivots to wanting to destroy her, and he gets kind of creepy both in this line (going a little extra nuts when he hears that she is apparently a virgin) and outside of it. The English-but-mercenary witch Viv also says hello to Maria, and sort of acts as the mouthpiece for the witches that are busy feeding off the state of war rather than trying to stop it like Maria, who apparently don’t do things impressive enough to get Heavenly attention.
Eventually, we get a major battle against England where Joseph (on behalf of his lord and also Bernard) asks Maria to not intervene, since victory may be the quickest road to peace. Though torn up about it, she’s prepared to acquiesce, but the little girl’s dad is once more a conscript, and that pushes Maria to act anyway.
If the conflicted interests weren’t bad enough, Bernard has been seeding plans that involve Galfa, and Ezekiel has at this point just gotten a stern talking-to from her boss about being sure to get Maria dead if she acts out. At this point, that has Ezekiel quite upset, since she seems to have gotten that Maria has a kind heart.
The interruption causes a complete disaster, especially when Maria is interrupted by Michael seeing, through Ezekiel’s eyes, Maria doing magic. Ezekiel is literally turned into a divine spear to kill Maria, but resists and misses. The graze, however, knocks Maria from the sky and sends the battle that might have been breaking up into a chaotic melee where the French, formerly winning, take heavy losses. Galfa even loses an arm in the process.
In the wake of the battle, Ezekiel seems to be siding more with Maria than Heaven.
All is not well, however. Maria stands blamed for massive French casualties, and Bernard has his own schemes. For starters, he turns even the friendly local village against her, but the bigger deal is sending Galfa to drug and rape Maria in order to strip her of her powers.
Galfa is all too pleased to get with that program. Though interrupted, it seems like he got far enough to seal Maria’s powers, and has the mercs go ahead and capture her for future sham trial and execution purposes.
Viv, Joseph, Ezeliek, and the familiars (whose continued existence is proof that Maria’s magic isn’t totally gone. It’s quickly confirmed that Galfa never got around to the raping.) all end up trying to help.
Meanwhile, an imprisoned Maria is having a battle of words with Bernard.
Bernard lets his crazy show during this, giving his underling, the inquisitor actually handling the trial, some doubts about his senior. Viv, meanwhile, ends up in a battle of words and also violence against Michael, who seems to be willing to act to prevent a rescue of Maria. He has none of Viv’s arguments and shoots Ezekiel right through her, which seems to further shatter Ezekiel’s faith.
Joseph ends up going off to battle on the false premise that his lord will commute Maria’s sentence should he return in glory, while Maria is all set to be burned. Viv, who survived being impaled, manages to enlist other witches, one of whom helps free Maria from the stake. Maria, rather than being taken home to recuperate, insists on being taken to the battle to see Joseph.
She finds Joseph in the midst of getting the tar beaten out of him by Galfa. Maria’s arrival with a flying kick turns it around, but she stops Joseph before he can beat the jerk all the way to death. Sending Galfa running with his tail between his legs, Maria and Joseph kind of have it out, which results in the two confessing to each other and basically agreeing to get married, and in Maria getting her magic back online.
That brings us to a final confrontation with Michael. Joseph and the entire group of fellow witches rally around Maria and protect her and, when all seems lost, Ezekiel even rebels and refuses to be Michael’s spear, standing up for Maria and Joseph.
This causes Michael to actually do a bit of a trial, reaching out to everyone who ever interacted with Maria and demanding their opinions. There are some negative ones, like Galfa and the local lord, but more common folk standing up or putting in a good word for her with their heart of hearts. Michael ultimately concludes that Maria, such as she is, is part of the world’s order, and thus not something he exists to purge.
Ezekiel’s sin, however, is unforgivable. Her punishment isn’t that bad, though: for displaying free will, she’s sentenced to be reborn as a human, and is even allowed to choose to be Maria’s future child. Thus Ezekiel’s soul is pushed into the future, Michael withdraws, and Maria leaves the weird forest witch rep behind to live with Joseph, insisting she’ll be part of both the human and magic worlds. The end.
Now, longer time readers may note that this is a fairly brief summary. There are a couple reasons for that. One is that Maria the Virgin Witch is a very lightweight product. It’s twelve standard episodes, fair enough, but there’s a fair amount of faffing around in those episodes. There aren’t that many plot beats, with only two really significant turns, one when she’s cursed and the other when she’s made to lose her magic.
That isn’t to say it’s badly paced. The other reason this summary is short is that I left a lot out: character scenes, comedy scenes, and sequences that imply a wider and more magical world, like Maria talking with the fading elder god Cernnunos or healing some goblins. These scenes don’t add a lot to the story, but they do add to the world.
Maria is one of those cases where Japan doesn’t really understand Western culture in the best of ways. They got all the notes on the raw facts, but still clearly see things through their own lens, where the old gods are real, just fading as they’re forgotten, and armies of the Hundred Years War look and act eerily like Sengoku samurai. We’re not quite at the level of shrine maiden nuns, but it’s still kind of charming to see a take that’s not perfectly to-trope with how Western media would do the story.
One downside you might imagine for Maria the Virgin Witch is that there would be a lot of awkward sex talk. Maria has her weird curse, succubi seem to be pretty standard witch minions, there are some random shots that let us know Maria usually sleeps in the nude (nothing 18+ on display, sorry)… it’s set up to be pretty raunchy. But honestly it’s no worse than, say, Spooky Season classic Hocus Pocus. The element is certainly there and sex and sexuality come up a good deal, but it’s a fair bit less awkward than I feared going in to this one.
The biggest downside to the show is probably that the only characters who really feel dimensional are Maria and Ezekiel, and Ezekiel takes her sweet time to be not annoying. Maybe Joseph in his best moments, but he slides too easily into being just a follower with a conscience. For a show that’s so light overall, this isn’t the worst thing ever. At least Maria is kind of fun, and forced to answer for or even question her beliefs.
All in all, this is a B- from me. It’s still a solid piece of work, even if it is awkward at times or potentially annoying in places. One thing that’s not uncomfortable is my ability to recommend this show.