Finally read up to vols. 12 and 13 of Ancient Magus Bride. The more I delve into the story the more I realized the early criticism some people had (the relationship is toxic, Elias is too controlling, he’s taking advantage) which never made much sense to me from the beginning

(does everything have to be perfect and wholesome, people? Is that even art? ) all seem to fall apart. Maybe is because the anime ended abruptly and at such a weird point like.. hey, they’re getting married happy ending right? What? Why? No! Though this is not an excuse.

Elias does a lot of very wrong things and even his old teacher is prompt to point out that he usually does not have bad intentions but that Chise should not let him get away with it anyway. The manga is precisely about broken people (and others), making mistakes, choosing wrongly

learning from it. It especially becomes clear once Chise asks Elias what does he think a bride is and well… Moreover, aside from Chise learning to take pride in herself and Elias striving to becoming more human and considerate, it’s also about all the other characters

navigating the world. I particularly love the relationship between Renfred and Alice, where Renfred sees himself as Alice’s father (which sadly is already a miracle regarding most manga) and she, while happy for this, sees herself more as his bodyguard and suffers tremendous

guilt about him getting harmed in order to protect her. It is heartwarming, messy, somewhat painful and even a bit funny.
The thing is, Ancient Magus Bride seems to me to be extremely sincere about relationships and how an apparently simple thing can get so convoluted (as well as

stuff like depression, low self esteem, a disconnect from others, etc...). To label the entire story as toxic, problematic or on the other hand, wholesome, is an extremely simplistic take and I do wish more people would venture beyond that. It’s okay for art to depict things that

aren’t perfect or even good. From my point of view Ancient Magus Bride is not advocating for predatory relationships, it’s saying, you need to learn form your mistakes, to grow, to accept yourself before you can accept others. And also, everybody is different,

every relationship is different and one thing may have many different meanings depending on who is observing.

That said, I'd be beyond ecstatic if we get more Ancient Magus Bride anime, and the short stories based novels based on it are pretty ggod too (The Golden Yarn and The Silver yarn) Also smthng weird happned with this thread , Go from pst1 #Mahoutsukainoyome #TheAncientMagusBride