Mashle: Magic and Muscles was released as a manga in 2020 and became an anime in 2023. I’ve known about it for a while, but it’s never really appealed to me enough to go out of my way to watch it, however when it dropped on Netflix last week it was too easy to just click play!
Mashle: Magic and Muscles season one is only 12 episodes long which makes it easy to watch. It is set in a magical world where society judges others on their magic ability and those without magic get ‘arrested’ so that magic society can thrive. The main character is Mash Burnedead who doesn’t have an ounce of magic in his body. He is brought up in the woods by his adopted father to protect him from being discovered. To make up for his lack of magic, Mash trains his muscles every day and becomes incredibly powerful, but will this be enough to get him into the elite Easton Magic Academy so that he can become a Divine Visionary? Proving that muscle is stronger than magic?
Mashle: Magic and Muscles can be compared to many different manga and anime, the most prominent one being Black Clover as well as One Punch Man and My Hero Academia. Mashle is an easy to watch series, it’s entertaining and funny but there’s no real depth to it like some of the other anime I mentioned. I did enjoy the silliness and the humour of the series which is sometimes needed when you’ve been watching plot heavy anime, like the final season of Attack on Titan – but that’s another blog! Then again, I feel that many other anime series are able to provide more plot with humour included, for example Black Clover.
There is a second season of Mashle, consisting of 12 episodes, which was released in January 2024 on CrunchyRoll and a third season has been confirmed. Even though I did enjoy Mashle I don’t think that I will be going out of my way to watch season two, instead I’ll just wait for it to appear on Netflix.
Mashle: Magic and Muscles is rated 15 on Netflix, as are most anime. This is because there is violence and occasional smoking. It is no more violent than My Hero Academia. There might be a bit more blood, but I think that it is exaggerated for comedic effect. If you want to watch an anime that is easy to watch and has that 90s, millennium style silliness to it then you’ll enjoy Mashle.
Lexémon
Published: 2025.01.15