Aerial Magic Season 1

Aerial Magic is a graphic novel published on the LINE WEBTOON platform by the same author as the wonderful Always Human, originally in weekly episodes. It is readable for free, starting with the prologue. I was going to wait until all seasons were complete and then review the entire work, like I did with Always Human, but apparently there are going to be five seasons and I don't want to wait that long. This is a review of the first season, which is now complete in 25 episodes plus a prologue.

As with Always Human, the pages metadata in the sidebar is a bit of a lie: a very rough guess on how many pages this would be if it were published as a traditional graphic novel (six times the number of episodes, since each episode seems a bit longer than in Always Human). A lot of the artwork is large panels, so it may be an underestimate. Consider it only a rough guide to how long it might take to read.

Wisteria Kemp is an apprentice witch. This is an unusual thing to be — not the witch part, which is very common in a society that appears to use magic in much the way that we use technology, but the apprentice part. Most people training for a career in magic go to university, but school doesn't agree with Wisteria. There are several reasons for that, but one is that she's textblind and relies on a familiar (a crow-like bird named Puppy) to read for her. Her dream is to be accredited to do aerial magic, but her high-school work was... not good, and she's very afraid she'll be sent home after her ten-day trial period.

Magister Cecily Moon owns a magical item repair shop in the large city of Vectum and agreed to take Wisteria on as an apprentice, something that most magisters no longer do. She's an outgoing woman with a rather suspicious seven-year-old, two other employees, and a warm heart. She doesn't seem to have the same pessimism Wisteria has about her future; she instead is more concerned with whether Wisteria will want to stay after her trial period. This doesn't reassure Wisteria, nor do her initial test exercises, all of which go poorly.

I found the beginning of this story a bit more painful than Always Human. Wisteria has such a deep crisis of self-confidence, and I found Cecily's lack of awareness of it quite frustrating. This is not unrealistic — Cecily is clearly as new to having an apprentice as Wisteria is to being one, and is struggling to calibrate her style — but it's somewhat hard reading since at least some of Wisteria's unhappiness is avoidable. I wish Cecily had shown a bit more awareness of how much harder she made things for Wisteria by not explaining more of what she was seeing. But it does set up a highly effective pivot in tone, and the last few episodes were truly lovely. Now I'm nearly as excited for more Aerial Magic as I would be for more Always Human.

walkingnorth's art style is much the same as that in Always Human, but with more large background panels showing the city of Vectum and the sky above it. Her faces are still exceptional: expressive, unique, and so very good at showing character emotion. She occasionally uses an exaggerated chibi style for some emotions, but I feel like she's leaning more on subtlety of expression in this series and doing a wonderful job with it. Wisteria's happy expressions are a delight to look at. The backgrounds are not generally that detailed, but I think they're better than Always Human. They feature a lot of beautiful sky, clouds, and sunrise and sunset moments, which are perfect for walkingnorth's pastel palette.

The magical system underlying this story doesn't appear in much detail, at least yet, but what is shown has an interesting animist feel and seems focused on the emotions and memories of objects. Spells appear to be standardized symbolism that is known to be effective, which makes magic something like cooking: most people use recipes that are known to work, but a recipe is not strictly required. I like the feel of it and the way that magic is woven into everyday life (personal broom transport is common), and am looking forward to learning more in future seasons.

As with Always Human, this is a world full of fundamentally good people. The conflict comes primarily from typical interpersonal conflicts and inner struggles rather than any true villain. Also as with Always Human, the world features a wide variety of unremarked family arrangements, although since it's not a romance the relationships aren't quite as central. It makes for relaxing and welcoming reading.

Also as in Always Human, each episode features its own soundtrack, composed by the author. I am again not reviewing those because I'm a poor music reviewer and because I tend to read online comics in places and at times where I don't want the audio, but if you like that sort of thing, the tracks I listened to were enjoyable, fit the emotions of the scene, and were unobtrusive to listen to while reading.

This is an online comic on a for-profit publishing platform, so you'll have to deal with some amount of JavaScript and modern web gunk. I at least (using up-to-date Chrome on Linux with UMatrix) had fewer technical problems with delayed and partly-loaded panels than I had with Always Human.

I didn't like this first season quite as well as Always Human, but that's a high bar, and it took some time for Always Human to build up to its emotional impact as well. What there is so far is a charming, gentle, and empathetic story, full of likable characters (even the ones who don't seem that likable at first) and a fascinating world background. This is an excellent start, and I will certainly be reading (and reviewing) later seasons as they're published.

walkingnorth has a Patreon, which, in addition to letting you support the artist directly, has various supporting material such as larger artwork and downloadable versions of the music.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Reviewed: 2019-01-15