== *Flying Witch* shows me the limits of analysis

As an anime watcher, I typically seek out drama, by which I mean shows
where something is happening and going on; often this means action of
some sort, although not always. The further a show goes from drama the
less likely I am to like it. I also tend to look favorably on shows that
try to tell big stories with their drama, even if they don't entirely
succeed (*Concrete Revolutio* is one example this year).

[[*Flying Witch* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Witch]] doesn't
fall into this pattern. It has almost no drama as such (things happen
but they're little self-contained things), and about the only thing
that would normally attract me to it is the fantasy elements (which
are a reliably way to get me to look at shows with [[otherwise ordinary
settings OrdinaryLifeSettings]]). But [[I loved it in the spring season
Spring2016Retrospective]] and it remains one of my favorite shows
of the year. While not flawless, it was almost always fun to watch,
it made me smile repeatedly, and it had a number of great moments of
wonder and magic.

When I wrote [[my spring retrospective Spring2016Retrospective]]
I attributed the show's success with me to 'execution', and when I
was initially outlining this entry I was going to use *Flying Witch*
as a springboard to praise shows that have modest goals but execute on
them extremely well. But what does 'execution' really mean here? Can
I actually put my finger on technical and story aspects that *Flying
Witch* does so much better than average? The more I thought about it,
the more I wound up feeling that when I said 'execution', what I really
was doing was trying to find some reason that I liked the show so much
when I didn't expect to. I couldn't find anything in specific, so I was
attributing my liking to the intangible concept of 'execution' without
being able to put my finger on anything concrete.

(This isn't to say that *Flying Witch* doesn't execute well; [[it
very much does
https://formeinfullbloom.wordpress.com/2016/07/02/cause-theres-no-nicer-witch-than-you-the-visuals-and-magic-of-flying-witch/]].
It stages scenes very well, it looks beautiful, it has a great sense
of place and of imagination, its comedic timing is spot on (as is
its timing in general), and so on. But it does not have the kind of
startlingly high quality execution that, say, [[*Sound! Euphonium*
does https://blog.sakugabooru.com/tag/hibike-euphonium/]]. Regardless
of what you feel about the story, *Sound! Euphonium* regularly knocks
your socks off purely on a visual basis, and *Flying Witch* never did
this in the same way.)

I'm someone who likes analysis on the whole, [[sometimes to excess
PhantomWorldBadFightStaging]]. It helps me understand why a show works
or doesn't work, and good analysis from other people can show me neat or
important things that I hadn't realized (or hadn't consciously realized)
when I was watching the show. But in thinking about *Flying Witch* here,
I have come to really appreciate that analysis has its limits in trying
to explain why I like a show.

Sometimes I just plain and simply like a show, and not only is that
is all there is to it, that is all there needs to be to it. In the
beginning and in the end, I'm here to enjoy the shows that I watch and
a show that I enjoy is sufficient in itself; even to myself, I don't
need to find reasons or justifications for my enjoyment. And I very much
enjoyed watching *Flying Witch*, even if I can't tell you why in any
coherent way.

{{IMG:/anime/ssnaps/flying-witch-12-end.jpg 1600 auto Makoto watches
not-fireflies ||| Flying Witch had a great ending}}

Merry Christmas, everyone.

(This is a [[12-days
https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2016/12/11/i-hijacked-12-days-of-anime-sorry-12112016/]]
post.)