• PDI Press

    PDI Press

    BETTY WHITE VS THE STUPID WORLD: The Movie

    PDI Press
    January 17, 2022 2

    Betty White Vs the Stupid World (Chapter Seven)

    PDI Press
    January 16, 2022

    Betty White Vs the Stupid World (Chapter Six)

    PDI Press
    January 15, 2022 3

    Featured

    BETTY WHITE VS THE STUPID WORLD: The Movie

    John E. Meredith
    PDI Press
    January 17, 2022 2
    • PDI Press Catalog
    • PDI Press Writers
      • Fiction
  • Columns A-D
    • A Fistful of Dollar Comics
    • ABCs of Horror
    • All Binge… No Purge
    • Anything Joes
    • Beautiful Creatures
    • Big Eyes Smart Mouth
    • Big Sleeps and Long Goodbyes
    • Cahiers du Horror
    • Dispatches From the Field
    • Drive-In Saturday
    • Dungeons & D-Listers
  • Columns F-P
    • The Final Girl
    • First Looks… Second Thoughts
    • The Flesh is Weak
    • Innocence and Experience
    • Lost in Translation
    • Marvel at the Movies
    • Muppets 101
    • Page to Screen
    • Popcorn Cinema
    • The Psycho Drive-In Podcast
    • Psycho Essentials: The ’80s!
  • Columns S-Z
    • Schlock & Awe
    • Shakespeare on Film
    • Shot for Shot
    • Sick Flix
    • Unnatural Selections
    • Versus
    • Video Word Made Flesh
    • We Got Lists
    • Women in Horror
    • The Xeno File
    • Zombies 101
  • Reviews

    Reviews

    Predator: Killer of Killers (2025)

    Movies
    June 8, 2025 6

    From the World of John Wick: Ballerina (2025)

    Reviews
    June 7, 2025 14

    Until Dawn (2025)

    Reviews
    June 5, 2025 8

    Featured

    Predator: Killer of Killers (2025)

    Paul Brian McCoy
    Movies
    June 8, 2025 6
    • Books
    • Comics
    • DVD/Blu-ray
    • Movies
    • TV
    • Series
  • Interviews

    Interviews

    Interview with Indie Horror Master, Chris Bickel

    Interviews
    July 13, 2018 397

    David Black: Carnies, Carnage, and the Creative Chaos of Darkness Visible

    Interviews
    March 7, 2017 223

    Jaiden Kaine joins the Marvel Universe as new Luke Cage baddie, Zip

    Interviews
    September 29, 2016 8

    SDCC 2016 Interviews: The Cast and Creators of Batman: The Killing Joke

    Interviews
    July 28, 2016 61

    SDCC 2016 Interviews: The Cast and Creators of Syfy’s Van Helsing

    Interviews
    July 27, 2016 3

    Wondercon Interview: The Cast of Damien

    Interviews
    April 16, 2016 3

    Featured

    Interview with Indie Horror Master, Chris Bickel

    The Final Girl
    Interviews
    July 13, 2018 397
  • News

    News

    Regular Show: The Complete Series DVD is here!

    News
    February 9, 2025 19

    “PATER NOSTER AND THE MISSION OF LIGHT” UNLEASHES TERRIFYING UNDERGROUND HORROR – A PSYCHEDELIC CULT MOVIE EXPERIENCE COMING SOON!

    News
    November 15, 2023 74

    Breaking Down The Upcoming DC Studios Slate

    Shot for Shot
    February 1, 2023

    Featured

    Regular Show: The Complete Series DVD is here!

    Paul Brian McCoy
    News
    February 9, 2025 19
    • Trailers
  • Psychos
  • Shop
Breaking
  • Predator: Killer of Killers (2025)
  • From the World of John Wick: Ballerina (2025)
  • Until Dawn (2025)
  • Havoc (2025) / Novocaine (2025)
  • RSS
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • Who We Be
  • Contact
    Home
    Columns
    Big Eyes Smart Mouth

    Big Eyes Smart Mouth: Izetta: The Last Witch

    Serdar Yegulalp
    Big Eyes Smart Mouth
    February 1, 2017

    There is an apocryphal quote, sometimes attributed to Dr. Samuel Johnson, that goes: “Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.” I felt like that sometimes while watching Izetta: The Last Witch. Parts of it are a delight to watch because they are both good (high technical caliber) and original (creative setting). But it’s in the service of telling the wrong story to the wrong effect, an attempt to make a sweet and uplifting story out of material that isn’t suited to it.

    izetta-02

    Last witch standing

    Izetta opens on many promising notes. It’s set in an analogue of WWII Europe, where the names have been filed off all the countries but it’s plain what they all represent — Germany is “Germania”, Russia is “the Volgan Federation,” and so on. The protagonists hail from the little country of Eylstadt (Austria, perhaps?), where crown princess Ortfiné Fredericka von Eylstadt — “Finé” for short — is forced to assume responsibility for the future of her nation when neighboring Germania invades and her father dies unexpectedly. Finé has the personality for that sort of fast thinking on her feet; she’s a headstrong and upright young woman, reminiscent of one of Hayao Miyazaki’s firebrand heroines. But she can’t outrun a bullet, and she’s betrayed and captured by Germanian forces.

    While being transported by plane, Finé is rescued by an unexpected savior. The same plane is also transporting a sort of sensory deprivation chamber capsule, inside which is contained another young woman with flaming red hair and the powers of sorcery. This is the Izetta of the title, and Finé remembers encountering her when they were both children, even going so far as to protect her newfound friend from the ignorance and violence of a mob. Izetta is able to enchant objects, and so the two of them fly away from their captors together astride the barrel of a bewitched anti-tank rifle.

    izetta-03

    Izetta is devoted to her friend first in all things. Translation: she doesn’t want to sit out the war effort, not when she can use her enchantment to transform swords and lances into anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons, like some militarized version of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. It works smashingly well — not just because it puts Germania on notice, but because Eylstadt’s own soldiers are now that much more inspired by a literal and figurative local legend. But the battle isn’t so easily won: Izetta’s powers have their limits, and Germania has not only started to figure them out but surpass them with a witch of its own.

    Missing and mislaid pieces

    Again, this isn’t a bad setup, and for the first couple of episodes (and apart from some annoying injections of fanservice), I thought Izetta was on to something. Specifically, I thought Izetta, the character, would have to choose between becoming a weapon of total war and remaining true to herself. There are a few stabs in that direction, as when Izetta gets staged for a photo-op to demonstrate her powers, and feels uneasy about the whole way things are being played out. In the same vein are a few moments where Izetta is forced to confront the humanity of the people she’s being tasked to fight, that they are more than just targets to be picked off but people with lives and destinies of their own.

    izetta-04

    Here’s the problem: the story isn’t about any of this stuff. It’s about what total besties Izetta and Finé are, and how awesome that is. Somewhere along the line, the creators decided the purity and directness of the friendship between Izetta and Finé was the most important part of the story — which would have been fine, just in a different story. The problem here is that all they do with such a sentiment is highlight it, over and over, instead of actually challenging it, or commenting on it, or doing any of the other things that good fiction does. Izetta and Finé end up with the kind of programmatic character busywork relationship where one character gets unhappy and the other one buoys them up and then an episode later they swap roles. It doesn’t feel heartwarming or human, just mechanical and obligatory.

    The biggest mistake with Izetta, one committed not just once but many times, is how things that should be themes in the show are treated like mere ingredients. I liked how Izetta is unnerved about the idea of being turned into a propaganda tool, but the idea does not fuel the story in any significant way; it’s brought up, then plowed under. Likewise, the whole the-other-side-is-human-too thing is essentially the whole throughline of something like Turn A Gundam. Another conceptual mistake involves trying to wring some suspense out of details involving Izetta’s lineage, but again it’s a mismatch for a story like this. We care about these characters because of where they are headed, not where they are coming from, and so every time they trotted that stuff back out I winced.

    izetta-05

    What’s most ironic is how some of the side details in the story are better thought out, more resonant than its central storyline. I particularly liked a subplot involving Rudolf, Finé’s intelligence officer. He kills a hapless young soldier who mistakenly discovers the limits of Izetta’s power, the better to keep the whole thing from falling into enemy hands. Irony: his urge to secrecy is rendered entirely moot since the enemy reverse-engineers the whole thing anyway. I kept wondering why the main storyline wasn’t composed out of pieces like that. I suspect this was for two reasons: 1) they wanted the core story to be “uplifting”, and 2) it’s the same reason the heroes in Disney movies are so bland and the supporting cast so colorful, because they’re hedging their bets about what kind of character most people will find appealing.

    The big letdown

    The conclusion of the story is absolutely infuriating. (Warning: spoilers.) Izetta uses her magic to level the playing field — not just to destroy the magic of her clone, but to destroy all the magic in the entire world, thus living up to her namesake. Then a shot at the end implies she somehow survived the conflagration. It’s a total snub of the audience since everything we’ve been fed up to that moment implies she’ll die if she does that. It’s not heartwarming when you set up your character’s choices as hard-won, then make them irrelevant and pointless because hey, she lives. It’s just insulting.

    izetta-06

    One of the troubling things about alternate -history productions that use WWII as a setting is how it can come off feeling like a way to borrow the romanticism of WWII without having to deal with the horror of Naziism. Why directly evoke most every aspect of the period, save for the one that was ostensibly most responsible for it in the first place? (Actually, Hetalia showed you didn’t even need an alternate history; you could just flat-out ignore the implications of the period entirely.) I get that they ultimately wanted Izetta to be a fantasy and an uplifting one at that, and not let the story get bogged down with that stuff, but it would have been far easier to forgive that if the story had been worth it.

    Izetta does, to its credit, try to deal with the other major horror of WWII — weapons of mass destruction, with Izetta herself being one such weapon. But the storytelling and the characterization crumb that play, too. At one point it’s flat-out stated that Izetta, and the nation she fights for, could easily become the most powerful entities on the face of the earth. The fact that the only thing Izetta and Finé seem motivated to do with such power is ditch it speaks more about the incuriosity of the story than it does of their goodness as characters. Again, the story never really becomes about those things, and again, no tension comes from anything around it. The worst thing that happens to Finé’s resolve is that she gets a little depressed and Izetta slaps her out of it. And then what genuine tension does get built up in the climax — all of it mechanical tension around whether or not she’ll pull off her big gamble — is then set on fire and thrown gaily out the window by that awful ending.

    izetta-08

    All this said, Izetta does have one thing going for it. It will never, ever be anywhere nearly as terrible as Strike Witches. One must count one’s blessings.


    This article was originally published on Ganriki.

    Thanks to our friends at Ganriki for letting us share this content.

    Ganriki is a partner in Crossroads Alpha along with Psycho Drive-In.

    (Visited 295 times, 1 visits today)

    Related

    Big Eyes Smart MouthIzetta: The Last WitchSerdar Yegulalp

    FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
    Previous Cahiers du Horror 01: Introduction
    Next Women in Horror: THE SUBVERSION OF GENDER ROLES IN 1970’S HORROR
    monsterid
    Serdar Yegulalp
    Big Eyes / Smart Mouth
    Serdar Yegulalp (@genjipress) (G+) is Editor-in-Chief of Ganriki.org. He has written about anime professionally as the Anime Guide for Anime.About.com, and as a contributor to Advanced Media Network, but has also been exploring the subject on his own since 1998.

    Related Posts

    Big Eyes Smart Mouth: Kyosogiga

    Serdar Yegulalp
    Big Eyes Smart Mouth
    July 25, 2018 1

    The Xeno File: Bakumatsu Taiyōden / Sun In The Last Days Of The Shogunate

    Serdar Yegulalp
    The Xeno File
    July 11, 2018 3

    Daily Top Ten

    • nightmare-07Freddy’s Sweater: Revisiting A Nightmare on Elm St… by The Final Girl
    • i-spit-on-your-grave-09The Final Girl: I Spit on Your Grave (2010) by The Final Girl
    • Superman-II-headerSuperman II (1980) by John Clark
    • Uzumaki_3Uzumaki (2000) by Matthew Fantaci
    • Punisher_RedA Work in Progress: The Punisher (1989) by Paul Brian McCoy
    • night-specterAnything Joes: Backstock Blacksite – Night… by Greg Engle
    • Evil-Dead-13-08Lost in Translation 132: Evil Dead by Scott Delahunt
    • Hannibal – Season 2Hannibal 2.05 “Mukozuke” by Amanda Lafond
    • mikels-headerABCs of Horror 2016 Day 20: M is for Ted V. Mikels by Paul Brian McCoy
    • trilogy of terrorWomen in Horror: Karen Black and Trilogy of Terror by Laura Akers
    400x400 GI Joe Funko Banner

    Weekly Top Ten

    • i-spit-on-your-grave-09The Final Girl: I Spit on Your Grave (2010) by The Final Girl
    • AT606-visionAdventure Time 6.06 “Breezy” by Dave Hearn
    • DS-headerDungeons & D-Listers: Deathstalker (1983) by Alex Wolfe
    • ballerina-headerFrom the World of John Wick: Ballerina (2025) by Paul Brian McCoy
    • MacbethShakespeare’s Macbeth (2010) by Paul Brian McCoy
    • hills-have-eyes-02The Hills Have Eyes (1977) vs The Hills Have Eyes (2006) by Corin Totin
    • one-eye-headerPOPCORN CINEMA 23: THEY CALLED HER ONE EYE (aka,… by John E. Meredith
    • nightmare-07Freddy’s Sweater: Revisiting A Nightmare on Elm St… by The Final Girl
    • babylon-5-blu-ray-04Babylon 5 Complete Series Blu-ray Review by Paul Brian McCoy
    • predator-killer-of-killers-headerPredator: Killer of Killers (2025) by Paul Brian McCoy

    psychodrivein

    We came here to chew bubblegum and write intelligent reviews and commentary on cult TV and movies! And we're all out of bubblegum!

    Today at https://psychodrivein.com Predator: Kill Today at https://psychodrivein.com

Predator: Killer of Killers (2025)

With Predator: Killer of Killers, Predator fans are feasting, baby!!
—
Read more of Paul’s review at the link in our profile!

#Predator #PredatorKillerOfKillers #KillerOfKillers #DanTrachtenberg #LindsayLaVanchy #DamienCHaas #LouisOzawa #RickGonzalez #MichaelBiehn #JoshuaWassung #MichoRobertRutare
    Today at https://psychodrivein.com From the World Today at https://psychodrivein.com

From the World of John Wick: Ballerina (2025)

I can’t wait to see more Ballerina films. Seriously. I want one right now.

—

Read more of Paul’s review at the link in our profile 

#Ballerina #JohnWick #FromTheWorldOfJohnWickBallerina #AnaDeArmis #KeanuReeves #IanMcShane #AngelicaHuston #GabrielByrne #DavidCataneda #LenWiseman #ShayHatten #ChadStahelski #NormanReedus #LanceReddick
    Today at https://psychodrivein.com The Psycho Dri Today at https://psychodrivein.com

The Psycho Drive-In Podcast 05: Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2 

Join Paul and John in the fifth episode of the Psycho Drive-In podcast, where they delve deep into the universe of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.
—
Listen to the guys at the link in our profile!

#PsychoDriveIn #ThePsychoDriveInPodcast #KillBill #QuentinTarantino #LadySnowblood #Arena #FemalePrisonerNumber701Scorpion
    Today at https://psychodrivein.com Until Dawn (20 Today at https://psychodrivein.com

Until Dawn (2025)

If you’re going to be Until Dawn in name only, why not just be that original horror idea and let someone else actually adapt Until Dawn as it was? 
—
Read more of Nate’s review at the link in our profile!

#UntilDawn #DavidFSandberg #PeterStormare #EllaRubin
    Today at https://psychodrivein.com The Psycho Dri Today at https://psychodrivein.com

The Psycho Drive-In Podcast 04: Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning (Part One)

In this week’s Psycho Drive-In Podcast, Paul and John delve into the world of espionage and high-octane action with a focus on Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning.
—
Listen to the guys at the link in our profile!

#PsychoDriveIn #PsychoDriveInPodcast #MissionImpossible #MissionImpossibleDeadReckoning #ArmyOfShadows #TheBourneLegacy
    Today at https://psychodrivein.com Havoc (2025) / Today at https://psychodrivein.com

Havoc (2025) / Novocaine (2025)

Both Havoc and Novocaine are fairly enjoyable escapes and reminders that action cinema can be some of the most gleefully transporting sensory experiences.
—
Read more of Nate’s reviews at the link in our profile!

#Havoc #TomHardy #GarethEvans #Novocaine #JackQuaid #AmberMidthunder #ForestWhitaker
    Today at https://psychodrivein.com The Psycho Dri Today at https://psychodrivein.com

The Psycho Drive-In Podcast 03: Sinners

In this episode, Paul and John discuss their recent film binges, and review Sinners.
—
Listen to the boys at the link in our profile!

#ThePsychoDriveInPodcast #PsychoDriveIn #Sinners #RyanCoogler #MichaelBJordan #JackOConnell #HaileeSteinfeld #MilesCaton #DelroyLindo #WunmiMosaku #LiJunLi
    Today at https://psychodrivein.com Anything Joes: Today at https://psychodrivein.com

Anything Joes: S02E28 - File Card Focus: Recoil

Greg and Jaren take a deep dive into the world of Recoil?
—
Watch the @AnythingJoesPod guys at the link in our profile!

#AnythingJoes #GIJoes #FileCardFocus #Recoil
    Today at https://psychodrivein.com Thunderbolts* Today at https://psychodrivein.com

Thunderbolts* (2025)

But damn, the Thunderbolts* really got to me.
—
Read more of John’s review at the link in our profile!

#Thunderbolts #MarvelStudios #Marvel #FlorencePugh #SebastianStan #DavidHarbour #HannahJohnKamen #JuliaLouisDreyfus #LewisPullman #OlgaKurylenko #WyattRussell
    Follow on Instagram

    Look Who's Talking

    Shawn EH
    Shawn EH - 5/4/2025
    Thunderbolts* (2025)
    Yep, very well done; avoiding the big flashy battle that these heroes (can any of you fly?)...
    Ideonova
    Ideonova - 12/26/2024
    Page to Screen: F. Paul Wilson’s The Keep
    Not living up to the source material? What source material? The book is a predictable, at times...
    Fred L. Taulbee Jr.
    Fred L. Taulbee Jr. - 8/17/2024
    Cahiers du Horror 03: Frank Henenlotter and The Brain that Wouldn’t Die
    I need to see that again. Maybe make it a double feature with All of Me. Steve Martin is someone you...
    RSSTwitterFacebookinstagramtumblr

    Archives

    Large_rectangle_336X280
    • PDI Press
      • PDI Press Catalog
      • PDI Press Writers
        • Fiction
    • Columns A-D
      • A Fistful of Dollar Comics
      • ABCs of Horror
      • All Binge… No Purge
      • Anything Joes
      • Beautiful Creatures
      • Big Eyes Smart Mouth
      • Big Sleeps and Long Goodbyes
      • Cahiers du Horror
      • Dispatches From the Field
      • Drive-In Saturday
      • Dungeons & D-Listers
    • Columns F-P
      • The Final Girl
      • First Looks… Second Thoughts
      • The Flesh is Weak
      • Innocence and Experience
      • Lost in Translation
      • Marvel at the Movies
      • Muppets 101
      • Page to Screen
      • Popcorn Cinema
      • The Psycho Drive-In Podcast
      • Psycho Essentials: The ’80s!
    • Columns S-Z
      • Schlock & Awe
      • Shakespeare on Film
      • Shot for Shot
      • Sick Flix
      • Unnatural Selections
      • Versus
      • Video Word Made Flesh
      • We Got Lists
      • Women in Horror
      • The Xeno File
      • Zombies 101
    • Reviews
      • Books
      • Comics
      • DVD/Blu-ray
      • Movies
      • TV
      • Series
    • Interviews
    • News
      • Trailers
    • Psychos
    • Shop
    • PDI Press
      • PDI Press Catalog
      • PDI Press Writers
        • Fiction
    • Columns A-D
      • A Fistful of Dollar Comics
      • ABCs of Horror
      • All Binge… No Purge
      • Anything Joes
      • Beautiful Creatures
      • Big Eyes Smart Mouth
      • Big Sleeps and Long Goodbyes
      • Cahiers du Horror
      • Dispatches From the Field
      • Drive-In Saturday
      • Dungeons & D-Listers
    • Columns F-P
      • The Final Girl
      • First Looks… Second Thoughts
      • The Flesh is Weak
      • Innocence and Experience
      • Lost in Translation
      • Marvel at the Movies
      • Muppets 101
      • Page to Screen
      • Popcorn Cinema
      • The Psycho Drive-In Podcast
      • Psycho Essentials: The ’80s!
    • Columns S-Z
      • Schlock & Awe
      • Shakespeare on Film
      • Shot for Shot
      • Sick Flix
      • Unnatural Selections
      • Versus
      • Video Word Made Flesh
      • We Got Lists
      • Women in Horror
      • The Xeno File
      • Zombies 101
    • Reviews
      • Books
      • Comics
      • DVD/Blu-ray
      • Movies
      • TV
      • Series
    • Interviews
    • News
      • Trailers
    • Psychos
    • Shop
    Type to search or hit ESC to close
    See all results
    Username
    Password
    Remember Me
    Lost password?
    Create an account
    Username
    Email
    Cancel
    Enter username or email
    Cancel