Farmagia – Episode 1

Content Warnings: genocide and fan service

What’s it about? An underworld called “Felicidad” is considered a safe haven where humans and monsters can live together in harmony.  That all changed when their ruler, Magus Dilculum, died. Now the safety of Felicidad is under threat, so now our young protagonist Ten and his comrades must band together to protect their loved ones.

I came into this premiere ready to make self-deprecating “Felicidad” jokes about how this premiere didn’t make me feel any happiness, but surprisingly, I did end up enjoying a majority of it.  Don’t get too excited, since I’ll be discussing the negatives towards the end of this review, but let’s start with the positives.  Farmagia is an adaptation of a video game and for the most part, I think it did a good job capturing the peaceful atmosphere often felt when playing a farm sims game.  The main characters, especially Ten, are lively and energetic people that love being helpful to their community.  

Since we’ve been getting a lot of anime recently that try (and fail) to examine systematic oppression, it was nice to see a community of humans and monsters living together harmoniously.  It just really shows what can happen when everyone is willing to communicate and accept each other’s differences.  Unfortunately, the series also highlights that larger political forces affect the lives of average people in the most brutal ways possible.  After the death of Magus Dilculum, his supporters immediately broke into factions and the majority decided on eliminating weak members of their populations, indiscriminately attacking and killing anyone who can’t defend themselves.  The quick shift from tranquil to full-blown extermination is shocking, but does reflect the reality of how fast the lives of citizens can change when the government decides to go to war.  

 I appreciate that Farmagia is trying to say something interesting, but whether that will hold up for the rest of the series remains to be seen.  The comedic moments between Ten and his friends doesn’t really work for me, especially during intense fighting scenes.  I guess it’s just hard to find the humor in their shenanigans while people around them are being slaughtered.  Despite all the positive things I’ve mentioned above, it’s frustrating that some of the comedy was at the expense of sexualizing women’s bodies.  If it’s not Ten putting his face underneath the skirt of his “comrade”, then it’s magic being used to rip off the women’s clothes.  That crap really took me out of this episode, which doesn’t inspire me to continue watching since I have so much less tolerance for that “humor” now that I’m older.  

If our readers think the faces of the characters look eerily similar to Fairy Tail, that’s because the creator of that series, Mashima Hiro also did character designs for the Farmagia video game.  If you can stomach the fan service, the series is a strong “ok” in a sea of subpar anime coming out this season. While I don’t think I’ll be sticking around, perhaps some of our readers might find something to enjoy here.