Episode 5

**"Royal Celesteria"** (王立セレステリア, *Ōritsu Seresuteria*) is the fifth episode of the *Wandering Witch* anime.

## Synopsis

Elaina visits Royal Celestria, where mages do odd jobs and perform in the streets; she finds a place called the Royal Magic Academy but isn't allowed to enter.

## Summary

Elaina arrives in an unnamed country and spots books for sale named "The Adventures of Fran". As she has a quick read, she notices the person inside looks just like her former teacher. This sparks a flashback 6 months ago where she visited the country Royal Celestria.

Upon immediately arriving in Royal Celestria, Elaina notices the happy atmosphere of the country, where the mages are doing tricks for everyone to enjoy.

Elaina stumbles upon a large building called the Royal Magic Academy and decides to open the gates with her magic. A local worker quickly prevents Elaina from entering the building, despite her being a witch.

Elaina notices that many of the mages flying around are working but is then stopped by two students from the Royal Magic Academy. The students try to convince Elaina to come with them without asking any questions but she declines. As she tries to leave, she is quickly surrounded by a group all ready to catch her. However, Elaina uses her swift broomstick flying skills to avoid all the students despite them all working together.

By evening, all the students have exhausted trying to catch Elaina and are about to give up, until Fran shows up and explains the difference between them and a full witch. Elaina is shocked to see her former teacher and she learns that Fran is a teacher at the Royal Magic Academy.

Fran reveals that she sent the students to try and capture Elaina to use it as a training for them whilst also allowing Elaina to be more easily found in the large country. The two catch-up and Elaina explains that she is travelling just like Nike in her favourite book. Fran also knows the book and as they flip through their favourite story "Foula, the Apprentice Witch", it is subtly shown that Foula is actually Fran in the past where she was taught by Nike and then becomes a traveller herself whilst Nike ends up living in a countryside as an ordinary woman. Elaina doesn't notice when Fran says "that takes me back". Fran then explains that she loved "The Adventures of Nike" so much that she wrote a novel as she travelled. But after writing a hundred pages of manuscript and reading it, Fran did not like what she wrote and never took out the manuscript from the bag again as she forgot about it. However, she ended up selling the bag with the manuscript inside. Fran remembers what she wrote occasionally and makes her so embarrassed. She is scared if anyone ends up reading the text. Unbeknownst to her, Fran believes it's something "I can laugh about now" as she believes it is forgotten. Fran then tells Elaina to keep writing in her diary as she travels so she can one day hear stories of Elaina's fun memories of the stories of her travels.

The next day, the students ask questions for Elaina. Elaina then helps Fran teach the students in manipulating water out of buckets. The students are instructed to use their magic to get a round ball of water out of the bucket. Elaina helps out those that ask for help, to get a clean round ball of water out of the bucket.

The evening before Elaina leaves, Fran shows Elaina her favourite spot in the country. Elaina asks what the students will do once they graduate and Fran explains that they'll work. But instead of working for money, the mages work because they like it. Fran plans to gift Elaina and asks what she likes other than travelling and books, then decides to gift Elaina flowers in the morning at the city gates.

In the morning as Elaina is about to leave, she notices Fran still hasn't shown up and is prepared to leave when she notices small pedals of flowers in the air thrown by Fran and her students. Fran explains that everyone is cheering on Elaina and she should never forget that. They exchange goodbyes as Elaina departs on her journey to the next country.

In the last scene which is linked to the opening scene, Elaina closes the book of "The Adventures of Fran", and notices the artwork of Fran around the country. She knows that next time she sees Fran again, she'll have an interesting story to tell her teacher.

## Differences in Adaptation

* Unlike in the light novel, most of Fran's students have given names in the anime.

## Characters

* Elaina
* Magician Brothers (cameo)
* Ikeme
* Odoko
* Chara
* Yuuto
* Fran
* Victorica (indirectly-referenced)

## Trivia

* In near the end of the episode, Ikeme is the only one animated throwing flower petals in close-up with his left hand, despite visibly being right-handed in the previous scenes.
* During the beginning of the episode, Ikeme's uniform cloak length is not long enough to reach the end of his broomstick, but at the end of the episode, it is shown that his cloak almost covers the entirety of his broomstick, suggesting that there was an animation error, or that the cloak had magic length-changing properties.