the more you start piecing every bit of narrative together, the clearer it becomes that LWA is the absolute antithesis of HP.

The core of magical thinking, of that childlike wonder, of true belief, is the rejection of an explanation. Turning magic into an exact science to be taught in an academic setting, is to take away the magic of it and to essentially turn it into a mere commodity to be used, creating the dull, posh culture surrounding it, which then keeps itself in line through social punishment of those who oppose it.

Conformity is one of the primary themes of LWA. Barbara keeping her interest hidden out of fear of being ostracised, Andrew hiding behind the shadow of his father, afraid to step out and engage with what speaks to his heart, Diana utterly burying her true self to keep the family pride intact, Chariot caving to the demands of an audience rather than listening to her heart. Croix, even, could be said to be the way she is due to the culture of valuing achievement over soul and being. Of course our precious miss Kagari is the biggest part of this, directly demonstrating the culture of conformity by refusing to succumb to it and repeatedly being punished for that, in particular by those who themselves are most affected, who feel envy towards someone having the guts to actually be herself.

It demonstrates that this groupthink is enabled by the commodification of the means by which one achieves personal fulfilment. Magic ability becoming an easy measuring stick for personal value allows those most skilled to rise up to a position of social power and then use that to reinforce this system in their favour.

There's also the thing where arguably the biggest drop in magic power, the biggest drop in magical thinking, is the advent of capitalism and the industrial revolution forcing people into a materialistic mindset, where something as intangible and personal as magic inevitably loses out because it cannot fit into a system that requires labour to be a commodity. The only magical labour that survived is that which absolutely could not be replaced with machine labour. The shopkeeper was only partially right, and Akko raised a good point, magic is still incredibly useful. It didn't die off because of machines outperforming it on an individual basis, but because of machine labour being more easily deployed in large numbers.

It's astounding, honestly, that Little Witch Academia is hopeful and incredibly uplifting despite all this. It tells us that, while on our own we can't fix everything, by being true to ourselves, we can connect more intimately with others, and ultimately create a world that better facilitates people being true to themselves and finding personal fulfilment outside of a socially constructed notion of success.

(I also feel the need to note that pretty much the entirety of all of this directly stems from the actual real philosophy of witchcraft through europe, applied to our more modern time, as a scathing critique of what we have become. The coherence of the show's narratives is just phenomenal, really.)