Gosh darn it, they ruined spirit magic. In the light novel, his first time using spirit magic was super special, because it showed that spirits were little living things, and to even get them to do anything, he had to coax them by appealing to their core virtue in some small way. Using spirit magic is like making friends with a pet that has very specific tastes in food, feed it the right treat once or twice, and eventually it start being happy before you even bring out the treats. You even train them to do tricks.
Also that evaporation thing is a lil odd, but might just be cause the lightnovel only names the BIG spells, or ones that actually do something that can't be done by basic manipulation.