Tag: Mahou Shoujo Magical Destroyers

Posted on in anime, Reviews

(REVIEW) MAGICAL DESTROYERS Flames Out Forever

This review contains spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning.

“If I round up, I’m basically 30.”

Well folks, I’ll admit it. I’ve basically been had.

That’s dramatic, but it was legitimately my first thought upon sitting down to write this piece. Where to begin? I’ve gone to bat for Magical Destroyers, even as I’ve gone back and forth over whether or not I thought the show was actually, you know, any good. Now that it’s over, we can settle the question with a definitive “no.” It’s not even the high-speed trainwreck some might’ve been hoping for. Taken on the whole, it is simply bad in a broadly disappointing way that feels all too familiar in the present anime landscape. Embarrassingly, this series—not the rightly polarizing but unquestionably effective Heavenly Delusion, not the relentlessly dramatic second season of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury, not even the low-stakes fun of Dead Mount Death Play, but this series—is what I’ve written about most of the Spring 2023 anime crop. (Other than Oshi no Ko, at least.) This is embarrassing not because the show is bad, but because I let myself be taken in enough by its occasional moments of brilliance—moments that are real, and genuine, but do not do enough to justify the mediocrity around them—that I was convinced it would pull everything together in the finale somehow. That didn’t happen. Spoiler alert.

I won’t flagellate myself over this mistake, if it can be called one. Sometimes anime just aren’t any good, and if you go into every anime expecting it to eventually become the best version of itself—and I generally do—you’re going to sometimes be disappointed. That’s just how the game goes. I might feel worse if I had a larger audience and had inspired legions of people to watch this, but I didn’t. To be honest, I don’t think much of anybody, inside Japan or out, watched Magical Destroyers. Nonetheless, because I was so convinced I’d eventually be vindicated, I feel something of an obligation to try and take the show apart and see why, specifically, it doesn’t work. Because I do think that much of what little criticism of Magical Destroyers there has been has been misaimed, in that it assumes that this is an idea that could never create a good or even great TV show. I don’t agree with that, I think Magical Destroyers had many opportunities to be brilliant, and more than one chance to salvage things once they started going off the rails. It blew almost all of those opportunities, which is, in my mind, worse.

But we’re starting with the conclusion, here. It’s probably best to lay out what Magical Destroyers actually is, for those of you just joining us. Here’s the very short version; Magical Destroyers is an admittedly novel fusion of magical girl trappings and some stylish red-and-black anarchist chic paint with what I’ve taken over the past few years to calling the otaku action anime subgenre. It ends up doing rather little with this fusion, but that’s the general idea.

About the otaku action anime microgenre. These shows, of which there are only a small handful, are all broadly similar; they combine the general highs and the structure of action anime with a premise that asks what would happen if society’s general dislike of the weird and socially awkward—specifically in the form of otaku themselves—were actively persecuted, like a dissident political movement. It’s an indulgent thought experiment, to be sure, but as I said back when this show premiered, it’s not a wholly irrelevant question. In the US alone, bans on artistic expression designed to catch minorities in their net are a real thing, and have been an ongoing issue especially this year specifically. Extrapolating from stuff like that into a full-on nerdocide is still pretty out-there, but it’s not entirely crazy. Especially if the show in question actually does something with that connection. Magical Destroyers really doesn’t, but other anime in this subgenre occasionally have, most notably 2021’s Rumble Garanndoll and its direct line-drawing between hatred of “undesirable” subcultures and out-and-out fascism, an observation that is actually pretty on point. (The other entry in the genre that sticks closest to this model is Akiba’s Trip. Not as good as Rumble Garanndoll but still decent, certainly. Slightly farther out, dealing in different specifics, are the second half of Anime-Gataris, undersung metafiction clusterfuck Re:Creators, and emotional fireworks display The Rolling Girls. All of these are better than Magical Destroyers, some significantly so.)

Magical Destroyers’ twist on the formula is that the otaku are being persecuted by a dictatorial being named Shobon, a man with a TV displaying a (•ω•) face for a head, and his army of similarly-decorated troops. They round up otaku and put them in reeducation camps and confiscate their stuff. It’s all a big to-do. But of course, there is a rebel army, led by our protagonist Otaku Hero [Makoto Furukawa], and aided by his three weed-smoking girlfriends1, the magical girls Anarchy Red, Blue, and Pink [Fairouz Ai, Aimi, and Tomoyo Kurosawa]. I’m being glib because the specifics really aren’t important here. The first half of the series follows a broad threat-of-the-week format that it mostly (but not entirely) manages to make work. The first three episodes are legitimately pretty great, especially the second with its Pepto Bismol-pink psychedelia, and if that were all there was of the show I would think fairly highly of it.

Unfortunately we hit our first major obstacle soon after, with a truly tasteless fanservice-focused episode. Things pick up somewhat again after that, but the show becomes markedly spotty from there on out.2 Throughout, it often threatens to make a greater point beyond its core slogan—and slogan really is the only appropriate term for the constant repetition and variations on the phrase “people should be able to like what they like”—but always backs away when that would jostle the show’s status quo. This is an absolutely bizarre approach for an anime about a group of rebels fighting against an oppressive government to take. Forget any specifics here, this is just bad writing in the broadest sense possible.

Sometimes, it gets by on audacity, style, or weirdness. The show’s visual quality is inconsistent, but the episodes that look good can stand up to anything else from this season. The aforementioned episode 2, along with a few other highlights, namely episodes 9 and 11, are full-on standouts. In addition, the show’s stylish, post-modern take on the whole “bank system” idea, where certain elaborate sequences are made to be reused many times throughout the course of a show’s run, is pretty great. All three magical girls have really great henshin sequences that we get to see a few times, and they have similarly fun attacks that really pop, despite the fact that we only get to see a majority of them once or twice each.

The character writing is similarly of variable quality, but Anarchy, who serves as a secondary protagonist, is great when given proper opportunity to shine. She’s a loud-mouthed hothead with a showoffy streak and a sensitive side that she reserves for (of course) Otaku Hero himself. It’s nothing revolutionary, despite the show’s posturing, but it’s decently compelling stuff. (Blue is also fairly entertaining, if one-note. I could imagine being offput by her, but to me the idea of gender-flipping the “moron pervert who is unfortunately a protagonist” character archetype is actually pretty funny. Pink, a druggie who can only speak in the phrase “gobo gobo”, is much less compelling.) Even Otaku Hero himself isn’t a bad character per se. Despite the vibes that the show’s 1 guy 3 girls setup might give off, he doesn’t really feel like a harem series protagonist, and doesn’t much feel like a self-insert or otherwise generic either. He can even almost spit some decent rhetoric in the show’s better episodes. But again, any time the show has to get more specific than “people should be able to do what they want,” it backs off, and this kneecaps everything about the series, top to bottom. For much the same reason, the crowd of nerds who make up the Otaku Revolutionary Army is pretty narrow, too. They’re uniformly—and specifically—Somewhat Unattractive™ Dudes From Japan, with the only exceptions being Pink’s band of nightclub warriors and literally two (count ’em, 2) indie idols we see join the ORA’s ranks later on. Even the show’s visual style isn’t all-upsides. There are episodes that look outright bad, and even the good ones are often extremely homage-heavy, which can be a good or at least fun thing, but we aren’t talking about Kill la Kill here. Magical Destroyers does have style, but it doesn’t have enough to make that approach work.

Really, the fact that I’m having to get so specific and caveat-heavy with the show’s positives says a lot on its own, doesn’t it? You could say things like this for any anime that’s not truly terrible. And that’s really the issue, Magical Destroyers isn’t truly terrible, and I’ll probably never actually dislike it. I like too much about what it could’ve been for that, and what the show actually is feels too slight to warrant hatred. But that doesn’t put it above the level of, say, The Detective is Already Dead, another anime I’ve fostered a somewhat inexplicable even to myself attachment to despite it being fairly mediocre.

So to round us out, the question must be asked; what was Magical Destroyers actually trying to do, if anything? Be a real rallying point for otaku counterculture? Establish a lasting multimedia series that would persist well after the anime itself is over? Just simply be a good action anime with more highs than lows? It accomplishes none of this. Which is a shame, because there’s some real love in this thing if you know where to look. Certain individual animators and episode directors clearly cared a lot about the show’s visual angle, and most of the voice talent turn in good to great performances, especially Ai Fairouz, who, when she gets the chance to truly chew scenery as Anarchy, is just as unstoppable here as she was as Power in Chainsaw Man last year. Unsurprisingly, this combined with the fact that Anarchy is actually decently-written makes her the show’s best character by far. Looking back on the first two episodes I’m left to wonder if the show wouldn’t be more coherent if they focused on her a little more. It’s hard to go wrong with such a delightful little firecracker.

But again, none of this ever comes together to present any kind of coherent theme. The fact that I’ve seen all twelve episodes and couldn’t really tell you what the show is about on any level except the most literal is kind of a problem! “People should be able to like what they like” is a reddit comment, not a core thesis you can hitch your whole show on! This is to say nothing of the whole kerfuffle involving Origin in the show’s final arc, the goddess who it seems to present as sort of an ur-anime viewer. This idea is simply not around long enough to ever be developed in a really coherent way, and it ends up being just another extraneous idea that the show briefly plays with but doesn’t actually engage with in any meaningful way.

But perhaps the most telling problem with Magical Destroyers is not anything obvious. It’s how the show treats youth as a concept. One of the very, very few coherent thematic lines through the series comes from Otaku Hero getting older. This article’s lead-in quote is from him, reflecting on his life in his last moments as he’s killed by the now-evil magical girls in the final episode, the climax of a conclusion so pointless as to feel deliberately insulting. On the one hand; same, buddy, I’m 29 myself. But there is something genuinely dark and offputting about this alluded-to notion that it’s better to die as a young otaku than to live to be an old one. It’s also complete bullshit! I personally know more than one person still active in the fandom who is over 60, and those people have stories! Stories that matter and are interesting! The only positive gesture in this direction are the characters of the Kanda River Squad. Their big character moment is to engage in a pissing contest with the young’ns about whether or not they’re “real” otaku all the way back in the loathsome fourth episode of this show. It’s pretty dire that all this is the only coherent theme to be pulled out of this series, other than it’s incredibly weak sloganeering.

In another lifetime, Magical Destroyers could have been something truly special. Maybe there, its talk of revolution isn’t all only just that and it actually has some bite to it. Maybe there it’s more even, maybe it has stronger writing, maybe it has the self-awareness to call out problems within the otaku subculture too, and not just pretend everything is a black-and-white us vs. them scenario. But of course, this thing we’re constructing, an anime about four real revolutionaries whose adoption of anarchist rhetoric is more than costume-deep, is not actually Magical Destroyers; it’s a dream on a cloud. It’s easy to say how things might have been different. And as I always say, you review the anime you watch, not the one you wish existed.

Magical Destroyers, as it exists, is a sign of an anime industry in a fairly dire place. Sure, it’s still better than the lukewarm backwash of the isekai boom, and it’s too ridiculous to be in any real way morally repugnant, but, really don’t you want more out of your anime?

Maybe I’m just getting old—as I said, Otaku Hero and I seem to be about the same age—but at some point, watching things like this just becomes depressing. It’s not the worst anime of all time or anything, and it’s not even the worst I’ve seen this year, but it is one of the most pointless. There’s something to be said for being memorably weird, and Destroyers definitely at least clears that bar, but maybe that’s not always enough to make a show worth watching on its own. In the end, there’s not really anything for anybody here. Other than the lingering suspicion that these girls deserved better.

1: This is a joke, of course. There is no actual weed usage in the show, since that would require actually pushing the envelope. God forbid an anime with a loose “anarchy” theme be on the same level of transgression as A Woman Called Fujiko Mine, an anime from 11 years ago.

2: I feel the need to point out that I briefly consulted Wikipedia to check my episode order was correct here. In doing so, I noticed that no one has uploaded titles or descriptions for the last two episodes, proving that even the diligent Anime Wikipedia community is having trouble staying invested with this one.

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All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: The Revolution Wears Red and Pink in MAGICAL DESTROYERS

Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.

Somehow, this is a genre. I can only think of a few off the top of my head—2021’s Rumble Garandoll, 2017’s Akiba’s Trip, 2015’s The Rolling Girls, arguably Anime-Gataris, also from 2017 counts too—but it’s a real, if small phenomenon, one without a defined name, at least over here in the Anglosphere. I tend to call them otaku action shows; anime that cast the social divide between the hardcore nerds of the world and “normal people” (no one is actually “normal,” but that’s another subject) as a real source of actual, physical conflict. What would happen, they often ask, if society’s dislike of people who are just generally weird or are into things considered unacceptable, turned truly ugly?

It’s a bit of a loaded question. And I’ve never seen one of these anime that properly grapples with it, although Rumble Garandoll, with its art-hating fascist antagonists, came pretty close. The general premise of these things always sounds like paranoid nerd persecution fantasy bullshit when you spell it out; yeah man, what if they rounded up people who liked anime or kinky porn or J-pop or whatever and put us all in camps? That sure would suck. Thankfully, it doesn’t really happen. Nonetheless, that doesn’t inherently make the question these things are asking worthless, and while they tend to be very campy, they’re almost never intended to just be jokes; something can be silly but still ask serious questions. And honestly, as someone who is both part of an actively under attack minority in the country I live in (I’m transgender) and who is also a huge nerd, I find the comparison to be less nonsensical and offensive than it might appear at first glance. That’s not to say that Magical Destroyers, the first anime from fashion designer, A$AP Rocky acquaintance, and aspiring auteur Jun Inagawa, is necessarily the first of its genre to actually successfully thread this needle, but it’s going to make an honest go of it. That counts for something, even if not everything here works. (I’ll say upfront I mostly really liked this first episode, but a small handful of the gags cross lines I wish they wouldn’t. Hopefully there will be less of that going forward.)

The premise here is dead simple, and will be familiar to anyone who’s seen the second half of Akiba’s Trip or any part of Rumble Garanndoll. One day, out of the blue, an army of mysterious Bad Guys yanks all of Japan’s otaku media off the shelf and starts rounding people up. Despite their hilariously stupid owo masks, these guys mean business, and things get bad fast.

Naturally, this spurs the country’s otaku to revolution, hoisting a black-and-red flag over the next several years as their chief organizer and leader Otaku Hero [Makoto Furukawa], one of our protagonists and the only guy among them, turns the Resistance from dream to reality, and his people capture Akihabara from the tyrants, who go by the name “the Shobon Army.”

But that’s the past. By the time we’re flung back to the present, three years have passed, and the Resistance is in shambles. Things are looking bleak, and at his wits’ end, Otaku Hero quits his position as the informal rebel leader upon learning that an entire patrol, including one of his elite “magical girl” soldiers, Blue, has been captured. This does not sit well with Anarchy [Ai Fairouz], his de facto second-in-command, obvious love interest (yeah, this one’s straight. Sorry yuri soldiers) and another one of the magical girls in question. Minutes later, we find out that the government is launching an operation to snuff out the remnants of the otaku resistance. Things are bleak, and Anarchy and Hero have a bit of a fight over the future of the resistance.

It’s worth pausing for a moment here to consider the other genre that Magical Destroyers draws heavily from. It’s not a secret that the show is also working with magical girl material. Specifically, the genre’s latter-day format as being primarily about superpowered magical warriors fighting off the forces of evil. Some of the marketing pushed this angle hard enough that I can imagine some people being burned by the presence of a male co-lead at all, but Otaku and Anarchy get about equal billing, and despite a scene where she breaks down over his departure, it’s eventually her own act of courage—raising the otaku flag over the apartment complex that the resistance is camped out in—that convinces him to take up leadership again.

If that were all she did, I might still think Anarchy’s role in this story is a bit reduced from what it should be. But then, in the latter half of the episode, she basically takes over entirely, and Magical Destroyers goes from having a solid premiere to having an absolutely great one.

There’s a pretty amazing meta non-twist here, in fact. For most of the first episode we don’t actually see Anarchy use any of her powers, and given that the marketing was already a little misleading (much of it left out Otaku Hero entirely), it’s easy to assume that the “magical girls” here aren’t actually such at all, that magic doesn’t even exist in this setting, and that they’re all just cosplayers Batman-ing around with explosives or whatever. Then, we cut back to a scene we were shown devoid of context as a cold open, where Anarchy dives out of a plane to assault the otaku prison, and does so without a parachute. Then, this happens.

It is well and truly a moment, one of the year’s best so far, and if Magical Destroyers never reaches that high again, it would maybe still be worth it just for the 30 or so seconds that her henshin sequence lasts. Anarchy in all-business mode is an absolute powerhouse, and while Fairouz’ performance does a lot to sell the character’s more outlandish aspects, they arguably don’t need selling. After a solid 20 minutes where Anarchy seems, honestly, like all talk and no walk, it’s insanely refreshing to see just how much she’s actually bringing to the table. As she fights, her dynamic with Otaku Hero starts making a kind of sense; you can think of them respectively as the brawn and the brains of the Otaku Resistance’s operation. They’re complimentary forces.

They do eventually find and rescue Blue of course. (Who is tied up in bondage gear, one of the episode’s iffier jokes that gets pushed further over the line and back into genuinely funny territory when we find out that the reason she got caught in the first place is that she was catfished and wanted to hook up with someone she met online.) The episode’s triumphant coda leaves a lot of possible angles for the series to explore, and while it’s certainly always possible that something like this will crash and burn, I’m actually pretty confident that Magical Destroyers will remain worth watching. There’s a substance to this style, an order to the chaos, and a method to the madness.

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All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime

Vote on the Next Let’s Watch for the Spring 2023 Season

Hi again, folks! I think most of you know how this works at this point, so I’ll just link the survey immediately, but if you’re new around here or would like a primer, let me briefly explain. Even returning voters might want to give this a read first, though, since I’ve changed the selection process a teensy bit this year, and, as you can see, there’s a bit more than just a call to vote this season.

Every season (with the notable exception of this past season for Various Reasons), I cover one or two anime on a week-by-week basis here on Magic Planet Anime as they air. I like to leave the selection of at least one of those anime to You, The Reader. In the survey linked above, you can vote for any number of the anime from the upcoming—and absolutely packed—season. This season, though, I trimmed the list of candidates somewhat, restricting it to a narrower selection of 18 shows I have an at least marginal interest in, in addition to the usual exclusions of second seasons of things I haven’t seen, and so on. (Marginal Service isn’t here, funnily enough. I wasn’t impressed by the trailer and while it’s the sort of thing I might check in on anyway in a slower season, this is not a slower season.) I did however leave an “Other” field with a customizable response, so if you’re really dead set on getting me to watch Summoned To Another World For a Second Time or what have you, you can at least try to rally 30 of your closest friends to get it to win out.

This season, since things have been quiet here lately, I wanted to be a bit more thorough than I usually am. Since this coming season is so packed, it helps to have some idea of what these candidate shows actually are. Why don’t we run down the list here, so we can get a sense of the shows in question? Hell, I’ll link the trailers too.

Oshi no Ko

Right off the top, this is the big one. Every season has a few high-profile manga adaptations. In 2023’s Spring season, this is probably the highest profile. Superstar status is pretty fitting for Oshi no Ko, though; the series is a dark, incisive examination of the underbelly of the entertainment industry. If you’re like me and your main complaint with a lot of idol anime is the lack of proverbial blood on the stage, you absolutely need to watch this; it’s some real “the spotlights here can burn holes through the stage” shit. There’s just one catch; the show also has a completely absurd shock value high-premise, one the triple-length first episode will explore in detail. A lot of people aren’t super keen on that part of the series, but I have to admire the incredible power play of putting out a 90 minute first episode in this anime season. That takes some serious confidence.

I have to be honest, this is easily my most anticipated show of the season personally, and I will probably cover it at least occasionally regardless, but I’m really pulling for this, specifically, to win the poll. I even cheated a little bit, using its romaji title, which encases the show’s name in square brackets, to boot it to the top of the list. You can’t be afraid to get a little underhanded in the entertainment industry, folks! Did I mention the manga is written by Aka Akasaka, of Kaguya-sama: Love is War! fame? And illustrated by Scum’s Wish mangaka Mengo Yokoyari? Also that much of the Doga Kobo team who did the gorgeous Shikimori’s Not Just A Cutie adaptation from last year are on this? I’m just saying, I think we’ve got a star in the making here. Check out the very much not fooling anybody trailer below, which mostly tries to present the series as a zany comedy.

alice gear aegis Expansion

Here’s a weird one for you. Is it an idol anime? A battle girl series? Both? Neither? I’m going with “CUE! with power armor” at the moment, but that’s admittedly only so much of a description. I’ll confess that I mostly chucked alice gear aegis Expansion—which is apparently capitalized like That—onto the list because it seems to at least be within the rough ballpark of the battle girl genre, and those are pretty hard to screw up. Even when they’re bad, they’re usually at least funny-bad.

Of course, I’m well aware that by saying that I’m practically jinxing myself. But hey, I’d still be willing to give it a shot, even if it does turn sour. Also, it’s based on a video game I’ve never heard of? So that’s cool. Check out the weirdly rambly, somewhat inscrutable trailer below.

The Blue Orchestra

Let’s say pop stardom isn’t your thing but you still want to see me cover an anime about music this year. If that admittedly narrow description applies to you, you might want to cast a ballot for Blue Orchestra. I’ll be honest – I don’t know a ton about the manga this is adapted from, aside from the fact that it’s well-liked. The trailer, in all its CGI band glory, tries to give the idol anime treatment to something decidedly more down-to-earth and personal. Will it work? I’m interested to find out. Check out the trailer below, and make an amusing mental note of how similar the protagonist looks to Ishigami from Kaguya-sama: Love is War!

Birdie Wing: Golf Girls’ Story – Season 2

Birdie Wing is just one of those things; you either get it or you don’t. The first season of the Golf Girls Story aired about a year ago to sudden cult fandom, as the series’ combination of strong lesbian undertones, hilariously over-the-top interpretation of golf, and more than a little no-shit social commentary were weaved together surprisingly well. But, the outwardly ridiculous bit of Birdie Wing is over, and I’m admittedly interested to see if the show can keep its pace up in its second half, as the golf mafia and life-or-death stakes are replaced with more mundane golf tournaments and interpersonal drama.

Ah, who am I kidding? It’s probably still going to be crazy as hell. Check out the trailer and it’s intoxicatingly chipper soundtrack below.

Dead Mount Death Play

Here’s the sum total of what I know about Dead Mount Death Play: 1. the manga was written by the Baccano! guy, 2. it’s a two-cour anime, which is noteworthy here because almost everything else on this list either is the second cour of something or is only one cour long, as far as we know. 3. it’s an isekai? Or something? It’s tagged as an isekai on sites like AniList and MyAnimeList anyway, and that gnarly skeleton monster from the trailer sure looks like something out of an isekai.

Beyond that, I really have no idea what to make of this thing. (I have to admit with some embarrassment that I missed the Baccano and Durarara hype trains back when those anime were an active, going concern.) But that’s precisely why it’s interesting! The trailer, which I will direct you to below, offers tantalizing glimpses of mystery and violence soundtracked to a nice minimal piano piece. Also, check out that girl with the glasses. Any time a girl with glasses gets to cause violence a show is at least going to be decent, don’t you think?

Otaku Elf

Otaku Elf!

Otaku elf.

An elf who is an otaku.

An elf who primarily enjoys pop culture media from Japan.

An otaku elf, if you would.

This really seems like it should be one of those “the title says it all” affairs, and it mostly does seem to be shaping up that way, but aside from the fact that I am willing to watch anything that reaches for this particular kind of comedic vibe—check out that shot in the trailer of the titular elf being flanked by a pair of actual-ass Red Bull cans while some shoujo stuff happens—there’s also a hint of an actual story here, something that might dig into why this particular stock fantasy character is such an otaku, maybe? This is one that I’ll probably cover at least a few times even if it totally washes out in the poll. I can’t stay away from something with this much 2006 energy. Check it out in the trailer below, but watch out for that incredibly catchy theme tune.

Jigokuraku: Hell’s Paradise

I have to give Hell’s Paradise—or Jigokuraku? I’m not sure what’s going on with the English name situation for this one—a very important award here; most bitchin’ trailer. This shouldn’t be confused with best trailer, those are different things, even if this one is pretty great. But if you’re like me and you need a “completely crazy action anime” quota filled each season and feel a little unsatisfied when it’s not met, you’re going to love this one. This is one of the anime on this list I knew the least about when I checked out its trailer (the third of three, apparently, in fact), but it’s now up there as one of my most anticipated shows of the season. It’s funny how that works, isn’t it? I don’t know much about Buddhism, but despite the series taking place in a Buddhist hell, that doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a huge obstacle; anybody could pop for this.

Check out the trailer below, and be prepared for the needlessly hard soundtrack to kick in about halfway through.

TOO CUTE CRISIS!

You know what’s missing from anime these days? Aliens. The Invaders from last year’s Teppen!!!!!!! made an admirable go of it, but they were only a pretty small part of a large ensemble cast. Here, with TOO CUTE CRISIS!, the aliens are the majority. But if that does nothing for you, the sheer stupidity of the comedy on display here should. Sure, the aliens try to destroy the Earth but can’t bring themselves to do it because cats are really cute. Why not? Check out the extremely fuwa fuwa trailer below, where I believe the lead character compares cuteness to a black hole.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury – Part 2

Look, I’m not going to pretend anyone needs me to explain Gundam to them in 2023, especially not the second half of this Gundam, which is interesting and important in all sorts of ways. I’ll be totally honest, I was actually kind of hesitant to even put The Witch From Mercury on the poll, because I don’t know if I’m totally up to the task of covering a Gundam anime week by week. Nonetheless, if you all should find it in your hearts to assign it to me, I will do my very best. That’s about all I have to say on this one.

Check out the trailer, full of blood, iron, and drama, below.

Insomniacs after school

Figure this one out; after years of being quite possibly the least impressive anime studio regularly making shows on its own two legs, Liden Films have managed to really turn things around over the past few. Between Insomniacs after school here and last year’s excellent Call of The Night adaptation, they might even be establishing something like a studio specialty.

Far from a re-tread, though, Insomniacs after school promises a kind of dusky romantic magic all its own, charged not with danger like Call of the Night’s, but with a galactic, midnight sweetness. The real highlights here are the shots in the trailer that nail this home; a shrine gate against the night sky, our two leads prancing through a dreamlike reflection of the Milky Way itself. You can check out the dizzyingly romantic trailer for yourself below.

Kizuna no Allele

Every year, there are a few anime that I treat less on the terms they probably want to be taken on and more as….mysteries to be solved, perhaps? Sometimes it just isn’t totally clear what a show is trying to do. Kizuna no Allele is one of those.

At first glance, Allele seems like a fairly standard idol anime with a virtual twist, with a color-coded cast of candy-haired girls who want to put on their first concert and become big stars and so on. What makes Allele odd are its ties to real-world VTuber Kizuna Ai, whose level of involvement in the project is fairly unclear at this point and who haunts the trailer (which you can check out below. Are you sick of me saying that yet?) like a ghost. That, plus some of the more surreal stuff in said trailer (what’s up with that room with the metal box in it?) make this an odd one. Airing in the same season as Oshi no Ko might sap this thing’s chances of getting a real fanbase, at least in the west (even if Oshi no Ko is only an “idol anime” in a fairly broad sense), but I am nonetheless somewhat intrigued by it.

Oh, also, the main girl’s name is Miracle. I’m not clear on if that’s her VTuber name or what, but I just think that’s funny.

Mahou Shojo Magical Destroyers

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before; in the grim darkness of the near future, nerd shit is outlawed by an oppressive government, and it’s up to a ragtag band of otaku heroes to save the day. No, I’m not describing Rumble Garanndoll, though I could be. It and Mahou Shoujo Magical Destroyers here are bedfellows as part of the niche self-aware otaku action-comedy genre. I’m kind of a sucker for these things and I like them more than I probably should, but even with that in mind, Magical Destroyers here is shaping up to be a strong example of the form, even if hiding the fact that you have a male lead until fairly late in the PR cycle does scan as a bit disingenuous.

If there’s a real star here, it’s Red Anarchy, the crimson-haired mahou who, in the trailer, is rocking a black t-shirt with the word “RAGE” written across it in all caps. And yes, that is Ai Fairouz you hear, staking out the exact middle ground between her voices for Power and Cure Summer with laser precision. What a talent.

A Galaxy Next Door

Remember a few entries up where I mentioned all the space imagery in Insomniacs after school? Well, here we have an anime that is bold enough to ask, what if there literally was A Galaxy Next Door?

I’ll be upfront about it, this is another one that I don’t know a ton about, but the premise of a mysterious otherworldly woman turning an everyman lead’s life upside down does appeal to me when it’s done right, and the hints of the literally supernatural going on here sweeten the deal. This looks like it could be low-stakes fun, and in a season this busy, sometimes that’s a nice thing to have.

Skip & Loafer

Three words I will never truly tire of no matter how old I get: coming of age! I don’t know what it is, but there’s a certain brand of summery, glinting story about the ups and downs of youth that just hooks me right in almost every time. I feel like it’s been a while since we had a truly great anime of that sort. Was the last one still O’ Maidens in Your Savage Season? Possibly. It’s too early to call if Skip & Loafer will be great, but it’s shaping up to at least be pretty good, with its powerfully scrunkly lead and J-Rock soundtrack. I’m just very fond of this one, okay? I’m rooting for it like a parent for their kid during a baseball game.

Heavenly Delusion

Here’s a guy I bet most people were betting would never show up on this site again; Masakazu Ishiguro, once and future mangaka of And Yet The Town Moves, and the same for Heavenly Delusion, a series that is, in quite possibly all ways, absolutely nothing like And Yet The Town Moves.

Heavenly Delusion stands as a rare cult favorite manga getting an adaptation that seems like will actually elevate its already-impressive source material. I’ll admit to being only passingly familiar, but something like this—a fairly heady sci-fi seinen—getting an adaptation from Production I.G. of all people should be cause for celebration. I’ll admit that the trailer looks absolutely fantastic, beaming all the spec fic sci-fi specifics directly into your brain without wasting a second on belabored narration, and then cutting to the next while you’re still processing the first scene.

If I seem a little more muted on it than you might expect, given all that, that’d be because Heavenly Delusion is being brought over to the states by Disney+, and I do so hate the Mouse and his increasing investment in the medium I love. Last year, almost no one was able to watch Summertime Render, also a top-shelf adaptation of a cult favorite manga, and one of the year’s strongest anime overall, because Disney+ simply sat on it for months and then released it with no fanfare whatsoever a few months ago. I hope they don’t make the same mistake with Heavenly Delusion, but I have my doubts about whether they’ve learned any real lesson here. Disney seem to be in the anime streaming game more to deny rights to their competitors than they are out of any desire to actually let this stuff be seen by an anglophone audience. If that seems like a paranoiac reading of their actions, I encourage you look into their historical business practices.

Nonetheless, if it’s even possible to do so, I would love to cover the series. Time will tell if that’s doable. Check out the trailer and get combination hyped / irritated that we might not get to watch this for like 9 months with me below.

Yuri is My Job!

Another nefarious yuri! Yuri is My Job! is an interesting one, being a girls’ love series equipped with a pretty novel high premise. The gist is this; our lead gets roped into working at a character cafe` where, basically, the workers act as though they’re in a school setting. The sort one might find in ye olde Class-S stories, back in the day. I won’t spoil any further details, but you can intuit some of the metacommentary that might arise here from the setup alone, and the lead’s charmingly bitchy personality is the lemon in the confectionary that ties things together.

Admittedly, the anime’s soft, jelly candy art style is not the first choice I would’ve gone with to adapt this material (I might’ve advocated going full-on retro shoujo pastiche. Admittedly, that’d be quite effort-intensive), but the trailer makes it look pretty good in motion. To me, my fellow lesbians!

World Dai Star

Rounding things out, we’ve got another idol anime but actually it’s about acting sort of thing. This is another niche subgenre of anime that I’ve become a bit of a mark for over the past couple of years, although it’s definitely possible to do badly. (See CUE! How has that come up twice in this article?)

Will World Dai Star do it well? Honestly, this early on it’s kind of hard to say. I was drawn in by the colorful character designs (the handiwork of Fire Emblem and VTuber character designer Mika Pikazo), but the trailer itself has not given me much to work with other than pondering how I’d navigate the sight of anime girls doing what seems to be a stage version of Aladdin. I suppose we will leave that question for if the time comes.

Thus ends the list! If you haven’t already, go and vote for your favorites (remember you can vote for as many shows as you like) if these candidates. I should note that this season, I’m only running the poll until the end of this weekend. So, I will take the final tally sometime after Sunday ticks over into Monday.

I hope you’re all excited, I’ve missed writing for you guys, and it’s great to be back.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter, Mastodon, Anilist, or Tumblr and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

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5 Underrated Magical Girls I Think Would Be Fun Hangouts, Based on Nothing but Their Vibes

I usually write pretty straightforward articles on this site. But I don’t know, I wanted to be a little silly today. So why not, right? Join me as we explore the hangout vibes of five random magical girls who I basically picked out of a hat.

Inori “Buki” Yamabuki (Cure Pine) from Fresh Precure!

Perhaps the least complex of Fresh Precure‘s four main characters, Cure Pine (Akiko Nakagawa) strikes me as a deeply chill person. The only Pretty Cure to ever be given a canonical religion—she’s Christian, in what I assume was someone’s attempt to get Toei some merch money from Japan’s surprisingly large Christian minority—Buki is only lacking in complexity as a character because she’s the Fresh member who least needs it. She begins the show as a pretty well-adjusted person and basically still is one by the show’s end. Her parents are veterinarians, which seems neat. Buki is not the sort of friend you call up because you want to go clubbing, but she is the sort of friend who’d happily be your designated driver after the night is over. That’s called reliability, every friend group needs “the down-to-Earth one.”

Vibes: Peaceful Pineapple.

Special Friendship Skill: Will Pray for You (but Not in a Judgey Way)

Kirika Akatsuki from Symphogear

Is your friend group missing that one person who really seems like they should work at a Hot Topic, even if they don’t? That one friend who knows every single lyric to “My Immortal” and seems like she’d think the main character of My Immortal is genuinely cool? Do you need, also, someone who is a hyperactive ball of energy, a perpetually coiled spring ready to leap to their feet to join in on whatever inane totally badass plan you’ve cooked up for the weekend on zero notice? Well, I don’t know why I’m phrasing this as though she’s a car I’m trying to sell you, but Kirika Akatsuki (Ai Kayano) ticks all those boxes. The second-string Symphogear character is a highlight of the series’ cast, even if she’s occasionally subject to, we’ll be delicate and say, questionable things from the show itself. There is no friend group that would not be improved by adding in this adorable little edgelord. Just make sure you leave room for Shirabe Tsukuyomi (Yoshino Nanjou), the blonde beyblade and her yo-yo girlfriend are a package deal.

Vibes: Says “Death” a Whole Lot

Special Friendship Skill: Funny Noises

Momo Chiyoda (Fresh Peach) from The Demon Girl Next Door

At first blush, the rather reserved Momo Chiyoda (Akari Kitou) might seem like a strange choice for this list. But the real secret here, aside from the fact that much like 90% of anime characters who seem such, she just needs to be around the right people to open up, is that Momo has stories. You see, Momo is in the rare position of being mostly retired by the time we actually join the story of her originating series. Machikado Mazoku is a comedy show, and the big dramatic events that define the lives of most magical girls are several years in the rearview for Momo. She has been places and seen things—we know from the series’ actual text that she probably saved the world once—and in the right setting, she might be persuaded to share some of that wisdom. It’d probably be good for her, too, honestly. Momo is certainly the most emotionally troubled mahou up to this point on the list, even if she doesn’t show it often. (Machikado Mazoku is not usually that sort of series, after all.) Also her cat sometimes mutters ominous things in a deep voice, which is pretty fun.

Vibes: Seen It All

Special Friendship Skill: Property Owner

Asuka Tsuchimiya and Asuka Tsuchimiya from The Girl in Twilight

Easily the most obscure girl on this list, Asuka Tsuchimiya (Tomoyo Kurosawa) hails from forgotten 2018 battle girl anime The Girl in Twilight, the only full-length TV original from little-known studio Dandelion Animation. I don’t have the time or space to give TGiT the writeup it deserves here (despite being seen by just about nobody, the show is actually quite good), but the appeal of Asuka herself is easy to explain. One; she’s just an all-around good girl, an uncomplicatedly kind person who makes every room she’s in that much brighter. Two; she’s friends with a double of herself from another universe who is basically just the same person as she is but more badass, a fact that objectively rules. With Asuka, you get two friends for the price of one. There’s no beating that.

Vibes: Seeing Double

Special Friendship Skill: Ham Radio Expert

But alright, let’s say you’re tired of all the sunshine and quiet wisdom. You want to throw some anarchy and chaos into your friend group. Who do you call?

Anarchy from Mahou Shoujo Magical Destroyers

So, okay, full disclosure. This show doesn’t exist. Yet anyway. Mahou Shoujo Magical Destroyers is an upcoming anime based on a small group of characters created by fashion designer Jun Inagawa. We don’t really know what the show is going to actually be yet, the only extant trailer is very vague, as is the plot description. (Which kind of implies to me something vaguely akin to last year’s Rumble Garanndoll, but at this early stage who the hell knows.) But there’s no way Anarchy wouldn’t be a fun hang. Look at her. Look at her name! It’s Anarchy! She has a magic staff with an anarchy A on the tip. There’s no way this girl isn’t a living party-starter. If you want good vibes, you can call any of the other girls on this list. If you want to overthrow a government, you call Anarchy.

Vibes: Rage Against The Machine Fan.

Special Friendship Skill: Will lend you her copy of The Abolition of Work.

So that’s the list. Normally I try to concisely summarize the main point of the article in these closing paragraphs, but, you get the picture by now I’m sure. Did you like this article? Absolutely hate it? Do you want more of these (whatever “these” are) on MPA? I do have to say I feel a little bad that I only got one girl from a “traditional” magical girl anime in there. Perhaps a follow-up is in order? Let me know in the comments below. Also consider donating if you can! See you on Friday for the Kaguya recap, friends.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.