Mahou Shoujo Tokushusen Asuka

Three years ago, a bloodthirsty race of interdimensional beings known as the Disas appeared and destroyed everything they could reach on Earth. With regular weapons rendered useless, humanity's only hope of survival relied on humans who became magical girls after forming an alliance with the Spirit Realm, who had followed the Disas to Earth. After a violent conflict, the squad of magical girls emerge victorious, with the survivors now known as the "Magical Five."

Following the war with the Disas, the Magical Five disbands. Kurumi Mugen, Mia Cyrus, Tamara Volkova, and Lau Peipei independently continue their own military services, while their leader, Asuka Ootorii, retires and becomes a high school student. However, Asuka's peace is short-lived, as it seems there were survivors on the enemy's side as well. As magic must be fought with magic, Asuka is dragged back into combat as an even worse battle looms on the horizon.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Ootorii, Asuka Main

Suzaki, Aya Japanese

Mugen, Kurumi Main

Sekine, Akira Japanese

Yonamine, Chisato Main

Taketatsu, Ayana Japanese

Cyrus, Mia Main

Matsui, Eriko Japanese

Volkova, Tamara Supporting

Ichimichi, Mao Japanese

Makino, Nozomi Supporting

Takahashi, Rie Japanese

Abigail Supporting

Takagaki, Ayahi Japanese

Chevalier Francine Supporting

Hisakawa, Aya Japanese

Sacchuu Supporting

Kikuchi, Kokoro Japanese

Nazani Supporting

Ishigami, Shizuka Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Kamei, Hiroshi Producer

Komatsu, Shouta Producer

Isogai, Noritomo Producer

Reviews

Jan 25, 2024

Deepfry_Water

Recommended

So what do magical girls do after defeating the big evil?
Ofc, fight terrorists, mercenaries, join the army, special forces, etc.... there is no happy ending here.

That was the basic idea. The fact that they don't really do this and go again to the big evil is stupid.
There isn't any big reason why everything is happening, we're getting scraps about the actual plot and after I finished it I don't really care about it, because the reasons look shallow.

Now, for the parts that I liked. Lesbians, 90% of the girls in the show. And big tits. Huge badonkadonkas. Also, magical spanking.
The ... eyes of the MC were pretty.

Honestly the anime looks like someone watched Madoka and said: "I can make a sad magical girl show too, with lesbians, huge tits, guns and pokemon". But they didn't really have anything to make it spark, kinda just did their thing

A decent 7, show wasn't bad at all. It was good, but didn't go beyond the "not fucking up" level. Maybe it had an 8 from me if they actually explained more wtf is happening and made some reveals but it is what it is I guess. It's like fast food, you know it's bad but you eat it, enjoy it, then forget it next week.

Opening was a banger, and naming the MC support character "Kurumi" - walnut was cute.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Sep 2, 2024

APETTR2

Mixed Feelings

This Anime is the definition of a good premise ruined by lazy art and poor moments. The poor moments come from the interactions where the MC and her friends hangout in school. I do not know about others reading this, but I found these moments dreadfully boring. The premise meanwhile, was interesting, high school girls becoming full on soldiers basically. Experiencing trauma and all that. Interesting premise right there that can be used to make a good anime and the manga was the same guy that made psycho pass, that is credibility right there. Yet the studio that managed the art killed it, like seriously. ... I can tolerate the long monologues of The Irregular at Magic High School because the art was good and made me want to look at it, but in Spec Ops Asuka, it is mixed. In the slow dialogue moments that made up a lot of the character development and interactions, the artists did not care and made those moments unwatchable. Meanwhile, in the action scenes, the artists cared and did really good on the animation and art. AND THE SOLDIERS ACTUALLY FIRE BURSTS!
Overall, good premise with bad art. Read the manga instead

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jan 10, 2025

Justykanna

Not Recommended

Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka tries to do a lot of different things at the same time, but the problem that it kind brings upon itself is that it doesn't do any of them particularly well.

Story: Before the events of our main story, Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka introduces us to a group of magical girls who are fighting a war against the Disas, large monsters that fight to kill. After winning the war, though not without a few casualties, the remaining five magical girls, dubbed the "Magical Five", disbanded and went their separate ways. Their leader, Asuka, decides to retire as a magical girls, ... where she hopes to live life as an ordinary school student. But due to events unfolding in front of her, we soon see that she can't escape her past.

The story itself has an interesting concept - magical girls who have military-like powers in order to fight. Each one has their own unique powers. These were fun because of the variety the combat scenes could have brought to the table. The problem is that the series never really got all that interesting. Most would brute force their way out of a situation and it rarely led to any interesting fights. Kurumi had a wider array of tools, but the rest were pretty boring in general.

The series tries to be a more violent version of, say, Madoka Magica, and I do like what they were going for. This series gets pretty bloody. While this dark twist on the magical girl genre is welcome, I'm not sure they did enough with it.

The association that act as our antagonists clearly have some long-term plan on what they're doing, the problem is, once it starts to reveal itself, the series ends. This is always a drawback to any adaptation that only adapts part of the source material, and we barely get far enough to start to figure out what they're up to.

One real problem this series had was an annoying amount of "plot armour". When you have a healer on your team, your ability to recovery from "anything" is apparent, and basically reversing any damage that gets inflicting got old in a hurry. Characters would get emotional, and then it would all be better. I didn't mind it the first time, but after a few times, it gets very silly.

Another minor issue was the series had some very uneven pacing. Fights, story filler, anything were all very brief, so it feels like the plot is all over the place at times. The focus on different parts of the world didn't help either, so you're never really in a familiar setting more than once. While this isn't an issue in itself, the series does very little to explain why you're at a certain spot or why we care. The final 'arc' was done decently, mind you, and I actually like where they left off the characters - far too many anime end the series very quickly after the final fight. (5/10)

Characters: Our characters are an mixed bag, but I really couldn't attach myself to Asuka. She's an exceptional fighter and has a caring heart, but she always feels like a follower. For wanting to be retired, it doesn't really feel like it took much to pull her back into the magical girl world either. Kurumi fared a little better. She has a caring side, but also a bit of a psychotic side too. I do like the friendship she shares with Asuka, which makes her feel much more significant than the other magical girls. Nozomi and Sayako are Asuka's classmates and I actually liked them a fair bit. Adding ordinary citizens into a story like this, when done well, pays off and I thought they integrated them into the story quite well. For all the issues with the story there were, these two probably weren't part of them.

Most of our enemies don't mean a whole lot due to the story length - Queen is clearly the one pulling the strings but she's barely around. Abigail seems like her #2 and while I thought she was a good villain, she really is only part of a couple episodes. Giess and Chisato are decent characters. They fit the story well and have some decent backstory. There were a lot of very minor villain characters in the first half of the story and I couldn't say any of them felt memorable. Other side characters kind of just feel like they were there. Mia, Tamara, Mr Iizuka, Ise, Yoshino and even Tabira don't have enough story to call them good characters. (6/10)

Art: For the decent animation this series had, it feels like this was a bit of a budget work. Fighting scenes had the potential to look amazing, but there are so many times they use still-frames with panned shots going from one side to the other. This happened so often and really takes away from the battles, short as they may be. The series looking good aside one issue - the character models all looked incredibly awkward. They just always look ugly. (5/10)

Sound: Music and sound matches the series attempt at a military-style magical girl work, which is good. VO work was pretty good too. Tia Ballard (Abigail), Mikaela Krantz (Giess) and Sara Ragsdale (Kurumi) were all strong. I love Morgan Berry (Nozomi) and Bryn Apprill (Sayako) as a pairing - they were fantastic here. I'm never really over the moon on Trina Nishimura (Asuka), but she was okay here. (6/10)

Overall: Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka was mediocre in basically every possible way. Nothing really felt exceptional, and there are a handful other series in the genre - both military and magical girl - that probably do a better job at any of these. (6/10)

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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	Poll: Mahou Shoujo Tokushusen Asuka Episode 2 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Jan 18, 2019	59 replies	by AshRayKay »» Jul 28, 2024 8:58 PM
	Poll: Mahou Shoujo Tokushusen Asuka Episode 12 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Mar 29, 2019	79 replies	by H4sty »» May 10, 2024 12:40 PM
	Poll: Mahou Shoujo Tokushusen Asuka Episode 4 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Feb 1, 2019	59 replies	by 5hadow17 »» Oct 16, 2023 6:02 AM
	Poll: Mahou Shoujo Tokushusen Asuka Episode 3 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Jan 25, 2019	65 replies	by 5hadow17 »» Oct 16, 2023 5:59 AM
	Poll: Mahou Shoujo Tokushusen Asuka Episode 11 Discussion Stark700 - Mar 22, 2019	39 replies	by Serafos »» May 19, 2023 2:12 AM