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Dec 21, 2024
*Recommended in case you're looking for good animation. I feel this is what they set out to do, and it is what they delivered. It wasn't set out to be an ambitious poignant philosophical piece, just a well-animated action show, and it achieved that. The humor is mostly misses, but serve to keep the show lighthearted until things are flashing on the screen again.
While there's very little to actually say about the show, I think the bisexual love triangle was very fun and well done, there could have been more of that and less world-ending perils and I wouldn't mind. If the show did more
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for itself than what it did, maybe there'd be room for waifu warring a bit. Not Rei-Asuka, but maybe a bit of Ichigo-ZeroTwo. I don't see it happening, but wish it would.
The main villain pales in comparison to the pre-final boss, Amaryllis carried the antagonist side, and the writers clearly love her too, as she's as stubborn as a cockroach. Her voice acting and her role in the show outshines everyone else's and is probably the most memorable character in the show.
P.S: I have to applaud the courage to figure out you're most likely not getting a second season, so you do it via slideshow during the finale ED.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Dec 21, 2024
Starting with the good:
-Watercolor backgrounds really give it a unique visual identity.
-The OP is unskippable, Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi still got it
-Prominent doses of Horie Yui
Now, onto the intrinsic factors of it:
This show was sadly dragged down by its main plot. So much was dedicated to the evil lurking beneath our daily lives and the magic to solve it, that what actually was well done in it was lost. Episode 5 was the best episode in the show, worth of being the finale (though the finale did also do it for like 2minutes) even. The ensemble cast of various gimmicks often faces two issues: More
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characters than the writter can develop and/or more characters than there's screentime to share. Episode 5 showed they actually could write these characters, and use their gimmicks in interesting ways, but refused to, to focus on a The Great Evil plot that had no punchline, point or climax. It all just happened because it had so been written.
The proper execution of this show can be found in Princess Tutu: The darkness shouldn't manifest in random objects which are then exorcised and forgotten, it should envelop the members of the cast, and focus on clearing the darkness in them, developing their characters and through the clash of personalities show both who they and the MC are. Somewhere in here there is an Ahiru Kurumi Mirai and Rue Yuzu Edel, I can see it, but the show just rolled without any more profound developments.
Lastly, what I found most disappointing personally, is that the premise was "we're all magicians," Horie Yui was here teaching the entire class magic, we had an entire colorful cast, and the finale they cooked didn't include all the students gathering together to use a spell that saves the school or the world. They seem to want a second season, which I wouldn't believe to be likely to come, and if it does, I don't think that's the direction they'll take.
Yet another show that didn't notice what it was good at and didn't capitalize on it. It looks pretty, Horie Yui sounds like an angel, but even if my eyes and my ears are pleased, it rings nothing in my heart. Watch Princess Tutu, instead.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Dec 21, 2024
Spiritually another one of Yoko Taro's EoS'd mobages.
Starting from the finale, the last two episodes are all it had to be. If you finished the first season and will jump into the second, you could just not waste your time, lost as you may feel by doing that. By rewriting it properly, about three episodes would be needed to conclude the first season, if this was the goal it was heading to, but for some reason they did 12 more without any content do so.
It's easy to imagine how the script was written as if it were either a VN or the VN segment of
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a mobage, as there's no visual direction. The characters have no movement, the angles and visuals are always still (sometimes literally a slideshow), and they just keep talking and talking exposition. The first season may not have been the best show ever, but it clearly had much more of a vision, as in, the world was alive and so were its characters. Considering the metastory that takes place here, I can't even tell if it wasn't a cry for help from a writer that needs to write a second season after accidentally finding closure on the first one.
If I had to say something good about it, it made me realize how Goro and Sawa carried the first season. Not having them in the cast across so many episodes was a slog, a bore and a torture. Nothing interesting happens, nothing interesting is said. It's also kind of funny to see when the writing took an unexpected turn mid-production, because plot-relevant characters will use generic faceless colorless 3D models used for mobs, or show up as 2D sprites that change like you're on Powerpoint. They didn't plan for the character to be there, so they didn't have a model ready and had to improvise.
I wouldn't recommend this show to anyone, especially to people who liked the first season, because it'll really ruin what was a good experience, flawed as it might have been.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Dec 21, 2024
Mahou Shoujo only in words, Magilumi is (in general) closer to New Game! and (in anime that aired with it) Trillion Game as a workplace drama anime, rather than close to Precure in any way. But while both New Game and Trillion Game are mostly personal, focusing on the human element of the many working parts in an office, Magilumi is mostly professional and the cast is quite shallow.
This first season was pretty much about a singular thing: Kana's professional growth. She is good at learning the theory, but through these episodes she learns from people, from experiences, from the industry and through working. And
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that's it. Kana as a person doesn't shine through, and neither does anybody* else in the cast. If Kana is to be Aoba, Koshigaya is to be Kou, which is not only Aoba's Vergilius, but also her enemy down the line, making their dynamic ever more interesting; something which doesn't happen in Magilumi. Koshigaya is almost a deus ex machina, she's just there to solve every issue while Kana is still learning the ropes.
The Kaii aren't enemies or antagonists, which can be perceived by how there's no personality to them or their designs. They're just a simple proxy for "problems at work" for the drama to occur. New Game gives its problems solid form, deadlines, art issues, marketing issues, programming issues, concept issues, which gives the problem personality, and allows the characters handling it to show who they are. By making the problems the opposite of Koshigaya, in that they're just there for things to happen and Kana have something to think about and solve or not, much of how we, as viewers, can interpret what is taking place is also lost. In the finale there was finally a good design in the enemy, but the way to handle it was the same as always, in that vague magic shenanigans occur and it's over. It's mostly style over substance, without being very stylish at it (Mechaude, for an example, was also style over substance, but they went all out on the style, so it earned its worth.)
Ultimately, the antagonist of this season wasn't the monsters, nor the capitalist company, but Kana herself. The evil she had to defeat in this journey was her own self-hatred, and becoming a better professional by overcoming it, seeing how her talents aren't worthless and how what she does helps the company. Putting it this way, it does sound Mahou Shoujo-ish, in how she had to regain her own hopes and dreams, but through finding a job that allows her to see herself, and what she can do, and validates and values that. These girls are magical for people that work on terrible jobs, or aren't valued, or are soon graduating and fear what the future holds.
*Shigemoto isn't shallow and carries the show, both in personality and voice acting. Now that the "Becoming a full-fledged professional" arc is over, I can only hope his past and the future his ideals lead to are what the series spins around, as that's what's most interesting in this world.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Dec 21, 2024
A very unpromising start that follows every beat of a classic harem anime, it sets expectations very low, but then redirects itself towards how one interfaces with their hobbies, and on artistic ideals and how they clash. It's easy for fighting shonen writers to create stakes and write their battles, bigger power beats the smaller power, then the smaller power becomes the bigger power; everyone will die if it doesn't, it's as simple as it gets, and can be easily mastered. Ririsa however is a battle shonen (or a sports anime, which some may consider to be contained within battle shonen) which doesn't hang its
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stakes on life or death, bigger power and smaller power, it is earnestly a battle about love, and putting your heart into it. Sukuna vs Itadori wishes it could reach the depths that Nagomi vs Ririsa reached (and I bring up Jujutsu because it's in recent memory, but there are many more shonen battles of the MC against a much stronger foe that didn't meet this level; if I had to bring something up like it, Raou vs Toki is what comes to mind first, but Toki wasn't the MC.)
One issue caused by the change of direction is that now the MC which was supposed to be the center of the harem becomes an extra. He can't vanish from the plot, but there's nothing for him to do here anymore. (Kakegurui suffers from the same ailment) Yet, the writing finds something for him to do in the second cour, whilst keeping it true to the central theme of the series: The soul of a broken author can only be saved by directly facing the love of a fan, which is what he does, and nobody else in the cast could, or couldn't happen without him. After that the series directly adresses how he sort of didn't exist in the world, trimming down all the edges created by making a sports anime with a harem romance comedy on the side.
It's incredibly humane and probably any person can understand the struggles in the series, but I'd mostly recommend it to creative people, because they'd relate to it the best, and feel themselves in many of the experiences, doubts and ideals portrayed.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Sep 29, 2024
Hokuto no Ken II, Post-Varia Katekyo Hitman Reborn and Post-Arima Makibao make for a better read than Jujutsu post-Shibuya, creating the king of all "this manga should have ended ages ago," truly a feat to be remembered.
It's hard to believe the same author that did Mahito and Junpei spent 2 years having the characters explain their powers in (non-chronological order sometimes) in a slugfest of "actually I'm behind you now" "actually two weeks ago I made a pact that whenever someone is behind me, I get to be behind them now, so I'm behind you now." If Gege is asked their favorite character, they'll probably
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answer with a domain, as the characters completely were overshadowed by what powers they had and how they could use it.
A case study in what can go wrong with battle shonen about silly magical powers when the writer cares more about powers than characters and story.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Sep 27, 2024
Possibly the worst PA Works has produced so far?
Excusing the story being about nothing and going nowhere, as there is another review that talked about it much better than I could, I think what is unexcusable is that the cast wasn't devoid of radiance, but could not shine at all in how the show was executed, and they had no chemistry. There are countless scenes where they're just hanging out, doing homework and eating yokan, but it never sells the friendship, their conversations are mostly plot progression, exposition or a gag that develops nothing.
What brings them together and keeps them together isn't tangible, it
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honestly feels like they're together because the plot demands them to be, then when the drama requires them to split apart, it doesn't make you feel anything. Their entire "bond" is being told, not shown, so the most essential part of a show like this is absent. The two-parter format could possibly be to blame, an issue is presented just to be solved in the next episode, so there is no weight or meaning to anything that happens (but then again, Boukyaku Battery has a two-parter about overcoming yips that outdoes everything NareNare did in 12 episodes, so it's probably the writing that is at falut, not the execution). An issue that wasn't there appears, and then is gone. If the show was good, I think episode 8-9 and 12 could have been good, as there was an emotional core there, but they delivered payoffs that weren't setup, so all of it fell flat.
These characters had in common the fact they had underlying issues they struggled with, yips, rehab to walk again, being a foreigner and having anger issues, being autistic, being shy/anxious and... being bad at singing? Shion's role in this show is a mystery to me, I'm sorry. From the character concepts, it seems like it was supposed to be more psychological than how it ended up being, with stupid shallow plots being solved like nothing, instead of problems passing through each of the characters' mental issues and coming out with different answers and approaches towards its solution. Instead of there being anything personal to any of them, the answer to everything is "cheering", which makes the show stale and furthers the lack of meaning to any and every drama presented. Instead of being treated as sports often are in sports anime, cheering is a Deus ex Machina to not have to engage seriously with the very drama the series creates; the series raison d'etre is what kills it, making one wonder if the cheering was added afterwards to answer the questions presented, or if cheering was the only thing conceptualized and they winged everything else, resulting in this flavorless mess.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Sep 19, 2024
It's not terribly unfunny and unwatchable, it just doesn't know how to do comedy or a comedy series cast.
I can compare it to two anime, Bocchi the Rock and Cromartie Koukou. Bocchi has great visual comedy, an emotional core and a colorful interesting cast, that adds variety to the gags. Shikanoko would most likely profit from being only Koshi and Noko, as the rest of the cast is just white noise, they don't add anything, they don't have any interesting routines or gimmicks to the add to the comedy. They have a singular line (joke) and repeat it whenever they are on screen. However, even
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if the rest of the pointless cast was removed, there'd be one issue remaining: Koshi is a terrible tsukkomi. The straight man only being able to explain the joke is where comedy goes to die. There were very few gags in which Koshi's commentary added to it, instead of dragging it down. When Koshi is the boke and there's no tsukkomi's is when the gags flow the best, and the creator not being able to realize that and invest more in it probably shows how they're just doing whatever, instead of trying to learn and improve at their art.
As for Cromartie, it also has more characters than the author can write gags for, and sometimes it also has a series of gags that just don't land. BUT 1) Kamiyama isn't the one ruining the jokes, and the series learned that having him join in can be more interesting than just freaking out at the outlandish events surrounding him. 2) Even when the joke isn't a killer, you can be engaged in the overall story or situation, or a character gimmick that wasn't very funny on their first gag does better on their return. Shikanoko has no love for its characters, so the viewer also won't be invested on what can happen to them, and neither for the gags, as they never evolve.
The first two episodes are the best the show can offer, and while there were some gags between 3 and 11 that were smirkable, the overall rate of bombing makes the show one that can't be recommended to anyone looking to have a good time with a funny anime. If the last episode was funny, I'd be willing to say it was an okay show, at least, because it'd at least end on a high note, but it was 70% as unfunny as any episode. "It's the final episode, so this HAS to happen" isn't so funny a joke you get to do it 5 times, and the events that took place weren't interesting enough to forgive using genre staples as an excuse to write a bad finale. It's still shitposting even if you're just pretending.
If you need to experience the deer, watch the first two episodes and the finale, then go on with your day. It won't add anything to your life, but losing an hour of your day with a tentative bland comedy won't kill you either.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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