Notes of Magical Warfare Episode 1

Is it just me, or do all of the heroes look like villains in this poster?

• Summary of Magical Warfare Episode 1:

  We open on the decaying ruins of a city, and a girl calls out to a man who appears to be her brother, to which he replies “I’m not your brother”. Cut to a house, where we see our protagonist Takeshi talk about how he wants to get away from his house. He then meets up with his girlfriend, Kurumi, and the two of them set off to their school to train in the dojo. Just as Kurumi leaves him to go to the dojo, Takeshi finds the girl from the opening passed out outside. He takes her to the nurses office, where she wakes up and shoots at Takeshi. She then explains that her name is Mui Aiba, and she’s a magician. Just then, her brother shows up with some other people who are there to take Mui away with them. Takeshi fights them, and discovers that he was accidentally given magic powers. Then, Kurumi shows up and also obtains magic powers. Then, a childhood friend of Takeshi named Kazumi shows up and also obtains magic powers. Takeshi is able to defeat the people with Mui’s brother with the help of Mui. Mui then takes Takeshi, Kurumi, and Kazumi in to the desolated place we saw in the beginning.

Thanks for telling us, Miss Exposition!

• My Take: Looking back on it, I remember being really excited for this show. Out of the entire winter 2014 lineup, Magical Warfare (also known as Mahou Sensou) and Space Dandy were the only two that I felt would be worth my time to give my weekly opinions about. They seemed to be the two I would gravitate towards the most based on their short descriptions. After watching the first episode of Magical Warfare, I can say wholeheartedly that this show seriously needs to have a better second episode, because the impressions I got from the first episode weren’t all too flattering.

• The first red flag that came up for me is how the main character, Takeshi, seems pretty void of personality. He’s just another quiet, mysterious high school student who has superior abilities in (you guessed it) kendo. He has a somewhat normal life, although we briefly see that his home-life probably isn’t perfect when he states, “I’d go anywhere to get out of this house… even to Hell”. Maybe that signifies something he did in the past? I don’t know, but his home-life dilemma (although seen very briefly) was much more interesting than anything else that happened in this episode.

• The second red flag that came up for me was Mui. She’s magic. She faints. She shoots at Takeshi when she thinks he’s being a pervert (despite the fact that she fell on him, demonstrating the classic “female misinterpretation of situation” trope we see all too much in anime). But she, just like Takeshi, has no character. I will admit that I sort of liked it when one of the characters who was trying to take her back eventually shouted out how she has an obvious brother complex. But that’s just because, well, it’s obvious, and I am a little glad that they were aware of this when writing the episode.

• The dialog can explain everything about magicians, how people become magicians, the history of magicians… but can’t explain why Mui is at Takeshi’s school?! It’s too selective in the information it gives us!

• The way I saw it, every character here is just present to have something happen to them rather than be characters. For instance;
  1. Takeshi, our main character, is just there to give Mui somebody to explain what magic is in this world.
  2. Mui is just there to spout exposition and act innocent.
  3. Kurumi is just there to give the audience information about Takeshi’s broken home life… and to have her breasts grow for no explainable reason other than “magic” (no, really).
  4. Kazumi is just there to… you know what? I don’t even know why he’s there. “Magic”.
  5. All of the people who show up to get Mui are just there to make sure something actually happened in this episode.
• Everyone, and I mean everyone was void of any sort of character. Nothing any of them said made me invested in either their life or personality. They all seemed to just be there to advance the narrative while offering no character establishment.

He never once asked why she has a gun, much less why she shot at him

• Some of the characters try to have funny moments, but not a single one generates a laugh. When Kurumi’s breasts start to grow for no reason other than “magic”, it plays these wacky sound effects. It’s as if they’re telling us, “This is the funny part, stupid! Laugh!” All of these moments are awkward at best.

• On a more positive note, now that our characters are out of “real world”, they can start using their magic. Hopefully that will be much more enjoyable. But that’s just optimistic speculation.

It’s like a soap opera, but instead of somebody getting pregnant, they just become a magician

• Summing up the first episode of Magical Warfare is hard. It just seems to fail on every level for me; the characters aren’t characters, the artwork isn’t anything special, the dialog consists entirely of exposition, and everything about this episode is completely archetypical, not to mention bland. Magical Warfare needs to up the quality in the second episode, because I can tell you for a fact that I will not watch 11 more episodes of what I saw here.