Saturday, January 11, 2014

[New][January 2014] Mahou Sensou

Right. Soo... Does my insurance cover that?

Summary: In this modern magic action story, Takeshi Nanase is an ordinary high school boy who has a somewhat dark past. Due to certain circumstances, he forms a "fake" couple with his childhood friend Kurumi Isoshima, but otherwise lives a normal life. However, one day a girl named Mui Aiba, in a uniform he has never seen before, collapses in front of him on the school campus. Mui tells Takeshi that she is a magician, and apologizes for turning Takeshi into a magician, too.

First Impression: This should be average at worst, good to great at best. Action driven drama so far. They're taking a bit too long to stop and explain things, but that's a good sign, usually.

First Opinion: Gonna bump this one up a few notches on the priorities list since Pupa kind of disappointed me by being a five minute show. I'm also indirectly grateful to it for one of its summaries I harvested to make mine containing that phrase "Modern Magic Story", as I now have the perfect term to use when I'm trying to explain why Magic is unique in a Terry Goodkind novel, with it's rules, upon rules, within rules, that borders on science-fiction science and physics.
More to the point, they make a few calls that I think are in good taste, such as hinting that magicians were always about, but just retreated away from the normal world. That always starts stronger than trying to convince the audience that they've just always been around and still are, when you're using a modern setting. For those of us who frequently watch anime, we have a higher level of 'Suspension of Disbelief' to allow ourselves to be immersed in the story, world, and characters. A lot of people don't find it so easy, so whenever a show makes good choices like this, they earn points in my book because it helps increase the chances that I'll be able to share this with others who aren't as big on anime as I am.
On a less positive note, the show needed to make a recovery midway in of me not liking Mui. At the end of the show, she's sitting on a nice equalized scale, but at the beginning she was beginning to look a bit too comfortable in the 'Damsel in Distress' role, which didn't mix well with them trying to make her a fighter with a gun. You are not a good damsel in distress with a gun, and you are not a good fighter when you're playing weak that much. Nevertheless: Recovered, she earns some points for fast solid reasoning and keeping cool in a situation spiraling out of scale.

Gonna give this show some moderately high hopes, and as always, level off my expectations at a nice comfortably low position.

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