Kabushikigaisha Magi-Lumière

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. Andthat'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.

Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. - A Mahou Shoujo work focused on corporate management? That's a first. "A satirical, grounded take on magical girls, where they fight the biggest evil of all: corporate management." That's the comment from the ever-so-popular AniTuber Gigguk, and I have to say that the sentence rings true for mangaka Setta Iwaka's lone series that is a fascinating take on the oversaturated Mahou Shoujo genre that houses within the much-popularized platform of where manga series become huge juggernauts in the process: Shueisha's Shonen Jump+. And truth be told, you can experiment on a genre so much to the point where it becomes staleby the dozen (at least when it comes to Isekai/fantasy works), but at least in the case for Kabushikigaisha Magi-Lumière a.k.a Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc., it has a promising hook, on the basis that you have to give the anime a second chance to let it stretch its plot in a slow, but tolerable manner. In the world of Kabushikigaisha Magi-Lumière, the Mahou Shoujo work is taken as a true profession: a legitimate one because of the creatures that roam around, which can quickly become a nightmarish catastrophe: Kaii, monsters that come in all sorts of ranges that's pretty much like Pokémon with their various types. And for the sole girl that is the new college graduate of Kana Sakuragi headhunting for her first job, she has an excellent depth of memory to offer, but most companies would find it to be more of a liability than anything. That is, until she comes across the Mahou Shoujo of HitomI Koshigaya having to exterminate a Kaii in an emergency situation, and with her depth of knowledge being the prime factor to help the Magical Girl defeat the creature, Kana is immediately signed onto the unkempt start-up company that is Magi-Lumière, where Koshigaya is the company's Mahou Shoujo spokesperson. For one thing, birds of a feather flock together, and Kana finding herself within an old, rundown building that houses the startup company alongside eccentric people that ranges from the crossdressing Mahou Shoujo fanatic of president Kouji Shigemoto, his able HR secretary of Kaede Midorikawa, alongside magic engineer Kazuo Nikoyama, not one single person is sane in this small startup company. But if there's one thing going for them, their quirks make up the fact that despite having more than 500 Magical Girl companies established for the very reason to exterminate Kaii, Magi-Lumière stands out for its orthodox approach to the standard, typical work that is assigned: to create and assess their aesthetics, as opposed to big corporations like AST Corporation's president Kei Koga and his able-bodied, all-rounder Magical Girl of Mei Tsuchiba, who is the best representation of Japan's typical Black Company culture, putting funds and results first before people. The dynamics of Magi-Lumière being the startup company as it is, they need not conform to hard-and-fast rules that would be the irate response to workers quitting, and instead, can establish themselves as a Magical Girl company operating on their own terms, terms that would not assume or judge people at face value, and the wholly trust by hiring them based on their hobbies and likings that would be future contributions to the company in a good way to help excel the growth into a good reputation. Now that's the mark of a strategic company, especially for Magi-Lumière's status as a small organization willing to experiment on the good and bad and see what works to advance their limitations forward. The anime being yet another one of J.C.Staff projects for the Summer/Fall seasons, the No. 4 of 8 shows, certainly is the mark of what I would come to expect of a J.C.Staff show, though it's the collab with the smaller studio Moe being its first foray into anime production. While the overall production is a touch above average, it's a thing of beauty to see the classic Mahou Shoujo transformation trope get some much-needed love, with each girl getting a minute or two spliced just for their somewhat heavily elaborate transformation sequence that shows every nook and cranny of their Mahou Shoujo likeness. Honestly, I'd feel that this show has not a single minute wasted on anything insignificant, and even if it does, it's only splashing on the minor stuff, and this is the one extent that the hit-or-miss studio Moe director Shingo Nagai and his no-name staff team got things handled right. The standout would be music composer Makoto Miyazaki's OST for the anime, and given his repertoire of high-profile works, the likes of One Punch Man, Spy x Family, and the most recent of which is Zom 100, I guess I shouldn't be surprised of a veteran's weight and prowess after all. Even both Mafumafu's OP and syudou's ED are good to great, catchy songs at the very least, and I find myself enjoying both songs quite a bit. It's easy to get lost in the Mahou Shoujo realm thinking that the genre can flex just like Isekai/fantasy does, but at least it's not to the point where it is run dry and overdue to correct its course too late to its run. At least in the context of Kabushikigaisha Magi-Lumière a.k.a Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc., I think that this is a show that deserves a second look, despite looking average and directionless at the very start to set its paces properly. It does have a plot, but like the story of the hare and the tortoise, it's better to plow through the plot/premise slowly than rush through its paces and end up being a trainwreck of an adaptation. Of course, there is the original source material of the manga to plow through, but why read when you can watch the show instead? With Season 2 confirmed to focus more on the main story at hand, you have no excuses to not give the anime a shot if you haven't yet already, you won't be disappointed.

What is the main issue of this show? I really can't suspend my disbelief at the setting sometimes. Generally speaking, I wouldn't say I am very picky when it comes to worldbuilding. After all, complaining about how physics just doesn't work with 3DM gear in Attack on Titan is just an "erm actually" moment and doesn't actually affect anything. However, Kabushikigaisha Magi-Lumière fails to even pass my low expectations. It's magic in modern world! The problem is quite apparent once you look at even just the first few episodes. The show is a profession-type show, with the main focus being the logistics of how magicalgirls fight Kaii (monsters) with their magical powers. The way the magic is generated, the pipeline towards subduing kaii, and overall the general worldbuilding surrounding magical girls is the focal point of the story. They even use code to generate magical spells in this world. That's all and good, but that also means that if you're going to be so focused on the development of magical girls as an industry and profession, it's got to be a bit more than just Sailor Moon logic. After all, with Sailor Moon, the plot is that "our heroes --magical girls-- have magic powers and can transform." That's perfectly fine for what Sailor Moon was trying to achieve and I am satisfied with that explanation. This show obviously tries to go more in depth on how the magic actually works, so on and so forth. Thus, if you focus on it, you need to flesh it out more. So begs the question: there's a LOT of blatant plot holes or worldbuilding the anime just decides to never explain or show to you. For example, how does the magical girl industry actually operate? We can go back to even just the adventurer's guild in a classic medieval fantasy as an example. Adventurers take on quests based on their rank, and these quests are issued out in conjunction with the adventurer's guild. The adventurer's guild is a third party entity similar to a contracting company where they accept requests from all sorts of individuals. Even the government will commission adventurer's guild to serve as mercenaries or to clean up monsters in the area. Here's the thing though: even this simple explanation of how adventurers work is not extended to this show with magical girls. After all, what does the government have to say about this? I have to say that some novels and anime make governments omnipotent. For example, the government being able to predict when monsters appear and issue people to address the issue immediately. In this show, the government doesn't even exist. The show kind of just assumes that a capitalistic privatized magical girl industry would actually be a good solution for a public safety concern that governments would probably have large regulations or control over. At the very least, it would be a mix of privatized and public magical girls depending on the pay and location. Anyways, you might say this is a huge nitpick, but it ties into the main issues I have. For how in depth the show goes onto looking into how magical girls perform magic and how they exterminate monsters, I really dislike how the show never bothers to explain how the industry came to be in the first place. To begin with, magic can clearly be used with harm as well. How are magical girls controlled and how are magic girl criminals handled? It'd be kind of fun to just see how let's say, see how magic brooms and wands are programmed with failsafes to not target humans under any circumstances, and how the history of that came to be. That's kind of the charm of these types of shows in my opinion; being able to focus on how things came to be in a fun but sort of realistic manner. For a show that has episodes showcasing magic conventions on how to deal with monster mutation and how the pipeline of creating spells from code to the actual field is emphasized, there are still very large holes in logic like this is commonly shown in this anime, which doesn't really make sense for what the theme of the show seems to be. I'm only focusing so much on these sorts of things because the anime clearly wants to be realistic about some things. Such as the fact that in a privatized industry, there's proprietary spells, software, and equipment that they use. And that such proprietary software and information is licensed out to magical girl companies. When you have dedicated research labs towards in-house magic development in companies and have a large amount of exposition and worldbuilding surrounding it, sorry if I also expect to have some semblance of how the industry actually works when it comes to government intervention and public safety. All other aspects of the show are fine. The show was fine to watch. It's just large leaps in some logic and storytelling makes the show a lot worse. For example, in one episode, Kana has a perfectly functional broom while her partner, Koshigaya broke hers and is running out of power. Since Kana is a beginner while her partner is trying to do the heavy lifting in this episode, is it not normal for Kana to swap brooms so Koshigaya can do her job? Instead there's a crisis with a clear solution but Kana never wants to pursue that line of thought. You might argue that Koshigaya wouldn't be able to reach in time but it's clear that in the next few frames that Koshigaya is able to push off the building and land right next to Kana to do the exchange, showing that it was possible. Instead, Kana inexplicably just does a risky move that she's never done before and crisis averted. Strange. Other ways the show is just straight up awful is how Kana is portrayed in the first episode. "huh, I really need a way to hammer into the viewer that Kana has good memory. How do I do that?" In an inconsequential scene, Kana is able to memorize all of the previous customers' orders in a coffee shop because the barista forgot their orders. This scene is so shoehorned in just to show how Kana has good memory it's ridiculous. The scene was only crafted to showcase that Kana is smart. It's not the fact that Kana has good memory that makes the scene bad, it's just that the scene was only created to show to the audience the in such a straightforward and forced manner that makes it bad. Could it not have been done more subtly or elegantly? Anyways, I have been bashing the show but characters aren't so bad outside of Kana's first episode and how her character is introduced. The episodes themselves are frankly average but enough to retain interest. There doesn't seem to be much of an overarching plot so it just makes the episodes focused around magical girl monster extermination and how magic can be applied in different ways. I did think the special effects and CGI were a cut above normal to be honest, and the animation quality isn't the greatest but good enough. I enjoy how the anime blends the CGI and 2D animation. Only in far shots is CGI used for the main characters, and most if not all closeups are hand animated still which is good. The show clearly understands that CGI can be used as a way to save money, but when shots matter, they won't use it.

This is a show characterised not by the presence of any serious negatives, but by the utter lack of positives. There is no real plot, the characters have no real depth, the events have no real stakes, the anime has no style. It's so bland that there is nothing to really recommend or criticise. It just is. Utimately this is a show about start-ups and business/working culture, indeed occasionally it is sickeningly complimentary of start-ups. However, combining the premise of a business start-up with magical girls sounds like it should be fun, but Magilumiere's greatest sin is that it does nothing interesting or memorable with theconcept. I was bored for much of the run time, particularly in the later episodes. I've watched good anime and bad anime to completion, but this is the first time in a while where I've felt like I've simply wasted my time. My advice would be, there are better magical girl shows out there. There are better workplace shows out there. If you do still decide to watch, quit if/when you get bored, because it doesn't get better.

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