Sakuragi Kana is engaged in the miserable grind of looking for a job after graduating college. She’s smart, energetic, determined and has a great memory, but the companies she’s interviewing with don’t value any of those qualities. When she encounters rough-around-the-edges magical girl
In Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc, streaming on Amazon Prime, Kana finds a place for herself in a start-up magical girl agency and a place in our hearts for a company that values what Kana brings to the table.
There’s no Yuri in this series, either explicit or implied, but this may well be the most affirming anime I have ever watched. Kana’s skills are not just useful to people around her – they and and she are valued. She is praised not just because she is helpful, but also because she is empathetic, smart and caring. This anime provides Kana, a girl who has been rejected by every company she’s interviewed with, a home where she can be seen as her best self. I cannot tell you what a gut-deep pleasure it is to watch a story that is not rooted in loss or trauma, or confusion or guesswork. Kana learns the tools and techniques, even as her team develops new magical attacks for her and Hitomi.
The only real mystery we face is what the nature of the Kaii are, and why they exist at all, but I allow that as the one handwaved fact for this series. – and given that one fact, the rest of the series is thus far holding itself together consistently. I even approve of the transformation sequence which is firmly rooted in shoujo references, but utterly avoids the kind of service that “magical girl for adults” often engages in. In fact, this series feels a bit like a magical Josei, in which real-life adult concerns are presented as a matter of course, and gives us a specific situation in which this particular women’s work is lauded, but devalued, in other companies, even as Kana’s company affirms and uplifts her.
Ratings:
Art – 8 Solid
Story – 9 Great so far, with one evil company on the horizon
Characters – 7 I hope to learn more, without raking anyone through the emotional muck
Service – 0
Yuri – 0
Overall – 8
You can read Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc manga on the Shonen Jump app, or the Viz site in English, or for free in English on the Mangaplus app from Shueisha, or Shonen Jump Plus in Japanese, so you have several opportunities to enjoy this surprisingly affirming series. I don’t know about you, but I really needed this. ^_^
A good review here! I don’t always agree with you, but I tend to wholeheartedly agree with this one! I don’t see any yuri (unlike the small amount in Acro Trip), but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It was really helpul to buy the manga beforehand and begin reading it while the anime has been airing. I guess I’m a person who likes to read manga on paper, so I have all the English versions to-date and have pre-ordered the others. I am slowly building my own personal manga and light novel collection, but its a long process.
Oh, I have an upcoming post/article where I briefly mentioning it in a post centering on female friendship (mostly on anime, but also on the very few Western animations focusing on this), saying, in part “the currently airing Magilumiere Co. Ltd. has a found family vibe, especially between protagonists Kana Sakuragi…and existing magical girl Hitomi Koshigaya.” It all relates to a recent survey by UCLA’s Center for Scholars & Storytellers I read recently about the increasing trend among young people [they say teens, but they asked most questions to those aged 10-24] (in the U.S.) to favor friendship/platonic relationships over romance, and they’ve done the same survey for a couple years now. I’m not one to wholly believe polls and surveys these days, but it was a great opening to a post focusing on female friendship, primarily in anime. So, that will (hopefully) be coming out soon. A number of posts on here are cited, along with a variety of my own, and that article you wrote last year for ANN (“The Joy Of The Everyday: Emotional Intimacy Between Women in Slice-of-Life Anime”). I know some people on social media snarled at it, but I just read it recently and I tended to… agree with it.
Always enjoy reading your posts/reviews on here.
Thanks for the comment Burkely! I’ll look forward to reading that.
Luckily for my Joy of the Everyday article, the snarling was mostly quiet snarling “why didn’t you include this anime that I like?” and thus, relatively irrelevant to the point. Overall, reception was positive and folks seemed to understand the point.
Sure! I’m glad the reception was mostly positive. Otherwise, I’m slowly building up my physical media collection, and have a whole bunch I’m calling my “yuri shelf”. I’m doing the same with yuri manga as well. I’ve also been slowly ordering some series from Japan (since it happens to be in the same Blu-ray region as the U.S.). Otherwise, my article is out, it just came out this morning: https://popculturemaniacs.com/a-trend-toward-nomance-in-animation-increased-depictions-of-female-friendships/ [it will be reposted/published on my personal WordPress blog on 11/1]. I’m still learning and won’t say that I may have made some errors there or that the article is perfect, but I can say it does appear from what I looked at that there is more anime focused on female friendship, as of late, than Western animation. There are a few Western animations, but there’s only a handful that are currently airing (one is even claimed to be cancelled), probably because executives don’t see it as profitable.
Executives are, and always have been, a problem in entertainment. Unable to see beyond representation of themselves, and listening to people people mostly like them, they have for decades been the bottleneck in good entertainment.
Nice article and, as always, thank you for the shout-outs.