©岩田雪花・青木裕／集英社・株式会社マジルミエ製作委員会
Taking a couple weeks off for a story arc rife with Serious Conceptual Debates and spiced up with (a little) bloodshed was neat, but now it’s time for Magilumiere to get back to business as usual. Kana’s back with the regular crew, if not the regular work environment, but I’ll get to that in a moment. I was mainly just elated to see Koshigaya back at the beginning of this episode, while she, in turn, was adorably excited to see Kana again. I’m not sure what the rules on workplace romance are for magical girls—that tends to be frowned upon in the real-world version of the former, but shipping girls together can be a key component of the latter for some viewers. Hopefully the worldbuilding of this anime will eventually elucidate on the best practices of this element.
It’s not like Magilumiere is gun-shy about getting granular about other aspects of its distinctive fantasy-fusion setting. That’s embodied in the locale of this week’s episode and the reason Kana and the rest of the crew aren’t in the office: they’re attending the annual Magical Technology EXPO, where all the latest advancements in magical girl monster-blastin’ can be seen! As I mentioned at the end of my write-up last week, this is another winner of a sub-concept within Magilumiere‘s overall brilliant setup. It’s to the point that one of my main complaints about the episode is that the need for dalliances like plot advancement and character focus means the audience doesn’t get a ton of time to just marinate in the magical atmosphere of a trade show floor stuffed with frilly outfits and transformation devices.
The spirit is there to start, anyway. Anyone who’s ever been to a convention before can recognize the cat-herding push and pull of different members of the group wanting to check out different things. Shigemoto and Niko fanning out over everything seen in the brochure is wildly relatable—I’d probably react the same way if I were there. And there’s a neat combination of that kind of aesthetic appreciation with the high-powered business approach in how Midorikawa is sent out on a hyper-scheduled high-speed sweep to gather all the info and business cards he can. There are snippets in that micro-plot that sate my desire for the kind of mundane magical-ness I love about this show’s setup. Just the shot of some magic wands set up like electronics store demo units was enough to make me want to wave Miracle Lights around like I was a kid in a Precure movie.
However, that is just the framework for this episode to provide additional magical professionals for the crew of Magilumiere to make a name for themselves interacting with. Appropriately enough for the focus on magical technology, it would seem to be Niko’s turn for this storyline. I like Niko! I enjoy how his design takes so many of the signifiers of the classic pop-cultural otaku stereotype—glasses, ponytail, plaid shirt—but specifically designs him to be positively adorable, not to mention so earnest in what he’s a fanboy of. But this little arc for him is just barely getting going in this episode, so beyond his timidness in the face of industry peers and some brief flashes to how he got involved with Magilumiere in the first place, the audience isn’t given much insight into the little guy yet.
The writing is clearly setting up to follow through on Niko next week, but it still undercuts what’s shown for him in this episode, since viewers don’t have enough to go on to be invested in how he’s helping out with the crisis that arises at the expo. Niko’s mad magitech skills have been demonstrated before in earlier episodes—if this is going to be his showcase, it should have more even insight into what’s driving him, what his insecurities are in this moment. I still like Niko and want to see him overcome his neuroses, to say nothing of the momentary tech limitations. Don’t you hate how your work computer always, without fail, screws up at the most critical moments? But I’m left impatiently waiting to see how the rest of Niko’s backstory is going to get back-loaded in next week’s episode.
It doesn’t help that this episode looks as uneven as it feels in terms of structure. The team at Moe and J.C. Staff seem to be trying to use the first part of the episode where there’s relatively little “action” to conserve resources, but even the still bits have a fair amount of crust and jank to their visuals. There’s one really awkward cut in the scene where Kana and Niko are talking to the two magical tech engineers. The second half of the episode, trying to keep up with the flying action, devolves into a few rough pans and zooms. It’s nothing totally busted, but it did take me further out of an episode that already felt like it was stuttering a bit. I’ve enjoyed Magilumiere enough so far to have faith that it’ll right itself when it continues this arc next week, but I shouldn’t have to qualify that sort of thing. The best businesses ought to deliver consistently good service.
Rating:
Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. is currently streaming on
Amazon Prime.
Chris would 200% work for a magical girl company if they were real, but he’ll settle for writing reviews and ad copy instead. You can peruse more of his views over on his blog
, or catch him reskeeting art of anime girls (magical and otherwise) on his BlueSky.
