Gushing Over Magical Girls Anime - First Impressions - I am not gushing over it.
Written by Rei Caldombra 1/16/2024
Sexual content warning for this post. This is based on watching the first 2 episodes and does contain spoilers for those episodes.
The main reason I checked it out is because I saw some people in the Demon Girl Next Door fandom drawing crossover art of it and seeing some similarities between Shamiko and the main characters. I read the summary and off of that I thought there could be some funny stuff from this premise and saw the similarities people mentioned. I went into this expecting degeneracy more on the comedic side and magical girl parody. What I got was straight up softcore hentai. I got hit with the uncensored boobs and went “Oh. Uh ok that just shifted the tone.” Then I saw how detailed the character's skin was during the changing scene and went “OH this actually wants to make us horny”. There is really not much else here than horniness. I do like the character’s hair and facial design but that really is all I have to say on the show itself.
I do not have a problem with sexual content fundamentally and admit to being a degenerate who does get ironic and unironic enjoyment out of sexual content. But as I am now, I have no interest in watching a show that is skirting that line of titillation and legit porn. If I want to see sexy anime characters, then I will go watch actual hentai. Rather than sitting through the checklist of “normal anime stuff” these types of shows fit in so they can claim they aren’t just porn. If your goal is to be a normal series, then this is going too far. If you're trying to turn people on, then there’s tons of screen time that does nothing to make that happen. I admit to enjoying shows like this when I was younger like To Love Ru. I do not think this kind of show is worthless or problematic. If it does something for you then that's great. But it doesn't have anything that makes me want to keep watching it now that my initial curiosity is gone.
I will go on to talk about some topics related to sexual content without being any more graphic than I already have. I don’t think I’ll have many chances to talk about this stuff as I do not care for this type of show and have no desire to talk about anything more intense than this type of show. The topics are if this kind of media is problematic and proportions in anime character design.
On the topic of whether this is problematic I say no. I feel like talking about this here as it seems like every time a fetishy show comes out and gets some attention, a more recent example being Don’t Mess with Me Nagatoro’s anime adaptation, there are people arguing about how these shows send bad messages or are problematic in some way. With Nagatoro, it was that it promotes bullying (it doesn’t in my opinion). I think people need to look at the context of how a piece of media presents itself and see if it seems like it is seriously trying to preach a message. When it comes to a show like this I do not feel it is trying to have any serious message about topics like women’s presentation in media, sexuality, pornography, etc. This is just dumb horny stuff. You are totally valid if you think there are problematic elements and characters within the story. Such as Venalita (the demon mascot) that manipulates Hiiragi and forces her to fight the magical girls, or Hiiragi sexually assaulting the magical girls. It’s valid if that makes you uncomfortable or you don't want to see that. Both of the previously described events are horrible acts to do to a person. What I am arguing is that the show is not trying to make it seem like anything that happens is comparable to real life. It’s not making political statements in my opinion. To me it is clear from the content, language, tone, etc. that this is not something to take seriously. Which is why I say this is not a problematic piece of media. It's just dumb horny content appealing to fetishes with no connection to real life social ideas. Anger towards how people are portrayed in the media should be put towards media that does make serious commentary you find immoral. These very much exist in the anime/manga/light novel sphere, such as the trashy, venomous ones where you can tell it was written by someone who decided all women are terrible because they got rejected. If you disagree with me on the impact of these types of shows that is totally fine. I’m happy to hear your opinion. This is just my own thoughts at the current time.
Feel free to skip this as I'm about to talk about how butts are drawn in anime. I will give this anime some respect for actually bothering to give the butts some form. 90% of the time butts in anime are drawn the exact same, being very flat and with little definition. Regardless of the body type. Boobs are drawn with a variety of sizes and shapes, but butts rarely get the same detail. I do unironically think that is silly from an artistic standpoint. Not trying to go on some tirade about how female characters need to be hot and meet horny men’s standards like certain dumb toxic people are being towards video games in recent times. What I’m saying is that if you are trying to make characters sexy and/or have a variety of body types, don’t make every character’s ass the same while having every single cup size on display. And this genuinely does go for biologically male characters too, for them it’s also all flat asses and everyone falls into the builds of extremely muscular, extremely fat or standard thin. Male character designs in the anime sphere do often suffer from having no distinguishing features other than hair, eye color and height. More varied body types are nice to see, whether the media is trying to be sexy or simply wants to have better character designs. I’m all for body inclusivity both from a social standpoint and wanting to see characters that don’t always look the same. Give butts the respect they deserve.
Getting back to the actual anime now as this closes out. I do not plan to continue watching this show as there really is nothing appealing to me now that I know what its intentions are. And I am not curious enough to ride it out to see if anything interesting happens. This is a bit of a weird one, thank you for reading through my tangents that were spurred from magic bdsm anime.
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