Magikano

Information of Anime

Haruo Yoshikawa is just your average school student.  One day, a transfer student named Ayumi Mamiya came to his class.  Haruo was scared at first since he believes that she was the girl that he saw the previous day that disappeared from his eyes like a ghost.  To his surprise, he finds out that Ayumi is working as a maid for his home.  What he doesn't know is that she's a witch who is cursed.  To free her from this curse, she must awaken Haruo's powers.  However, his three sisters, Chiaki, Maika, & Fuyuno Yoshikawa, who are also witches, tries to stop Ayumi from seducing Haruo.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

What I got from this anime so far is about Ayumi's curse.  She was cursed when she was little by looking at a mirror.  The mirror showed a reflection of a young Haruo.  Looking at him, Ayumi was cursed.  She gets sent to the Yoshikawa household to act as a maid for them, which is didn't like.  However, she needs to remove the curse because it not only removes her magic powers, but her life as well.  To do this, she tries to seduce Haruo in becoming a man & awake his magical powers.  Because he's kind of an airhead, Ayumi will have a large task in front of her, aside from his sisters interrupting them.  Plus, it looks like there will be some outside competition as it looks like they are some girls drawn to Haruo.  With that isn't enough, Ayumi's maid, Rika Anju, comes down & live with Haruo & the others as a official maid & will heed to Haruo's commands.  However, Rika's purpose is to help remove Ayumi's curse & stop her sister, Michiru Mamiya, who is preventing Ayumi from removing the curse.  Through the show, we see a woman hiding in the backgrounds observing Haruo & company.  Around the end of episode nine, we see how much power Haruo has.  However, it's only a temporary thing.

As the show progresses, Ayumi falls deeper & deeper for Haruo that she develops some jealously when he's around other girls.  As this is happening, the curse starts to get lifted at the end of episode 11 which concerns Michiru.  However, it turns out that Haruo's magic powers are the Demon Lord's.  By setting up a trap for the girls, Michiru takes Haruo away from them.

Recovering from the trap, Ayumi & the others go to Ayumi's home to rescue Haruo.  In the meantime, Michiru absorbs Haruo's powers.  We later see a battle between Ayumi's team & Michiru with her being the victor.  After the battle, Haruo's demon lord powers are unleashed & creates a tear between the two worlds.  Mrs. Hongo appears & reveals the truth of how the Demon Lord was sealed by reversing time & how is she an artificial human that is use to seal him in case of emergencies.  After failing to reserve time on Haruo due to his past memories with the girls, Mrs. Hongo asks for the help of the other girls including Michiru to seal & reserve time on Haruo.  Here, Ayumi is sent to the core to free Haruo & she finally confesses her feelings to him.  The story ends as the credits roll with past scenes shown in fast motion & being played backwards; basically to show time going back.  After the credit roll, we got back to where Haruo meets Ayumi in the streets for the first time.

My Personal Review

Magikano is a strange anime series in my view.  The comedy seems far-fetched aside from the amount of ecchi content it has.  It's a harem type of anime due to the number of girls around Haruo.  You should expect some funny ecchi & love stuff.  In fact, I enjoyed it a lot due to its crazy harem.

Animation

The drawings are somewhat weird.  Also, it's pretty appealling for some reason.  Ayumi is drawn differently from what I've seen from other anime shows.  She looks like a neko girl to me, but she isn't.  The hair clips on her hair look like nekomimis & her eyes really look like a cat's.  But I'm really quite drawn in to her appearance even though her face is a bit round & chubby.  The other girls aren't drawn attractively like Ayumi.  They are more like typical medium-sized eye & round face girls.  Haruo does look a bit girly, but that really fits his character description.  The other males really look weird & I'm thinking that's how the series is.  The faces of the characters are a bit chubby than what I usually see when you view them from the sides.  However, the drawings start to go sour around the faces when the show is close to the end.

Colour wise, it's quite bright at a reasonable level.  It's doesn't clash with the backgrounds.

The backgrounds are ok.  Not the very best, but it works.  There isn't a lot of detail in it, so you would probably see a lot of bare walls with little amount of decorations on them.  The background has that anime feel to it as it doesn't look natural or realistic.

Animation flow is more on the weird side.  It's more focused on magical side of things.  Fast movements, high flying bodies, etc.  Fits the anime well.

Sound

The sound effect are ok, but the volume level is terrible.  The voices over take the loud sound effects so easily.  The explosions are so soft that it makes it sounds like it's over the other side of the world than less than ten feet away.  I think it got better on the second episode.  As the show progress, a lot of weird & funny sounds get added in the series.  For example, when Haruo got fat after eating a full course meal, the sounds of a baby cry was cued to make him look like pregnant instead.  It really adds a lot to the jokes in the series.

The music is nothing special.  A lot of it is on the intense side with a touch of cuteness for flavour.

The voices are not bad.  In fact, they are pretty good.  They match their characters well & their performance are good.  However, when the girls get very angry, you can heard some of the echoing effect from the studio room, especially from Ayumi.  It seems the seiyuus' voices are a bit too aggressive to the mic.

Story

It's really an harem based anime where we have this useless guy with potential magic powers being surrounded with a lot of magical girls that like him.  Although the show is heavily involved about Ayumi changing Haruo into a manly guy to get the curse removed from her, it's moving at a slow & steady pace.  The show is more on the just-for-laughs side than focusing on moving the plot.  Even with Rika helping out & Michiru stopping Ayumi, it still didn't feel like the story was going to go anywhere.  However, the jokes here gets funnier along the way even though they were perverted & downright bizarre. Although we discover that Haruo is the Demon Lord near the very end of the show, it doesn't give too much of a surprise.  Although it surprised me a bit, these kind of things are getting very common in a lot of today's anime.

What I find bizarre is how Ayumi falls for Haruo.  From what I saw, there was no "trigger" that made Ayumi want Haruo.  Although she wanted him to look at her only & make him a real man, they didn't really create a heavy effect on the love relationship.  Because the manga is still running, the writers probably cut out a bit too much stuff to create this relationship between the two characters.  Although Ayumi confesses her love to a somewhat unconscious Haruo, we don't know if that confession got through & Ayumi still has those feelings for him at the end.

Overall Conclusion

Magikano really is a funny show.  They are times where I didn't laugh at the jokes & times where I was covering my mouth to prevent loud laughter.  I'm thinking people who like their anime with ecchi comedy & magical girls will enjoy this, especially if they like harem ones.  However, the ending felt incomplete to me.

Magikano gets a seven out of ten from me.  The show felt like it was not moving until Haruo started to use his powers.  Although it's at a steady pace, it really feels slow.  The plot is very lacking & the main plot expose itself at the last two episodes or so.  It's got my interest because of the jokes and that's what kept me glued to this show.

Last updated on January 14, 2008