Do you like magic? And blood and mutilation and female breasts? Then Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku is the anime for you.
Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku is a seinen anime following the life and times of sixteen women in the city of Nabuka that have been chosen to become Magical Girls after spending many hours of their not-so-ideal lives playing a smartphone game promising to do just that. The protagonist, Snow White, goes about her Magical Girl lifestyle pretty carelessly and full of joy until the app that provided the girls with magical powers starts killing them off on a weekly basis. This results in the girls killing each other to survive rather than waiting to be wiped out.
As Snow White joins the Magical Girl gang, she makes friends with some girls and not so much with others. The viewer is introduced to a variety of characters, spanning from full-on tsundere to super-kawaii, paranoid, unreasonably sexy and ‘just there by accident’. Nothing new there. The most interesting one is probably Swim Swim, a young child that starts as an outsider, develops as a strong leader and ends up a complete maniac. Other than that the recipe is pretty standard.
The girls have to collect Magical Candy that are being counted by the app. Every week, the girl with the least candy ends up dead, killed off by an evil floating tampon called FAV. Thankfully, we are spared the visuals of that.
Each Magical Girl reacts to the challenge differently depending on her powers and personal background. Some, like Snow White, try to stay out of the killing spree and earn Magical Candy by helping people and doing good deeds. Others earn their candy by being suicidal bitches, like Calamity Mary, a middle aged alcoholic woman who was beating her child and was abandoned by her husband. And of course, some plot against each other, starting with Ruler, a megalomaniac idiot who gets betrayed by her lackeys while trying to take out Snow White.
With a rather consistent pace, the girls keep dying. I have to admit that the show does a pretty good job being unpredictable, with complete outsiders like Tama, the ultimate underdog of the show, randomly killing off the most hard-core ultra bitch out there, Cranberry, who –before dying– was the person responsible for this whole mess, having being anointed by the Magical World to oversee the Magical Girl exams and willingly turning them into a slaughterhouse.
The media of the show would be considered rather basic. Decent animation, but nothing jaw-dropping, with the battle being interesting at best. The colours are very dim throughout the whole show, as it mostly take place at night. That makes sense, but on the other hand, I personally wouldn’t mind some colourful funkiness when I’m light-heartedly watching underage women kill each other in funny outfits.
The voice acting is sufficient, with some pretty cool performances by Megumi Ogata (Cranberry) and Inori Minase (Swim Swim), but you will not find any superstar voice actors playing here. The music is what you would expect on a show of that style and content, with an upbeat emotional song (‘Sakebe’ by Manami Numakura) as an opening theme (this ‘IMAAAAA’ screaming will be staying with me for a while) and the ending an uninteresting jrock song (‘Dreamcatcher’ by Nano).
Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku belongs to that very long list of Magical Girl themed anime, spanning off from Sailor Moon to this day. The extravagant transformations, sexy fantasy clothing and special power of each girl are all stereotypical traits of the genre. However, I find its content to be less superficial than that; possibly a reference to the whole aesthetic of Magical Girl culture, and maybe even a critique to the whole naiveté that comes with it.
Nevertheless, the themes are still very strong. The protagonist is a perfect doe-eyed cutie, the portrayal of women is obviously sexualized and even though it brings together an interesting mix of elements, Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku fails to break the mould, remaining a non-controversial, standardized anime series that ‘wasn’t bad’ but very few people will actually remember in the following years.
Did I enjoy this show? Yes. Was it amazing? No. Would I recommend it? Maybe. When it comes to great anime, I believe there are two great categories: the ones so good that even non-otakus can watch, like Death Note or Ghost in the Shell, and those that make use of everything the genre has to give and create rich content that will set a paradigm for others to follow, or touch subjects in a completely innovative and ground-breaking way. And quite frankly, Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku is neither, which makes it just average. Pleasantly yet definitively average.
Spoiler alert: there’s no such thing as Magical Girls.
Bah. This show could have done way better. Disagree? Let us know in the comment section below. See you in the next season, if there will be one that is! Don’t forget to check our Winter 2017 episodic anime reviews! I am going to cover Demi-chan wa Kataritai, so look forward to it.
Part of the Fall 2016 Season (October)
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(C)2016遠藤浅蜊・宝島社／まほいく
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