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[series:3645#628] | ||||||
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(Two episodes watched): What do you do with magical girls once they have accomplished the goal they were created for? That is the unusual and interesting question this anime raises. I was certain that the Disas would be back before episode one was finished, but no, it looks like the idea here is that Asuka will use her talents to fight crime and terrorism instead. Her 'guardian' appears to her one day to ask her to join the 'M Squad', a magical anti-crime unit. She's initially not interested--she has been slightly traumatized by her experiences, which, again is something that seldom happens to magical girls. She makes a couple of friends and when one is threatened by a thoroughly unlikely criminal act she realizes that maybe she should sign on after all. It looks like eventually the other four magical girls will join up as well. The show could be pretty grisly at times, for instance the sadistic terrorist Asuka takes on at one point or what the Disas once did to her parents. You could almost say that it takes a sort of ham-fisted approach of creating thoroughly despicable opponents then having Asuka slaughter them. I wish there was more to her magical powers than an ability to deflect bullets and hack opponents to pieces with a fancy knife. While the basic premise is interesting, I can't help feeling that the plot to this show is not particularly daring or unpredictable. For instance, terrorists who just go on a shooting spree in a Tokyo street--they rescued a captured leader who was in transit, and while they're at it, why not just slaughter a few dozen people? That's not the way any credible terrorist group operates. The villains are just pure evil, and there is no mention of what cause they fight for--it would be a good deal more fun if they had minds of their own, and even if they are wrong they honestly believe that what they are doing is justified. But this show seems to just be taking the simplistic approach of whipping up hatred for them so that Asuka can butcher them. Apparently they have some evil magical girls fighting for them as well (one of them kills a policeman with a pair of scissors), but that prospect didn't really excite me. While Asuka has been given a basic personality I doubt that it will expanded much. Basically, this show struck me as gratuitous violence without a particularly interesting plot--I felt sort of patronized by it's simplicity at times--and ultimately I decided not to watch the rest. Last updated Saturday, February 02 2019. Created Sunday, January 27 2019. | ||||||||
