Welcome back to the Anime Grab Bag! In this series, we’ll dive into the depths of specific anime subgenres and hunt, perhaps futilely, for hidden gems. Each month, long-time otaku and old friends Leah and Bridget will spin a custom roulette wheel composed of qualifying anime in the genre and watch three random pilot episodes. You can find this volume’s wheel here!
While the wheel will contain almost every possible title in the subgenre, your hosts must abide by the following rules:
- Each show must be an anime that at least one host has never seen.
- Each show must be available to stream somewhere so that readers can join in if they want to.
- The hosts are forbidden to do any real research on the show before viewing it, although a simple Google search and some Wikipedia-ing during and after are fair game.
In each column, we’ll react to our selections and share our thoughts on where these fit into the subgenre and speculative fiction as a whole. We’ll comment on everything from music direction to character design, make comparisons to other series, and finally ask the most important question: Would we watch more of this?
Feel free to play along by watching these shows yourself (if you dare), spinning the wheel to meet your fate, or sharing your expertise below.
This week we’re excited to spin a wheel full of the power of friendship, sparkly transformations, unfair burdens placed on young girls, and a whole lot of gumption…
It’s Magical Girl Mania!
First Spin: Tropical-Rouge! PreCure (Toei Animation, 2021)
B: We were always going to end up watching a PreCure. There are twenty-odd series in the franchise.
L: At work, a whole delegation of students demands PreCure when I give out stickers. And when I don’t have them, they are heartbroken. And when I do have them, I have the wrong ones. They want Wonderful PreCure. I have… I don’t know, Less-Wonderful PreCure stickers.
B: I will say that HeartCatch PreCure! has a goth girl. Alas, we soon discover that we cannot watch HeartCatch PreCure! and admire the goth girl, because Netflix is sitting on the rights to many shows in the franchise—as a substitute, we decide to watch Tropical-Rouge! per Bridget’s request.
B: But you know, there’s also an idol PreCure featuring adults.
L: Someone commented about it on our last grab bag! They mentioned that it’s aimed at adult men. I think, unfortunately, outsiders would assume I mean that in a negative way, but it’s not like that. It’s hard to explain but… like the early days of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fandom, there’s still this kind of quiet demand for shows that speak to an innocence men don’t usually get to enjoy. And of course, every fandom has fetishists, but that’s not the bulk of it when it comes to idol and magical girl anime. It’s often a sort of nostalgia for a form of childhood daydreams that were not allowed in a hyper-masculine society. You know what I mean. You see this in your Aikatsu! fandom.
B: Most Aikatsu! fans are guys, yeah. Well, actually, there’s a big thing in Aikatsu Friends!, because it has adult characters. And the point is: just because you’re an adult, or a boy, doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to dream. Everyone has the right to dream, and to be soft, and cute. It’s very emotional.
L: Yes! And that brings me back to handing out PreCure stickers. Some little boys want them too. It upsets me when I catch another kid teasing them for it, saying “Kimoi!” (“Gross!”). It is so hard for boys to keep loving cute things sometimes. Why is that mindset still so pervasive? There’s a lot of cultural discourse that needs to happen there.
Viewing Summary
This is the 18th installment in Pretty Cure, aka PreCure, but you don’t need to know anything about the franchise to jump in. Most iterations air on Sundays and they have a few elements in common. Namely, the characters derive their abilities from items, usually cosmetics. And hey, you can visit real-life PreCure Pretty Stores around Japan and purchase these items for yourself!
L: The cynic in me finds it difficult to ignore that the franchise exists to shill hair accessories to children.
B: I know it is all to sell things, but I still love it.
L: We both stan Pokemon so we can’t say shit.
Name a franchise that does not exist to make money and we will laugh at you.
Within seconds of the episode starting, Bridget spots her kryptonite in the form of a spunky protagonist. “Oh no, it’s some red-haired little bish. What if her name’s Akari?” Too often in her life, Bridget has been smitten by some Akari or another.
But no, this girl’s name is Natsuumi Manatsu, and she is overpacking her suitcase and traveling by ferry to an Okinawa-inspired city called Aozora to live with her mother, who works at an adorable aquarium. The show’s color palette is determined to deliver on the eponymous tropical theme. Everything is lush and summery and clean. The animation is slick, the character designs charming; faces are expressive and luminous. This PreCure has budget, baby.
We’re treated to a jolly OP that has Bridget exclaiming “It’s so cute though!” every seven seconds, and then afterward, we are underwater. We meet a desperate magenta-haired mermaid princess with the most magical of first names: Laura. Laura is sent to the human world to find magical warriors with sunshine in their hearts, who can save her people from the spell that’s been placed on them. Where, oh where, will she find the correct red-haired little bish?
During the journey to the island paradise, Manatsu accidentally drops her mother’s magical lipstick over the side of the boat, but fear not! Laura happens to be in that exact spot in the ocean and catches it. She will return it in time for our effervescent heroine to pulverize some nautical villain.
B: I love how stoked Manatsu is about… everything. I love how many ahoges she has, too.
L: She’s very expressive but somehow not super annoying. That’s a tough balance. She’s got shōnen energy. They draw her boyish. Maybe that’s just my gay heart singing, but I really appreciate that.
L: Actually, a lot of PreCure is written more like a shōnen than a shōjo. You’ll see it when they start fighting. It’s not bubbles or magical beams. They’re doing kung-fu and kicking ass.
The Mer-princess Laura, however haughty, will eventually crumble before Manatsu’s radioactive enthusiasm. After all, this series has 45 more episodes after this one. But it’s still too early for a transformation sequence, and Manatsu fails to open a magical makeup pot that clearly needs a key. The two part ways.
After a commercial break, a marine menace named Chongire, an anthropomorphic blue crab with the grumpy face of a Persian cat, attacks a group of joggers by transforming a nearby palm tree into a coconut-tossing monster. The joggers’ Motivation Power is depleted! They lie down in exhausted heaps. It is relatable.
L: The enemy is lethargy.
B: Commonly, magical girls are fighting the bad vibes of lethargy, laziness, and depression.
L: I think I need a magical girl.
Bridget has a crush on the villain’s palm tree sidekick. She’s always loved PreCure villain designs. Leah suspects this is because Bridget is a total slut for One Piece, but may also have a soft spot for giant crustaceans wearing fabulous neck scarves.
Chungus-crab captures Laura. Manatsu, conveniently nearby, is not having it. Her powers awaken only after she’s given the bad guys a good whack or two and her magic ring opens the magic makeup pot, and ta-da! Transformation time.
As transformations go, this is a 10 out of 10. Leah appreciates Manatsu’s new custard and rhubarb hair, and Bridget likes that she’s wearing rainbows rather than the pink associated with most magical girl leads: “The outfits feel a little busy to me, but not in a way I entirely hate!”
Right before she makes crab meat of Chongire, Manatsu, in her glorious Pride get-up, declares, “My motivation is unbreakable!”
Finally, before the episode ends, we get a glimpse of the Big Bad lounging like Jabba the Hut in her undersea castle. She will deal with the magical girl problem another day because today she lacks motivation!
Bridget falls in love with every future cast member during the end credits. One of the girls appears to be wearing a cheese fondue fountain on her head.
Conclusions
B: This is a reminder that even when things are for kids, they can be very good. And you know, the gender elements are interesting. There’s another PreCure with a nonbinary character.
L: That’s great.
B: Like, the show creates a safe space for any gender. Manatsu is so positive. In the face of other people saying, “Ugh, I don’t feel like it,” her response is, “I am going to be passionate and enthusiastic anyhow.”
L: Being girly and tough and feminine and tomboyish at once in a kids’ cartoon is subversive. Fuck gender, if you want a PreCure sticker have a PreCure sticker. Who cares if selling stickers is its reason for existing? I want my motivation to be unbreakable too.
Would you watch more?
L: Probably not. It’s great, but I just don’t get invested in these kinds of characters because I usually find them one-note. But anyone interested in magical girls would like this. It wasn’t groundbreaking but it’s a great representative of the genre.
B: Something I think about a lot is an anime called Rokuhōdō Yotsuiro Biyori. It’s about a bunch of handsome men who run a sweet shop. And a character says, “Sometimes, things don’t have to have a meaning; sometimes you can just have niceness.” It forgives the watcher for enjoying something without a plot. For me, this is that kind of show.
Second Spin: Pastel Yumi, The Magic Idol (Pierrot, 1986)
L: She’s cute. Very shōwa era.
B: I could do this hairstyle right now and I’m excited about that.
L: This screenshot shows her running with flowers. I hope she doesn’t get hit by a vehicle.
B: No, that’s a different one. That’s… what is it?
L: Minky Momo!
B: Oh my god, yes! Minky Momo!
L: The children’s anime that became an urban legend because it predicted deadly earthquakes. And then the creators killed off the main character by running her over because they were mad at their bosses for canceling the show.
Viewing Summary
Immediately, we are laughing at the OP, which Bridget describes as a jam. But Bridget’s hackles rise when the little girl working at the flower shop makes eyes at a much older guy while the love song plays.
We’re treated to a bird’s-eye view of a beautiful little place called Flower Town. Watercolors abound. The backgrounds are drawn in pencil and handpainted. The score is over-the-top, the violinist teeming with as much excitement as Bridget talking about Jewel Pet. Leah thinks Yumi’s legs must be cold.
The first characters we see are a fat, angry woman named Lady Fukurokouji and her butler/lover as they hang-glide over Flower Town for no apparent reason and then, with boring slapstick predictability, crash. When we meet Yumi, she’s drawing graffiti on Lady Fukurokouji’s wall. Is she a rebel? No, she’s just dumb, and thinks Lady Fukurokouji will appreciate a kid scrawling insulting caricatures of her on her damn walls. Yumi is not much of an artist, but every other kid in Flower Town must suck because they praise her anyway. Yumi is also not much of a thinker.
The first really off-putting element of the show rears its head here, and it is truly unexpected: the butler accidentally turns to the wrong page in his diary and reads it aloud, and he’s waxing poetical about plucking the whiskers off a cat and kicking it, too.
B: What the fuck? Is that… humor?
L: Animal abuse and fat-shaming. Great sources of comedy.
Later, the woman’s little dog gets thrown into a bucket of red paint and smeared down the wall like a paintbrush. Rather than helping the dog, Yumi hits it with a broom and rescues a dandelion instead.
She goes to a tulip field to plant the dandelion—she’s a damn menace, honestly—and there she meets two Moomin-esque mascots. They tell her that she’s so awesome for saving the dandelion that they’re going to give her magic powers!
They give Yumi a wand that will bring her subpar drawings to life, but this is no compelling DoodleBob psychological horror.
Yumi draws a horse.
B: Someone in studio was like, “Guess what? I can draw a horse!”
L: Hey, that’s a vital skill when you’re a little kid. I still remember the girl who taught me how to draw a horse.
B: Look. We all remember the girl who taught us how to draw a horse. It’s a queer moment.
Yumi rides the horse to the flower festival in Flower Town, where her dad (who owns a flower shop) is entering the flower contest. Somehow our heroine manages to knock over his entry, destroying it. Dad weeps. We might be more sympathetic if his entry was not a life-sized, faceless female mannequin adorned with flowers (cue the Hereditary OST).
Because Yumi is as clever as a broken crayon, she doesn’t use her wand to make him a new entry. Instead, the family works together to remake the floral sex-doll and they put it on stage. Where it starts collapsing. Again. Also again, Dad cries.
B: Not even ’80s machismo could stop these tears.
Everyone laughs at him, because everyone in Flower Town is mean as hell.
So Yumi finally uses her wand to… turn herself into the entry? By magicking a flower dress onto herself! She looks like a 1970s Jell-O nightmare! Dad wins the crowd right back.
Yumi’s stupid magic wears off, and while the whole town watches, the petals fly away and leave her, an actual child, topless on stage. Again, every shitty-ass human in Flower Town laughs. A jaunty ED begins. We want to make an AMV of The Lighthouse using this track.
Conclusions
B: Well. At least Creamy Mami has a Cinderella thing going.
L: Magical girls are all a take on Cinderella, but it only works if they have more agency than Cinderella. This girl did not. I understand why people appreciate Sailor Moon so much.
B: What’s great about Usagi is she is quite silly and emotional, but those are never treated as weaknesses. They further her motivation.
L: And then when she gets serious, she gets serious. But before Sailor Moon you had shows like this. Yay.
Would you watch more?
B: I would rather watch an actual classic like Creamy Mami.
L: Maybe a show that doesn’t end with a little girl topless? This did not stand the test of time. And Yumi was the least interesting character. Why is the villainess more interesting? Why is her dad more interesting?
B: Because he spent a month making a woman-shaped flower arrangement.
L: And why is the butler plucking whiskers off of cats? All the jokes in the show were cruel. Pastels don’t make up for that. Oh, she’s naked! Haha! Dad is crying! Haha! Whiskerless cats! Haha. The angry fat lady is allergic to flowers in flower town!
B: It wasn’t funny at any point. And good as the backgrounds and watercolors were, they weren’t unusual for the era. At this time, Pierrot was putting out tons of shows every year.
L: Would you watch more?
B: I would prefer to be cursed by Minky Momo.
L: I too would prefer that.
Third Spin: Kamichama Karin (Satelight, 2007)
B: Oh no. This show is infamous. It looks really, really bad.
L: Wait a second, I want to see how ugly the character design is—oh, man, yes, she’s a meme. A meme!
B: She is.
Kamichana Karin-chan is disqualified for breaking the second rule of Anime Grab Bag.
Fourth Spin: Jewelpet Kira Deco! (Studio Comet, 2012)
B (with palpable excitement): Tell me what you remember about me talking about Jewelpet.
L: Jewelpet… is a magical girl anime. In which elementary school girls realize that… magical powers come from these… bejeweled pets. These animals are brightly colored and cute. Clearly, I remember nothing.
B: You got close. The jewels are in the animals’ eyes. They have eyes made out of jewels.
L: That’s a little horrific. Like taxidermy?
B: So they’re made by Lady Jewelina, the god of the world, who’s also the queen. She’s the god-queen of Jewel Land.
L: Okay, so I wasn’t close. But who lives in Jewel… Land?
B: The only people who exist in the Jewel World naturally are the Jewelpets and Lady Jewelina. The girls are isekai’ed there. And sometimes boys too. And they’re trying to be knights and princesses. It is very gendered.
L: Okay, but I was a huge fan of Littlest Pet Shop. I would have eaten this up with a spoon in second grade. And you probably ate this up with a spoon when you were fifteen.
B: Yeah, because they go to magic school.
L: Oh man. Magic school is an Achilles heel for both of us.
B: Thank you for letting me talk about Jewelpet.
Jewelpet Kira Deco! Is disqualified for breaking the second rule of Anime Grab Bag.
Fifth Spin: Magilumière Co. Ltd. (J.C. Staff, 2024)
B: This one is something I’ve wanted to watch. It’s super new.
L: I know nothing!
Viewing Summary
What happens when mahō shōjo becomes an industry? When magical girls grow up and find jobs fighting monsters by working for agencies and competing for bounties in the big city, the magic is bound to wear off. But both of us are intrigued. The show’s monsters, called Kaii, are confusing us already, because it seems they can be captured in USB drives.
B: There’s probably some Psycho-Pass bullshit going on with these USBs.
L: Yeah, later we’ll learn that the monsters were all created by businessmen trying to boost the magical girl industry or something.
The show opens with a chase sequence. A blonde magical badass named Koshigaya defeats a many-eyed monster while perched on the backs of two motorcycles, involving civilians in the process, which is a big no-no. She works at a startup company called Magilumiere in a city rife with magical girl agencies.
Meanwhile, recent college graduate Kana Sakuragi is interviewing endlessly and failing to find a job. Kana goes to Utarbucksfor a drink, and instantly memorizes the orders of the customers in line. This is one hell of a useful skill but Kana just wants to help people.
Koshigaya is hired to vanquish the Kaii who has taken over the cold conference room Kana visits during her next interview. Kana and her eidetic memory help Koshigaya defeat the Kaii, and of course she gets a job at Magilumiere. After the credits, we meet Kana’s new boss: a dour-faced salaryman in fabulous magical girl drag.
Conclusions
The show looks sharp, and a show following the lives of commodified magical girls has solid promise. Hit anime like Tiger & Bunny did something similar for superheroes, so why shouldn’t magical girls get the same treatment? In a post-Madoka world, magical girl anime have either followed the classic playbook or become darker reimaginings, as in Yuki Yuna is a Hero. Could Magilumiere Co. Ltd. offer genre fans a third alternative?
L: I smell potential.
B: It could go darker. Or it could be fun and zany.
L: Based on the monsters and the toxic work culture aspects, I think it’ll go darker.
B: As someone currently looking for a job, I really relate to Kana. She doesn’t know how to sell herself because she can’t see herself clearly. When you’re young and just starting out, it’s hard to know what makes you shine in a workplace.
L: I worry this show is going to have a hard time with tone. But I want to know about the friendly everymen at the office and why Koshigaya, if she’s so fantastic, is working for this tiny agency. Will they become disillusioned? Will they get a civilian killed? I want to know.
Would you watch more?
L: Yes! I want to learn who these people are.
B: Yes. I’m very curious about this world.
Almost half the shows we spun for the Grab Bag were unavailable on streaming platforms. Is a secret cabal working hard to ensure the world remains unmotivated? Or is licensing children’s entertainment internationally a minefield?
Which mahō shōjoseries was formative for you? Or, if you’d prefer, which one cursed you? Did any make you rant like a madwoman, a la Bridget and JewelPet?
Regardless, we wish you all nothing but Motivation Power in these trying times. May all your necessary transformations be glorious and accompanied by city pop jams.
Next Up: We’re watching vampire anime, baby! Because being undead never goes out of style. The wheel for Anime Grab Bag Vol. 3: Vampire Variety Show can be found here!
In This Article:
