When I first saw the previews for this series, I was smitten by everything but the titles – the Japanese one was clichéd and the English one was just cringe-inducing. The footage, however, was beautiful: superb CG-infused animation, attractive character designs, and a strong Miyazaki influence both in the old-fashioned fairytale aesthetic and in the giant robotic creature that made a brief appearance.To my surprise, pretty much none of the footage in this trailer actually made the transition to the series. No giant robot, no impressive camera-swooping-through-a-town sequence, no scene of the witches gearing up. The robot eventually showed up in the OVA releases, originally intended to be broadcast but delayed so much that they finally went straight to DVD, but I was surprised how little of the preview appeared in the episodes. Neverthless, what was on offer instead completely charmed me – at least for the first two thirds or so of the 40-episode series.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Mahou Shoujotai is that its episodes are only 8 minutes long. This leads to some very interesting writing decisions. Quite often, the action at the beginning of the episode would be quite unconnected to the last, and only later do the events in the interim get filled in. This kept the pace very fast, and was also quite satisfying, once the pieces slotted together. This was fine in the beginning, when the story was a nice, simple tale about a human girl in a magical world, gathering sprites and convincing everyone around her that magic was supposed to make someone happy. It always had a darker edge and realistic characters, so there was no danger of this childish premise making the show twee, and the direction was remarkably idiosyncratic, with odd angles, a more western art style than most in current anime, and some very quirky cutting.
But towards the end, the plot started to spiral downwards the way of so many good anime – into Pretentious-And-Barely-Coherent-Mumbo-Jumbo-Land, where various contrived magical gubbins mean that – oh no! – the world is going to end, and only equally made-up-on-the-spot powers and, of course, true friendship can save the day. Interesting minor characters get cast aside in favour of big overblown sequences, and everything descends into the same tired old action sequences. Which is a shame, because the one thing you could say about Mahou Shoujotai at the beginning was that it was most definitely a highly individual, original piece of work.
Nonetheless, it is definitely a series worth watching. Interesting characters, unorthodox storytelling and some very brave aesthetic decisions make a weird and wonderful little mini-series that has been woefully ignored by most of the online anime community.
(originally written 03.01.2006)
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