English Dub Review: Magical Girl Spec Ops Asuka “Babel Brigade-Combat Begins”

Yeah, it’s torture porn.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Nozomi has been kidnapped by the terrorist organization featured in the last few episodes of Magical Girl Spec-ops Asuka. The intentions of the kidnappers are unknown, but it’s clear that she’s been kidnapped because of her father’s profession: a torturer for the government who interrogates captured terrorists. Much to her father’s frustration, it’s made clear by the higher ups that sending agents to go find Nozomi is not an option, so it seems there’s no one out there who can save Nozomi.

Meanwhile, Nozomi’s kidnappers decide to have some fun with her by using their various abilities to torture her. We see in graphic detail the nature of her torture, which involves both drowning and physical abuse.

Though initially disheartened by the kidnapping, Asuka rallies to Nozomi’s defense and recruits Kurumi to come along and help her save their friend. The two arrive on the scene and do some major damage, infiltrating the hideout of the kidnappers with relative ease. However, the rogue magical girl who has Nozomi bound cuts off her arm before Asuka can save her. After Nozomi’s brutal amputation, Asuka and Kurumi rally and manage to escape with Nozomi in tow. However, Asuka gets surrounded by the twin terrorists at the scene, who it seems she’ll have to fight.

Our Take:

Well, its taken four episodes, but Spec Ops Asuka has finally decided to show its true colors. While I originally thought that some of the gratuitous fan service scenes were just there to add a little flavor to the story, it’s become clear that the purpose of this anime is less akin to “Madoka Magica” and much closer to “Senran Kagura.” In essence, this is an anime that is all about sex appeal.

The brutality, which had at first appeared to be a legitimate theme in the story, actually seems to be here to reinforce the “Torture porn” of this show as its main appeal. This latest episode makes this very clear since the kidnap and torture of Nozomi is not only not tasteful, but bordering on pornographic. There is nothing it adds to the story except for the potential to get some people off on the graphic imagery presented here, but for the rest of us, it’s just uncomfortable. I’m not saying, of course, that all brutality in anime is uncalled for. I’m a huge fan of “Higurashi”, and am well aware that stylized and directed violence can be a great way to make a story more intense and convey its themes. However, there is a line, and this episode definitely crosses it. Getting one of our characters half naked, strapping her to a chair, and then torturing the shit out of her in great detail is nothing short of softcore snuff.

And it’s not as if the rest of the episode around this is well made. Per usual, the dialogue is weak, the story structure is poorly paced and the animation is completely lackluster. This was an opportunity to have an actually good looking action scene but the animators have skipped out on the effort to get the sequence over and done with as fast as they can.

This is by no means the only show to ever go down this road, but it becomes especially apparent here that the torture and misery of young girls is one of the main draws to this property. It was silly of me to think that shit aspired to be the next “Madoka Magica”, when, like so many other properties, it seems to only want to be another batch of mildly successful fetish porn that can get past the censors. It’s curious that someone actually decided to fund this, and more curious still that Funimation decided to wast their viewer’s time by dubbing this garbage.