English Dub Review: Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka “The Magical Girl Comes Back”

Magical military girls with PTSD. Get ready for something different.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Several years ago, strange beasts from the land of the dead, known as “Disas”, (Who, coincidentally look like stuffed animals) waged war upon the earth. At the same time, emissaries from the spirit world arrived on earth to fight the Disas menace and allied themselves with humanity. Conventional weapons were ineffective, so the only ones able to protect the Earth were magical girl soldiers armed and trained by the spirit world. The Disas were defeated, and several years later these magical girls found their way into everyday life, where they try to enjoy an average life.

We follow one such girl, Asuka, as she enters the exciting world of high school. Traumatized by her time fighting the Disas, Asuka struggles to feel normal and sane, always having to have her mind occupied with a book or story to keep her inner demons at bay. In school, she meets Sayako and Nozomi, a couple of nice track team girls who take a liking to Asuka after she dispatches with a creepy guy on the street who was harassing them.

After she makes friends with Sayako and Nozomi, she meets with Iizuka Yoshiaki, Asuka’s de facto father who manages magical girls in the modern world. The two talk at a cafe and Asuka recounts her horrifying past, where her mother and father were killed by the Disas and delivered to her in pieces, one body part at a time. Returning to the present, Asuka ends her lunch with Iizuka, and goes back to school the next day. She spends more time with her friends, in particular, Sayako, who shares a deep love for literature that bonds her with Asuka. The two quickly begin to form a deep connection with each other.

The next day, Asuka sees Sayako on the street in the midst of a robbery/shooting taking place. Asuka dons her magical girl uniform and defeats the robbers in brutal fashion with her powerful magical girl technology. As she cuts down the criminals one by one, she remarks to herself about how humanity is still rife with conflict, and how a magical girl’s job is never truly done.

Our Take:

This episode is an odd beast of an opening to what will certainly be a very odd show. Rather than showing us the war between the magical girls and the Disas, Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka (Try saying that five times fast) offers a different perspective of events, choosing instead to do a character study on how a magical girl from that world lives in daily life. It’s an interesting concept, for sure, one that initially earned my attention in the same way that “Madoka Magica” did with its deconstruction of the magical girl genre. Unfortunately, this newcomer anime doesn’t come close to what made “Madoka Magica” so great, and while it’s not insulting, it doesn’t keep my interest enough to warrant the viewing of a second episode.

A show like this that actually takes itself seriously is going to be heavily dependent on the quality of the writing and directing to grab its audience. A strong, stylized camera with lines that feel real and believable go a long way to make the audience take this drama seriously, but Asuka is sadly lacking in that department. Asuka’s character, while tragic, is far from nuanced, and feels much more like a cliched stereotype of a “Military veteran” than someone who’s actually seen some shit. Her dour voice and soft tones are gentle on the ears but make her character just outright depressing. What’s more, her character is played out so obviously, so directly, that there’s nothing I really want to explore her character. She isn’t terribly mysterious or compelling, just kind of sad and boring.

The art, so far, is pretty, but repetitive. This looks like the same high school anime you’ve seen a thousand times before but with some minor differences. It’s not ugly, but it’s not exciting either, and the animation tends to run on the stiff side of things. Get ready for some fish-lipping with lots of standing around while people are talking. In the action scenes, there’s a level of violence that feels tonally dissonant with how over-the-top and gory it is. Limbs fly off of bodies in fountains of gushing red blood, which clashes with the contemplative struggle Asuka has with her PTSD.

While Magical Girl Asuka does earn some of my attention, its failure to do the essential job of a first episode, which is to make me want to watch the series further. It doesn’t excel in any particular area of the medium, and even wraps itself up so neat and tidy by the end I feel like I’ve learned everything there is to know about this show and its characters. Not to mention, the number of bizarre plot elements and frantic violence is off-putting and only dilutes the character drama that most of the episode is all about. I can give it some leeway for being new and not fleshed out yet, but this is not a great foot to start off the series with.