English Dub Review: Magical Sempai “Observers and Sempai; A Sempai I Don’t Know”

 

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

In our first episode, Assistant doesn’t want Sempai to embarrass him in front of a couple of the “cool” girls. He begs her not to do magic when they come to observe the club, but while they’re arguing she pulls a slick decapitation illusion which scares away the girls as well as Assistant’s ego. The next day, his anger fades and his arousal rises when Sensei shows off a new “stripper clothes” costume system she designed for her sister. Each layer gets more revealing until Sempai is clad in nothing but two really skimpy pasties. Yeah, Sensei be a bitch!

While attending the Chemistry club, Assistant begins to realize that Chemistry girl and Sempai aren’t all that different. However, Chemistry girl doesn’t like Sempai because she sees magic as a fraud that pales in comparison to the true magic of SCIENCE! The assistant notices the nuances but doesn’t see much of a difference. Chemistry girl is also somewhat blinded by her prudish nature.

Back at the magic club, while hiding in a box, Sempai mistakes Assistant’s affection for the stuffed animal, Behemoth, as a confession of love for her. While she’s flattered, her true amore is magic and she doesn’t want to complicate things. To improve matters, she foolishly invites him to her house where more shenanigans occur—including her deep-throating a platter of cookies. When she finally uncovers the misunderstanding she becomes crazy embarrassed.

In the next episode, Saki, an attractive, red-head girl, arrives on the scene. The good news is, she’s interested in joining the club. The bad news, she wants to change it to a Street Performers Club and insists that her brother Masa become the president. Waiting for a confrontation with a big jock, Masa turns out to be a short, doughy little guy who has no real interest in leading the club. Plus, Saki is massively in love with her own brother.

The two pairs have a showdown to present their mediums, and the siblings are just as bad at street performance as Sempai is at magic. Saki even winds up losing her skirt and showing her panties off to everybody, just as Sempai does on occasion. It’s soon revealed that Sensei is behind Saki and Masa joining the club, and she set it up for two reasons. First, she wanted to keep the magic club afloat, and secondly, she wanted to measure the weight of her sister’s breasts against Saki’s. Yup, she’s got creepy sibling issues just like those dirty street performance twins.

 

Our Take

You’ve probably figured out by now that this is an extremely silly show. That being said, they’re not doing too bad with continuity and character development. Assistant has gone from despising Sempai, to lusting after her, to now subtly rooting for his lady boss.

I didn’t talk about this above, but the most recent episode ended with a hypnosis scene. Sempai was insanely easy to hypnotize, and while Assistant’s first instinct was to have her undress, his conscience got the better of him and he felt shame. After that, his second instinct—now with a clear head—was to hypnotize away Sempai’s stage fright. What a kind, thoughtful thing to do. Sure, it was unsuccessful, but next time he protests too much, we’ll know how he really feels.

Maybe it’s because I don’t fully comprehend Japanese culture, but Sempai’s aversion to dating her assistant strikes me as strange. In his heyday, I’m sure David Copperfield slept with his assistants all the time. And there’s no doubt in my mind that Penn and Teller have gotten to at least second base with each other. That’s not even mentioning how much Penn’s daughter, Moxie CrimeFighter (that’s her real name, not part of this bit), looks and sounds eerily like Teller. I’m not trying to say the bad boys of magic somehow conceived a child together. What I’m hinting at is much more innocent—Penn and Teller share wives, that’s all. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is: Follow your heart, Sempai, Assistant would treat you like a queen.

In other news, the first major philosophical debate of the series was finally introduced. For ions science and magic have stood at a crossroads, eyeing one another, in hopes of one day battling it out for universal superiority. The stage is now set with Chemistry girl representing facts and the scientific method, and Sempai representing faith, mysticism, and believing in oneself. Such an epic showdown often plays out in fiction and in the real world, leaving no definitive answer once the dust has settled (except its definitely science because facts are indisputable).

Despite personally being a staunch believer in the natural sciences, in this particular match-up, I’m rooting for Sempai. While the prudish Chemistry mistress seems nice enough, Sempai is personality plus, and instantaneously likable. What we have is a classic “snobs vs. slobs” scenario, and even when they’re completely wrong, you have to side with the slobs because they’re so much more fun.