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skysenshi (12.18.2001)
How traumatic!
I have no idea how an anime that has an Akazukin Cha Cha
feel to it is able to traumatize me with its approach to rape
scenes and all those gooky stuff. Maybe that's just it. Like Cha
Cha, Meruru the sorceress, has laughable magic skills. When she
casts a spell, it's either working against her or working for
her...24 hours later. Also, like in Akazukin Cha Cha, Magic Woman
M has the ugliest roster of baddies imaginable. The similarity
stops there. So does its hilarity.
Unlike Cha Cha who has the most wonderful set of friends, Meruru's
choices of companions just leave everything to be desired. Imagine
having a friend who sees you getting ravished by an unbelievably
revolting ogre, and instead of helping you, she instead uses your
situation as her porn show for "self-loving" purposes.
Thank goodness, this taste improves in Meruru's later adventures.
Like I have mentioned earlier, the cutesy atmosphere that envelopes
Magic Woman M betrays an underlying putrid smell that can actually
make virgins fear the male gender in general. The violent and
disgusting rape sequences would have been easier to accept had
the anime been about mad scientists and lords of the underworld,
but no! The creators had to sugarcoat it, probably thinking that
it's more acceptable that way. Simple reverse psychology would
have been able to indicate otherwise.
I'm not really sure what attribute Magic Woman M tries to bank
on. Certainly it wouldn't be the artwork. The art and animation
have this 1970s quality to them sans the nostalgia of that decade.
It undeniably wouldn't win grand prize for plot twists either,
because the chain of events can truly make a sane person want
to gag more by the second. So what else is there?
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Interzone
(07.03.2002)
Magic? Come again?
One wonders what the 'M' in Magic Woman M stands for (OK,
it obviously refers the astonishingly underage titular heroine
Meruru, but I needed a good opening line!). Mediocre, perhaps?
Magnificently awful? I doubt my ability to put it more eloquently
than Ms. Skysenshi already has, but here goes...
Magic Woman is a thoroughly, painfully uninteresting hour of
yawn inducing appallingness. Heck, I'm running out of synonyms
for 'bad', so now I'm just making them up. Expecting saucy layers,
I just got a Limp La Blue Girl
(at BEST, people). Cool Devices
may win hands down with it's depictions of physical torture, but
it's hard pressed to outdo MW-M for sheer psychological damage
on the part of the viewer.
The show is imaginatively constructed around a series of pointless
and frankly gross rape scenes. What's more, any shock value is
rendered harmlessly impotent by the poor artwork. Bafflingly,
episode one sports typical mid-90's traditional cel animation,
while episode two goes for the nice, shiny (and more importantly
cheap) CG. I'd probably go as far to say that the visuals actually
ARE the most shocking thing about Magic Woman M!
This DVD, while containing the entire series still provides far
less bang for the buck (pun semi-intended) than some of CPM's
longer running discs such as Lady Blue, Demon Warrior Koji and
Teachers Pet - all of which are far better bets for the same price.
As Skysenshi mentioned, Magic Woman M doesn't know what it wants to be
- if it's comedy it ain't funny, if it's for the sex it ain't
sexy. But surely, it isn't that bad really, is it? Oh you bet
it is...
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