Sasami: Mahou Shoujo Club

(Note: This review is for both season one and two of Sasami Magical Girls Club.)

Shall I take you into the mystical world of “Sasami: Mahou Shoujo Club”? A world in which both humans and witches have lived in peace and harmony, until that fateful day when humans had betrayed them and cast them away for their abnormal powers. The witches had no choice, but to build a new world, separate from the human world, where they lived in that world to reclaim the peace and harmony that was once theirs. But some witches have stayed in the human world for several purposes: family, friends, and ... more. However, in order to stay in their world they had no other choice, but to never use their powers again. As a result, their powers grew weaker and weaker where it seemed as if they never had them to begin with. Soon hundreds and hundreds of years have passed and than for some strange reason, a few children all over the human world have discovered these powers. However, it is unknown if these powers are for good or evil, should these powers be ridden of for all eternity in which the same event shall not be repeated in years to come, or is this a chance for humans to finally come and accept these creatures again? There’s only one way to find out!

Plot:
“Sasami Magical Girls Club” is an anime about five girls, but they’re not your normal girls, each of these girls has wondrous powers which are special and unique in their own way. Usually in a magical girl anime you’d expect them to go battle some evil bad guys, however these girl s don’t have to do such a task. They usually just go on some weird adventures and such, and the whole season are mainly these girls slowly learning about the witch world and magic lots and lots of magic. So if I were to put it in a nutshell, I sometimes feel that the whole season are just plain fillers, I mean some of these episodes are just pointless, I feel like they’re not even needed in the anime in any way, only to teach us those cliché anime lessons about how much friendship is extremely important. During the last few episodes of the anime, the series grew some big boy underpants because it finally started rising up to the climax.
Season 2 is a continuation of season 1, only a tad bit more serious and interesting. It does start off a bit more slow, but later on in the series; I promise you it gets much more interesting because these girls finally have their first evil villain which I was very excited about because I like to believe that in an anime such as this one, it needs an antagonist to add as an obstacle for the magical girl group. The rest of Season 2 is pretty much cliché in a way to put it because I’ve seen this sort of development often in a magical girl anime. Its ending was somewhat to be expected though I could clearly tell that these producers could have given us a better ending.

Art:
The art style is nothing to die for which is a definite fact. It uses the kodomo art style which is a heavily popular style of manga, and possibly the most popular character type of anime. The kodomo art style, I must say is a perfect fit for this anime because it enraptures the cuteness needed to fully display the overall effect and maybe even potential the series has. The anime uses a large amount of colors which I really like about the whole art style because it uses the unrealistic hair colors I haven’t seen in a while, you know like weird and out of this world hair styles that can only exist in anime and manga. The art style does a great job of expressing the mood of the whole anime which are just a bunch of mixed feelings for me that is nothing special. One of my favorite things about the way the characters were drawn was their eyes, they were really adorable, and I just couldn’t stop looking at them.

Sound:
“Make a wish and ride with, me into the moonlight.” The opening of this anime was how do I describe it? Oh yes magical, so magical that if you just close your eyes while listening to the music, you will imagine that you are flying on shooting stars. Yep, I love the opening of this anime so much that its one of the top 20 openings in my opinion. The anime, I believe uses uncommon background music we rarely hear in anime because it uses those old effects we see in cartoons like “popping” and that sort of thing. The anime still needed appealing background music though to better add the mood of the events occurring throughout the show. I believe if the anime had some special sound effects or more official sound tracks than I bet I would have rated the anime a little higher maybe up to an 8.


Characters:
In an anime of the “Magical Girl” genre, I usually tend to love all main characters. However, season one of this anime took a different approach to teamwork which I can tell you is not a compliment in anyway, actually I believe it to be one of the many downfalls of this anime is its characters which leaves me and probably some of its other viewers a feeling of slight disgust in some of these main characters. The problem I have with this anime is that two of the five main characters, leave me with the impression that their bullies when their supposed to be one of the good people. When I watch this anime, I see these two girls each and every episode insult the main heroine calling her ‘stupid’ and some other insults which I find so revolting, even if it was meant to be a joke, they take it too far by insulting her each and every episode, even counting her as being the ‘fifth wheel’ of the whole entire Magical Girl group! Even though the creators try their very best to showing the viewers that these two girls are not that bad, and that they actually care about the whole Magical Girl group, it does little to no help in changing my opinion to the characters. Another problem I saw while watching this anime was that the creators didn’t do a good job of showing the girls grow closer, or get to know each other better. I didn’t see much interaction between all the five girls when it came to getting to know each other; it was like they were already best friends when they’ve only known each other for a day. By the time the “Sasami Magical Girls Club” reached its second season was when I can finally understand that these girls really have grown to love each other a lot. Unlike season one, the anime finally dug up a hole and found gold because now the viewers can finally see the characters get to know each other more and more.

Enjoyment:
I originally watched the anime on 2009, three years after it came out, however dropped it because I had gotten extremely bored with the first six episodes that I actually yawned a couple of times and ended up daydreaming while trying to listen to what the fudge was going on. So yes, I was bored even after rewatching the series. There were absolutely no moments where I felt like this anime was actually worth watching, but I did get confused, very confused. “Wait, what the, why is, isn’t that, but I thought she was the mai- OH WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON!” Pretty much that was what I was saying for some parts of the anime. There were also some times when I got jealous for some romance parts, yes there is some romance in this anime, I guess you could call it that. All I know is that the romance was so cute and adorable that I imagined my crushie doing that with me… OTL If only he would do that, but sadly, not all boys are as so sweet as to act as gentlemen.

Ok what was that.
So when I started this show I thought I it would be decent, But NOOOO! IT WAS AWFUL! THE ENGLISH VOICE ACTING WAS
AWFUL! Sasami was one of the worst protagonists ever. The reason I watched this show is because I love Magical girls, but this was horrible. The theme song was cute. The art style was cute. Those were really the only pro's. I've seen the second season too, but we arnt gonna talk about Amitav. Amitave was...anyways the story wasn't that creative. I felt like I have already seen it, it was kinda basic. I have seen the 90s Pretty Sammy ... OVAs and plan to watch Magical Project S. These have the same characters and they ruined Misao and Sasami. Th ey were totally different more annoying, her brother wasnt even in it when its a spin off of his own series. The 90s sasami felt more like Cardcaptor Sakura and Magical girls club felt like some American cartoon crap. The mascot was cute and I liked the teacher. The ganator was stupid but kinda funny.
Over all I would recommend this show if your really a hardcore magical girl fan but if you are not it's not worth your time.