Rental Magica

This anime takes a lot of risks by relying so heavily on exposition. It has such a rich index of lore and backstory that it ends up having to explain so many aspects in such a short time that it doesn't really do a great job of explaining them all. For example, one of my biggest questions was "does the number of legions a Solomon demon rules an indicator of how strong it is?" Or even "what's the difference between Glam Sight and Glam Sight +" (you know what I mean in EP 23.) The design on the magics and especially the Solomon demons ... is PHENOMENAL, it felt all very real and easy to lower your veil of disbelief. The depth of the creative lore of this story really managed to impress me and I cannot emphasize just how much this pays off Narrative-wise.

Tldr: Great worldbuilding, phenomenal art design,

lacking in animation quality and the characters themselves can be frustrating due to their one-sided nature and their lack of complexity.

Rental Magica is a hard series to review and rate because, for the most part, it's a good series, but one beset by baffling creative decisions that may or may not affect your enjoyment of the series. It hits differently for different people, so it's hard to give it an unqualified recommendation in light of that, but it's not so deeply flawed that its various issues are going to be universally hated either.

The series is at its strongest when it decides to just be a straightforward action story. The action is well-animated (if you can find a version with decent video quality in 2022), the ... monsters are well-designed and the battles have a good sense of natural progression, where they deal with larger and larger threats over time, using their experience from previous fights to overcome them. They also do a good job of handling the power of our main protagonist, Itsuki. In a lesser series, he would be ridiculously overpowered and his near-invincibility would suck all the drama out of the big action setpieces, but they do an effective job of placing limits on him to preserve that sense of tension without making it feel like that's what they're doing.

Unfortunately, Itsuki's power is pretty cringey (he takes off his chuuni eyepatch and can instantly see the exact way to defeat any enemy, and issues commands to his team in a very deep voice that contrasts hilariously with his usual Whiny Nerd speaking voice), but that's anime for you. The larger problem though is that it makes for not-very-compelling action once he gets involved. Seeing Honami throwing mistletoe darts and Nekoyashiki using his always-entertaining Cat Magic is fun, but it becomes substantially less fun when it's preceded by a guy doing a bad Lelouch impersonation and reciting the exact list of actions he wants them to take. Hearing a sequence of commands like "Honami, fire your mistletoe 44 degrees to the right and 12 degrees up" rattled off one after another feels like reading off of a spreadsheet or something, which is not the way you want your action scenes to climax.

When it's not building towards an action scene, things become even more hit-or-miss. The characters are mostly pretty good, and I like all of them for different reasons in isolation, but the romcom antics are frequently exasperating. The female leads, Honami and Adelicia, are the primary culprits here, their bickering over who Itsuki likes more is incredibly obnoxious every single time it comes up. It feels very undignified coming from two characters that mostly have their shit together in all other areas of life and doesn't really fit well with the fabric of the rest of the show. Itsuki himself is also too pathetic and cowardly at times. Those issues aside though, the characters are solid overall and the roster of Villains With Pretty Reasonable Motives is actually better than most shows of its type.

Finally, one last issue that bothered me was the lack of continuity. If you aren't already aware, the episodes of this series are intentionally out of order chronologically, and there is no apparent purpose to it other than a thinly-disguised attempt to capitalize on the success of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which aired the year before. Since most of the episodes are standalone rather than telling a single, serialized story throughout the season, you frequently don't even notice that it freely jumps up and down the timeline, and they make no effort to help the viewer orient themselves to "when" an episode is taking place. It's an aggravating way to watch, as character relationships feel like they've regressed or skipped steps from one episode to another, and sometimes characters simply aren't present because they haven't been introduced yet in the objective timeline. For example, Kuroha appears in episodes 1-3 as a regular member of Astral, while episode 4 resets everything to before she had joined and was just meeting Itsuki for the first time, which is about the most confusing way you could possibly present her introduction to the cast. Most of the time it isn't that big of a deal because the case-of-the-week structure often makes it irrelevant when a story is taking place in relation to others, but it's just weird and unnecessary.

Came after watching a reels on it. I gotta stop thinking that every mc with eye powers is like gojo.
The amount of shit the main character is made of and comes out from his mouth is unbearable. FUKIN good for nothing and makes every job hard for other characters. Everything would have gone smooth if the mc didn't existed. The mage girl is alone enough lol.

The anime storytelling is fuked up.Nothing is explained well. just don't watch it unless you want to see a bland mc with no powers but always says "he will save every girl 🤡".
Lol there's nothing to talk about more ... so added this

Due to his father's disappearance, Itsuki Iba has to take over the family business: a magician dispatch service. Their family employs countless magicians and other supernatural beings in order to send them out to help those who need magical assistance. As a leader, Itsuki now has to be tough, commanding, and reliable, but there's one problem, he's a coward. Also, in order to run a successful business, he must connect with his employees, which is more difficult than it seems due to his personality. But not only does he have to deal with his own employees, he also has to deal with those who threaten the family business.