Okusama wa Mahou Shoujo (Madam is a Magical Girl)

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Bewitched Agnes, Bewitched Bride

Japanese: 奥さまは魔法少女

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Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 13

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Jul 4, 2005 to Sep 26, 2005

Premiered: Summer 2005

Broadcast: Mondays at 00:00 (JST)

Producers: Media Factory, Amber Film Works

Licensors: None found, add some

Studios: J.C.Staff

Source: Original

Genres: Fantasy, Romance

Theme: Mahou Shoujo

Duration: 24 min. per ep.

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

Statistics

Score: 6.48¹ (scored by 2,954 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #7123²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #6334

Members: 10,184

Favorites: 14

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Resources

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Synopsis

Ureshiko Asaba, 26 years old, married. Few people know the fact that she is a magical girl named "Agnes", and she is actually the guardian of the town where she lives. One day she meets Sayaka Kurenai, aka "Cruje", another magical girl appointed by the magic realm as the legitimate sucessor to her position, but Agnes is reluctant in letting her assume because she knows that Cruje has orders to erase the whole place, including its human inhabitants with the purpose of creating a new one. To complicate matters, Ureshiko must deal with the growing distance between her and her husband, Tamotsu, her crescent feelings for Tatsumi Kagura, a young man who is now living as a tenant in her home, and the fact that in the moment she ever kisses a common human, she would lose her powers forever.

(Source: ANN)

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Characters & Voice Actors

Asaba, Ureshiko

Main

Inoue, Kikuko
Japanese

Kurenai, Sayaka

Main

Shimizu, Ai
Japanese

Kagura, Tatsumi

Main

Kishio, Daisuke
Japanese

Hermes

Supporting

Kugimiya, Rie
Japanese

Kashiwada, Yuuji

Supporting

Nojima, Akio
Japanese

Fujimori, Yumiko

Supporting

Masu, Nozomi
Japanese

Emma, Freya

Supporting

Matsumoto, Rica
Japanese

Chourou

Supporting

Nishikawa, Ikuo
Japanese

Morino, Fuyuki

Supporting

Kadowaki, Mai
Japanese

Nagamori, Souichi

Supporting

Tobita, Nobuo
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Matsukura, Yuuji

Producer, Series Composition

Hidaka, Isao

Producer

Yoshinuma, Oshi

Producer

Nishikiori, Hiroshi

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard, Series Composition

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Opening Theme

"Home & Away" by Melocure

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Ending Theme

"jewelry" by Kikuko Inoue

Reviews

Feb 24, 2008

loplop

Recommended

Okusama wa Mahou Shoujo was one of the big surprises of the 2005 summer season. When I first heard of the show, it first reminded me of the 1960’s U.S. Television Series, Bewitched. But I'm happy to say that it turned out to be a very different type of show. I am not a fan of magical girl anime, but I really enjoyed this one. It was nice to see a show that was as character driven as much as it was. Personally, I did not find the fan-service offensive but it was repetitive. Other than a couple of places where stock footage was used ...

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Apr 25, 2014

Fear_the_Reefer

Recommended

Tatsumi Kagura is a young college student who had a promising career as a professional athlete ahead of him... up until he injured himself, and had to leave school. He gets a job working at a publishing company in a boring city called Wonderland, and finds a new home at a nearby boarding house. It’s here that he meets Ureshiko Asaba, the granddaughter of the house’s manager. She’s older than he is, but she’s kind and gentle, and he soon begins to fall for her. But little does he know what kind of tightly guarded secrets are standing between them.

For you see, Ureshiko is really ... Agnes Bell, a magical girl from another world, and the reason she can never return his feelings is because it would only take a single kiss to rob her of all of her magic powers, for the rest of her life.

Now, on the surface, this may seem like yet another schmaltzy little fanservice-fest, a borderline harem with the barest ghint of a will-theyp-won’t-they plot to hold some semblance of a story together, and that the magical girl element is only there to justify a bunch of highly sexualized transformation sequences. But the truth is, this well runs surprisingly deep.

For starters, Ureshiko is 26 years old, at least ten years older than your typical magical girl, which makes the transformation sequences significantly less creepy than they could have been. Directly related to this is the fact that a much younger, more traditionally aged magical girl has come to Ureshiko’s territory to force her into retirement and assume her position. And for some reason, this girl has little to no regard for the safety of non-magical people.

Oh, and that kiss thing? It isn’t just some silly little tension builder. There are actual consequences to it. See, the other thing about Ureshiko that prevents her from loving Kagura is the fact that she’s still married to another man, to whom her marriage actually crumbled due to her inability to kiss him. They’re separated, but not divorced properly, and yes, he’s involved with another woman.

Yeah. Didn’t expect THAT out of your harem romp, did you?

Okusama had a moderate animation budget, but it was managed extremely well... Still frames are used sparingly, where they mostly won’t be noticed, so that the bulk of the budget could be dumped into some amazing action scenes and hilarious motion cycles. It’s fluid and graceful when it needs to be, but never goes too far overboard, placing every single yen where it belongs.

The artwork is just that... It’s art. The backgrounds are highly detailed, to the point that every single landscape... Even those that are only on screen for seconds at a time... Appears to have taken hours to complete. The blend of colors is elegant and precise, giving an impression of almost gritty realism to it. The character designs are also colorful, attractive, and well thought out. In short, this anime looks really pretty.

I’m afraid I can’t talk about the dub, because after nine years, there still isn’t an English dub to speak of. The subs sounded great, though my American ears aren’t entirely reliable. I can tell you, if nothing else, that the seiyou for Ureshiko and her estranged husband give performances that were nothing short of perfect. Everything else sounded like typical anime voicings, so I guess no comment is a good comment.

But as pretty as it may be, no anime can stand on it’s own without good writing... Well, except for Angel Beats, but that’s another review. Anyway, when it comes to Okusama’s writing, the first thing about it that really strikes me is how mature it is. I don’t mean mature as in ‘tons of adult content,’ I mean mature as in... Mature. The characters are mostly adults, dealing with complex problems that a lot of similar anime wouldn’t even consider as possible topics. They grow and develop in ways that don’t become evident to the viewer until after the fact, and yes, all of our noteworthy characters have gone through some very distinct changes by the end of it’s thirteen episode run. There’s no true villain to this story, just opposing viewpoints that clash endlessly with no true compromise in sight. nobody is completely right, nobody is completely wrong, and as you learn more about the situation brewing between them, you’ll find yourself constantly shifting between sides. The romance is also handled really well, developed at a steady pace, with just enough reasonable doubt to make the end result feel a lot less predictable than it should have felt.

I don’t want to give away any serious spoilers, but the plot evolves and develops just as gradually as the characters do Every single twist is delivered naturally, without a hint of exposition, and as each layer is peeled, it’ll reveal just enough information about what’s going on to leave you hungry for the next one. Although this could also be considered Okusama’s biggest downfall, as several really important questions are dangled in front of us for a really cruel amount of time without ever being answered.

Okusama carries a very strong theme about growing up, and how difficult it can be to leave your former self behind in the process. This is explored not only through the perspective of the individual giving up her old responsibilities to a younger generation, but also from the perspective of that younger generation, as she takes on the pressure of the older generation’s responsibilities, leaving behind all sense of ego as she does so. It teaches that time doesn’t wait for anyone, and that as long as both generations can trust and respect each other, they may just be able to live together in harmony.

Okusama wa Mahou Shoujo... Or the literal translation, Madam is a Magical Girl; Bewitched Agnes, is a very obscure anime series from 2005. It’s never been licensed for an English distribution, so I unfortunately cannot recommend watching it in any kind of legal way. It took me a long time to find a sub that wasn’t in French, and it wasn’t even a very well translated one. You can find it at Anime1.com, and trust me, if there was a legal way to watch it, I’d be recommending that instead. You can also buy the Malaysian bootleg off of Ebay, but the quality of those things are always a gamble.

Bewitched Agnes... Which is the name I’ve come to assign to it... Is a very mature, well written show that offers a surprisingly gripping experience. It falls apart towards the end, starting with a somewhat insulting deus-ex-machina event, and slowly losing all sense of the dark, pyschologically complex reveals that it could have easily reached. It’s a fun ride, but we never learn anything substantial about the magical world, or about Wonderland’s relationship to it, or how this bizarre system came to be in the first place. And that’s a pretty big blight on an otherwise perfect series. Some people won’t mind this, but for me, it drops the show down by about two points to an overall score of 8/10.

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Okusama wa Mahou Shoujo

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Characters & Voice Actors

Asaba, Ureshiko

Kurenai, Sayaka

Kagura, Tatsumi

Hermes

Kashiwada, Yuuji

Fujimori, Yumiko

Emma, Freya

Chourou

Morino, Fuyuki

Nagamori, Souichi

Staff

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Okusama wa Mahou Shoujo

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Synopsis

Background

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Characters & Voice Actors

Staff

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Ending Theme

Reviews

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