Mahou Shoujo? Naria☆Girls

Naria Girls is perhaps one of the worst anime I have ever seen and is definitely the worst title from this year thus far, even worse than other pieces of dookie such as "Big Order" or "Mayogia". It's that bad!

Everything about this anime reeks of laziness from the opening credits, to the animation to the voice acting. Nothing in this show is remotely decent and everything makes me want to throw up into a basket of puppies.

The plot makes no sense and I won't even try to explain it in this review. It's about three girls that become magical girls and have to fight the ... forces of evil or some crap like that. Boring and generic. What really makes this anime so bad, however, is the atrocious "script"...if you could even call it that. Most of the dialogue between the three girls is improvisation and none of what they say is funny or even makes sense half the time. Every joke falls flat and the topics they talk about don't even make any sense with no consistency or flow between what each person is saying. It's like these voice actresses got drunk, spoke some random trash which was recorded and lazily dubbed over animated girls. If there is some 'deep' symbolism behind what they're saying, I have no clue what it is (and let's face it, there is none)

The animation is terrible. It consists of either still frames, which you'd think would at least have some good quality artwork, but NOPE! These frames are badly drawn and look like aids. The other half is made up of CGI (ohhhhh my favourite!) which look terrible. The models have no texture and look like they were ripped from a PS1 game and the characters are constantly moving around or jumping. It's almost as bad as the film 'Food Fight'. Not only that, the mouths don't sync up to what they're saying and often, the two character models will walk into each other, passing through one another entirely. This extremely lazy and I wonder how the hell in 2016 could this be played on television?

I'm not even sure who this anime is marketed at. Even with all the pandering and the such, I'm sure no sweaty otaku in Japan would even go near this show with a 50-foot pole. It's the worst anime of this year and you should stay far away from it unless you're one of this sick twats like me who enjoy watching garbage anime.

"Vatican Carrots!"

Look at all of the bad reviews. How many episodes have they seen? 1 or 2 episodes is undoubtedly not enough to give this anime a holistic and comprehensive review.

Don't let this anime's synopsis fool you. If you take this anime seriously, then its score of 3.91 will be no shock to you. But this anime is not meant to be taken seriously. Its story is actually just a background for the refreshingly candid and original humor. The animation and voice acting are deliberately this way to perfectly fit the anime's theme. It's just satirically hilarious.

Granted, its humor is not for everyone. Mahou Shoujo ... Naria Girls' humor is very particular, and it expects the audience to have some kind of prior understanding/experience with its type of humor. It's not at all a generic comedy, and it's definitely not everyone's cup of tea.

Each episode is kind of structured in a certain way. The three Naria girls start out in some situation, to which there is often some impromptu comedic conversation. They then encounter a monster, and this monster leads them to enact a scenario impromptu, and as a result of the spontaneity, hilarity ensues. I really cannot praise the voice actors enough. From what I saw, each of their comedic skits was almost totally impromptu, with maybe some minimal guide-lining to make sure that they at least advance the plot a little bit. To be able to come up with this kind of humor on the spot is pretty impressive.

There is also the "main" story, in which the Naria girls need to fill up their Naria power to defeat the evil Ice Queen. The story itself has its moments, and if the comedy was not included, then it might have had the potential to become a compelling short story. It truly wasn't a terrible story. Cliche, but decently interesting.

I think the main thing that is very off-putting at first is the art, animation, and conversational style. To me, it seemed like the voice actors were actually video-recorded, and then they were reskinned in production to become the anime characters. So as a result, the animation seems strange and it doesn't seem well-planned. Most of the time there isn't really animation at all, it's just a still picture with sound effects and a narrative voice-over. And at first, the unfamiliar comedy is a bit jarring because the girls tend to all talk at once with seemingly no direction and no script. But all of these things actually are what contribute so much to the humor: all of the comedy seems impromptu and very candid. The bad animation style, the random conversations; each piece deliberately emphasizes this anime's satirical nature.

Don't take this anime seriously. Don't watch it expecting an emotional, inspiring story. Don't watch it expecting the battle scenes to blow you away with beautiful animation. Don't watch it expecting to learn a deeper moral lesson than its surface implies.

If you want a laugh, and if you want some quality, refreshing, candid humor, this is the anime to watch.

Wow, this sure is an underrated anime! But worry not, cause I'm here to clear this anime's name. I've seen that reviews here do this thing were they compare the anime that they're reviewing with others similar in style and more popularity. In this case I'll be choosing Nyan~ Neko Sugar Girls: even though they aren't on the same genre, they share a unique way of telling their respective stories. That's why I'll use it as a metric for rating this anime.

Story: 6/10 (1/10 if compared to other animes)
This anime engages in the common story-telling practice, usually found in seasonal animes that are 13 episodes ... long, commonly known as "developing the plot on the last four episodes". Mahou Shoujo? Naria☆Girls does this gracefully and better that any other anime that I've ever seen, developing all of it's plot in just three episodes. A truly exceptional work of art.
Both Nyan~ Neko Sugar Girls and Mahou Shoujo? Naria☆Girls share the trait of aggressively throwing important information over our heads right before it becomes important. I must recognize, however, that Nyan~ Neko Sugar Girls' plot twist is far better than Mahou Shoujo? Naria☆Girls' one, being the latter evident as soon as the information was revealed.
What made me compare both isn't this two characteristics, however, but a more unique one: in both animes, episodes consist of characters saying stupid things in front of a microphone (which makes it more confusing when we are supposed to take them seriously on the last episodes).
6/10, since both are quite similar.

Art: 9/10 (1/10)
In this aspect Mahou Shoujo? Naria☆Girls distinguish itself from Nyan Neko. The latter has a recognizable MMD style, contrasting with the classic MSpaint style that makes Nyan Neko so recognizable. I found that most people don't find this style particularly appealing and criticize some of it's quirks as it they were flaws. The clipping that constantly happens when a character moves is seen as a bug when it's a feature, one of the things that makes this art-style so enjoyable.
I also enjoyed that the fights were depicted as an still pictures with a different art style than the one seen in the rest of the series. It's reminiscent of Nyan~ Neko sugar girl's opening, which used the same tactic.
I only gave it a 9/10, however, since I kinda miss Nyan~ Neko Sugar Girl's style. It could be a ten, if they drew the fights using MS paint.
Also, should I include the part where they transform and look exactly the same?

Sound: 2/10 (4/10)
In this aspect, Mahou Shoujo? Naria☆Girls definitely distances itself from Nyan~ Neko. Instead of the quality work that Nyan did with it's voice acting (especially the nurse's), we have a voice acting done by professional microphones— acceptable, I guess, but it clashes with the choice they did for the show's animation. They have bits were they can't contain their laughter or directly forget the dialog/improvise, and that's why I decided it was worth a 2 instead of a 1.
The opening was bland, the ending fells short if compared to Nyan's— but what ending doesn't?

Character: 1/10 (5/10)
Look, we have three characters: the flat chested girl, the girl who has boobs, and the protagonist. That's all, there's no other personality trait that distinguishes them. I still gave a 4 (decent) because that's how many animes are, it would be unjust to criticize Mahou Shoujo? Naria☆Girls for it.
At least in Nyan~ every character had a distinguishable characteristic that made them all lovable.
My favourite character in this show was a monster, who appeared in one episode and was sad. This character alone elevates the rating from 4 to 5.

Enjoyment: 10/10
I enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed Nyan, which is to say a lot. The dialog was amazing, the artwork was one of the best that I've ever seen and the pacing of the story was simply perfect. There's nothing else to say.

I'll break character for a brief moment in this review: yes, it was awful. But what else can I say? Is so awful that it starts to be enjoyable at some point. I mean it when I say that this is underrated: even if it isn't at My Immortal's level, I think it deserves a better recognition as the awful— yet enjoyable— anime that it is.