Mahou Shoujo Ore

Saki Uno is an average 15-year-old girl with a side hustle as a member of the exceptionally unpopular idol duo Magical Twins. Despite this, she absolutely loves the time she spends with her best friend Sakuyo Mikage as she strives to become closer with her childhood crush, Sakuyo's brother Mohiro. Her peaceful life, however, unravels when she finds a yakuza-looking thug trying to enter her house. Forced to invite him inside, Saki learns that her mother used to be a demon fighting Magical Girl, and that her brutish guest is actually a mascot named Kokoro-chan looking to recruit a replacement. Dumbfounded and skeptical, Saki is hesitant accept the request until Kokoro-chan reveals that Mohiro is a target of some cute, squirrel-tailed demons.

Rushing to his side, Saki's overwhelming desire to save Mohiro activates her Love Power, and a daring confession awakens her as a Magical Girl. However, because her body is not suitable for combat, Saki's transformation turns her into a muscle-bound man clad in a pretty dress. Now, as a fully-fledged Magical Girl, Saki must team up with Sakuyo to protect the love of her life from the fluffy, demonic menaces that run rampant in her world.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Mikage, Sakuyo Main

Hatano, Wataru Japanese

Uno, Saki Main

Ishikawa, Kaito Japanese

Fujimoto, Ichigou Main

Ogata, Megumi Japanese

Yamo, Konami Supporting

Morikubo, Shoutarou Japanese

Uno, Sayori Supporting

Hisakawa, Aya Japanese

Hyoue Supporting

Yusa, Kouji Japanese

Mikage, Mohiro Supporting

Toyonaga, Toshiyuki Japanese

Mahou Shoujo Eternal Dangerous Pretty Supporting

Taniyama, Kishou Japanese

Mahou Shoujo Everything Crazy Beauty Supporting

Suzuki, Tatsuhisa Japanese

Kokoro-chan Supporting

Ichijo, Kazuya Japanese

Yoshie, Terushige Producer

Kurosu, Nobuhiko Producer

Ozawa, Fumihiro Producer

Isogai, Noritomo Producer

Reviews

Aug 1, 2022

RebelPanda

Recommended

Magical Bros turned out a way better and funnier than anticipated (or Mahou Shoujo Ore if you prefer). It's a thoroughly entertaining, if slightly uneven, magical girl parody that has plenty of funny meta-jokes, self-aware commentary, and a cast of likable characters. Perhaps its source material simply wasn’t long enough to be adapted into 12 episodes, but aside from some sluggish pacing around the series midpoint, it's a worthwhile watch.

Even now, the plot synopsis sounds like a crazy fever dream. The first two episodes are supremely ridiculous parodies of a typical intro to a magical girl series. Protagonist Saki plays the straight man in ... a world of insanity, with hilarious well-timed reaction faces and her perfectly dumbfounded voice performance. Her mom already knows magical girls exist because she was one, contracted by the same scary yakuza guy who’s trying to sign on Saki. Even Saki's singing partner in their up incoming idol duo, Sakuyo, and their manager were totally chill with her magical girl transformation. Oh yeah, she transforms into a burly dude in a dress. Instead of using magic, she has to use her stick to beat the shit out of demons in bloody brawls complete with pixelated piles of bodies to censor the carnage.

At first, it’s really funny to see how quickly everyone accepts her demon-fighting form as normal while she continues to freak out. This joke wears off as the show progresses, settling into a stable level of absurdity to give the story a chance to flesh out its characters. The show loves to make the joke of how much carnage magical girls would actually have to cause if they didn’t have flashy light effects, it comes up whenever Saki has to save everyday citizens from legions of fluffy demons. At the start of the show Saki has a typical fairy-like mascot flying around her while she dreams about becoming a magical girl and having her love interest Mohiro fawn over her; only to hilariously awoke to a ludicrous reality where her mascot is the mini yakuza guy floating around her and unable to even look at Mohiro without foaming at the mouth like your average horny harem protagonist dude.

It’s not until both Saki and Sakuyo gain magical girl powers that they go from being total failures of aspiring idols (not one fan at their barren roadside concert) that they actually gain popularity. Seeing Saki’s offbeat singing pair with Sakuyo’s comparatively great performance is quite funny, especially when their manager bluntly criticizes how terrible she is. Thankfully the show gives him more screen time to become someone who’s actually likable, we understand why he’s so critical and wants to see them succeed by the end which makes the greatest development the series has to offer.

Also, there’s a lot of singing in the first few episodes, the first sign that they’re stalling for a time due to the meager 12 chapter manga being adapted. The singing was good unless it’s intentionally off-key then it’s quite goofy, Mohiro and his idol partner Hyoue were shown performing the show’s great ed song on a tv behind the girl’s empty streetside performance. Perfectly showing how far they have to go to catch up to Saki’s love interest who’s also Sakuyo’s brother.

Their relationship quickly becomes something like a love triangle with Saki in love with Mohiro, Sakuyo in love with Saki, and Mohiro in love with Saki’s manly form. It’s sometimes cute to see but also the show occasionally portrays Sakuyo’s gayness as a threat to Saki (there was even a bad rape joke with Saki in bed crying while Sakuyo in manly form looming over her with a cigar). However, like most jokes in the show as it appears more often with increasing stakes it gets better. By the end, she becomes less of a threat and balances out to someone who’s trying to actually protect who they care about. It’s not a good portrayal of a gay character, but at least it doesn’t actively prevent you from enjoying the comedy.

Ore takes any chance it can get to poke fun at the magical girl genre, idols, and the anime industry. It points out all of the glaring troubles idols face like not being allowed to date, the age limit, the extreme contract guidelines, and how they have to meet and shake hands with anyone (oh god the condensed milk joke). Also, like any good absurdist comedy, it's surprising and does whatever it can to subvert your expectations to maintain your interest. Whether it be a joke playing out differently than you first anticipating, or even the story taking a direction as opposed to where it hinted it might go.

The show also takes a whack at Kamen Rider the hero icon that was stomped out when Magical Girls became popular. The recurring character Ichigo Fujimoto is basically the embodiment of a modern Kamen Rider, living in a run-down apartment, having to make his costume out of trash, constantly being forgotten. He angrily scolds Saki for being one of those weak magical girls just annoyingly lingers around her from time to time. Like most of the supporting cast, he’s an entertaining digression from the main duo’s dynamic.

It's clear that Mahou Shoujo Ore didn't have the highest budget. The animation is typically lacking, with lots of camera shaking and so-so background art, but typically they make the best out of what they have. Whenever characters are drawn with the simpler style they're always expressing some over-the-top emotion like a typical reaction face would, so it saves money and improves the jokes. There’s plenty of jokes on the meager animation budget too; a monster that turns the backgrounds black and white, the camera cutting to the 'nice boat' meme during bloody action scenes, most hilariously the art quality being lowered to toddler level for one of the conflicts, and how episode 5 is a riff on the animation studio producing the show.

The episode-long digression the show takes to rag on Studio Pierrot is funny and well made, but it has practically nothing to do with the show! It handles the Godzilla plotline even better than its latest anime incarnation, the monster representing an animator who just wanted the latest episode of Mahou Shoujo Ore to be released on time. Even so, this episode came out of nowhere and didn't develop any part of the story or characters. There's a lot of downtime in this show, so much so that it makes you wonder why they didn't shorten it to 10 episodes. The Godzilla episode was totally unnecessary, the hot springs episode was literally one joke for 10 minutes, so much singing, and the 'anime original' idol duo is just a copy and paste of Saki and Sakuyo but with less development. For all the time that Mahou Shoujo Ore wastes, it's mostly good content, and even when it's stalling out the plot progression it's still watchable.

Mahou Shoujo Ore knows the limits of its budget and makes an enjoyable time out of it. I wish the insanity from the first few episodes was more present in the rest of the show, but I feel like I will remember this series more for the time it gave to develop the characters. Rather than leaving them as the one-note stereotypes meant to riff on similar shows, it surprises you and makes you want to see what absurd situation they'll be put in next.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jun 19, 2018

Moskovskaya-chan

Mixed Feelings

Overall: Mahou Shoujo Ore is an anime that from the beginning until the end doesn't take itself seriously. I really don't really get the anime at all .
Its like a big joke at all dialogues scenes are so cliche that in some way you probably feel you just watching any other anime but in the same time is totally bizarre the setting with jojo's mahou shoujo with dreamy fairy-yakuzas trying to become the idols that everyone want to be.
It's a story about how Love can change someone and where ambitions can take someone.
The episodes 5 and 10 are in totally diferente level of the others ... i think in these two you can really grasp the meaning of deconstruction of the genre of mahou shoujo even madoka couldn't achieve that.
The episode 12 Mahou Shoujo Watashi is when shit get real. The name WATASHI and all the meanings behind EVEN Evangelion doesn't have that much symbolism. Maybe the problems with the site don't give us the information but i really think Hideaki Ano and Hayao Myazaki worked in this masterpiece.The illustrations of Monokuma in the ending are really incredible.
Maybe you'll like the anime just don't watch with big expectations.. Love POWER.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jun 22, 2018

LoomyTheBrew

Not Recommended

Magical Girl Ore is one of the strangest anime I've seen in some time.

Not quite as strange as something like To Be Hero, but definitely up there. I'm not going to reiterate the synopsis of the show, but this is essentially a satire of the magical girl genre. You got cute girls turning into burly magical men and demons that look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime. Already sounds odd and hilarious right?

But it goes deeper than that: enemies that disrupt animation, Godzilla(?), sauna competition, using the magical girl rod to literally beat enemies to a pulp, Yakuza fairies.... the list goes on.

For me the ... show was a mixed bag. Ya, it's funny with the gender bending magical girls, but the novelty got old for me about halfway through. The show in my opinion was best when it was completely random and off the wall (my favorite episode was the Godzilla episode). It was trying to make fun of a lot of magical girl and idol tropes, but it also felt like it didn't always succeed in its delivery. It felt pretty repetitive at times and in some ways it fell victim to some of the tropes it was trying to make fun of. It didn't take itself seriously, which is the point, but it also didn't take its comedy too seriously which left this show feeling dry.

Just because you're using overused tropes and showing how boring and stupid they can be doesn't mean it's any easier to watch if it's not executed well. I felt like this show should have really amped up the satire and comedy and make it even more crazy and out of nowhere. During the Godzilla episode I was wondering what the hell I was watching, but it was absolutely hilarious, I was dying during that episode. I wish there was more of that. Most of the time though the comedy felt flat and some times it was excruciating to watch because of how boring it'd get. But at random points in the show it'd throw a curve ball at you that'd keep me entertained just enough until the next curve ball came. But overall I didn't feel too satisfied once I reached the end.

In terms of satire, ludicrousness, and comedy, I was let down, this is definitely no Space Patrol Luluco.

For the characters, they're not much to write home about. They fulfill their roles fine for the show, nothing much more to say about them. The MC is about what you'd expect out of a magical girl MC, but it's different since she turns into a muscular man which makes it kind of funny (some of those camera angles though lmao, there's definitely manservice in this show). There's a complicated love triangle that's kind of assuming and some of the side characters are funny too, but are mainly pretty forgettable. The art and animation is pretty average, not much to say here. The episodes with the intentionally bad animation was pretty funny though.

To sum it up, I wouldn't really recommend this show to anyone unless you're just dying to watch some macho men in magical girl outfits with some crazy antics and a lot of pokes at the magical girl genre. In terms of comedy, there's not a lot of great material here and the delivery was hit and miss, even for some of the better episodes (Godzilla episode was great though). This was an interesting experiment that seemed like it was a lot of fun to make, but in a lot of ways I feel like it fell felt and didn't have much else to offer besides its main selling point: burly men in magical girl outfits. But maybe, that's all it ever wanted to be.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	Poll: Mahou Shoujo Ore Episode 4 Discussion Stark700 - Apr 23, 2018	38 replies	by LilyVarbik »» Oct 1, 6:12 PM
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