Maebashi Witches

a 6.12, really? God, people are so biased towards idol anime its unreal. This show is awesome. Not only is the animation and CG gorgeous but the premise and characters are also great. Combining magic and music is always a plus in my book and seeing how the girls use magic to solve all of their issues without really solving them is really interesting. This is the anime im most excited to see come out week to week because of how invested I am in seeing what all 5 of the girls are hiding behind their normal dispositions. Even the stereotypical pink genki lead has ... more weight here when she's the only one out of the five who are acting genuine to themselves.

Besides the deeper stuff, the general vibes are great. It's fun and energetic while still being able to incorporate deep emotional elements. I honestly don't have an issue with the show yet, if you like idol or magic anime please check this out. It's easily my favorite of the season thus far.

I am aware that this show is aimed at a more childish public but i am enyoing it a lot.
Im not really sure why people are rating this anime so low. I mean, it is obvious that a "man" in his mid thirties is not the main target of this anime so i personally believe there is no need to rate it so low.

Anyways, for me, it is a show really worth to watch if you enjoy idol-like shows with pretty songs.
There's not much more to explain. It is basically just that, 5 girls with magical powers who dream to become real ... witches and in order to do that they have to make people's wishes become true, but not everything is just what it seems... You will discover it if you decide to give it a chance <3

Im enjoying the character design and development, the animation is quite decent and the OST and the songs are on point.

Overall i think it is a really enjoyable show if you like this kind of plots. Give it a try !

Thank you for reading, i love you all <33

Sunrise have once again given us an amazing group of girls to fall in love with. This time it’s a mix of two of my favorite things, idols and magical girls and man, what an experience this was. Maebashi witches is definitely one of those shows you need to push through to be rewarded with an amazing ending. It started kind of rough, I wasn’t really a fan of any of the girls until about episode 4-5 and actively hated one of them(Azu) until about episode 7, but I’m glad I stuck it out because I really fell in love with the cast and ... the story got very good down the stretch. Pound for pound this has to be the most underrated show of the entire season and I promise it’s much better than the scores suggest. If you like idols, magical girls or cute girls doing cute things with good character development and some mature topics being covered, you’ll have a blast here. I definitely did.

As a lover of magical girls and idols, seeing them blended together in this series was awesome. The girls using idol performances to grant wishes for people is a nice touch and I generally liked the quality of the performances as well. Most importantly though, the story and cast were top notch here. What separates this from Sunrise’s other much more famous idol series, Love Live, is how dark they were willing to go in this. We have topics covered from abusive relationships, emotionally absent parents, poverty, grooming all the way to weight insecurity. A few of the character backstories really caught me by surprise and seeing all the struggles the girls are going through or have been through, made me appreciate the smiles they put on every week. I think this show’s message can be summed up quite simply with “you never know what someone’s going through, so be kind.” All the girls are dealing with really stressful situations, but their time at the cafe training to be witches and helping others is like the one time of day when they can get their minds off of things and just be themselves. They have their issues and fights, but when they realize how much everyone’s been through they all become much more understanding and I liked seeing them work to help each other with their issues. Burdens get a lot lighter if we all share some of the load!

Another thing that I both love and hate here is how flawed the characters are. Usually in idol shows, the characters are like tropes personified. There’s no real lasting consequences of their actions and things are just rainbows all the time. In MBW, the girls often do dumb things that made me roll my eyes or get annoyed, but then I think about the individual character’s age and their backstory and I’m like “yea, that’s something a teenager would possibly do”. People do dumb things and mess up all the time, it’s how you grow from those mistakes that define you and usually this show used those failures as learning experiences for the girls. It’s much more entertaining watching characters who aren’t perfect, embrace that and try to make the most out of their situations than cartoonishly perfect situations where everything just gets resolved perfectly.

Now we can’t talk about an idol show without talking about the music. Like I said, this is a mix of magical girls and idols so music isn’t the primary focus here. However, the girls use music to grant wishes so every wish granting sequence has a musical number. I enjoyed all of them, but most were quite short other than the last few episodes(Eiko’s, Choco etc), the outfits are cute, the 3DCGI is good and the lyrics are solid. The regular art and animation in this show are great. I’m a big fan of how bright and colorful everything is. The character designs are gorgeous and the voice acting performances in here are awesome too. Several of the emotional scenes were made even better thanks to great seiyuu performances. An all around very solid production.

Even though I had my problems with a couple members of the cast, I really fell in love with these girls after a while and it hurt so much when this ended. This ended up becoming one of my favorite shows of the season and I really hope sunrise continue to expand on this franchise. It would be a really nice secondary idol franchise to run adjacent to LL. Maebashi Witches, we will miss you. If you like idols, magical girls and yuri teasing, please check this out!

Maebashi witches gets 8 wishes out of 10.

The biggest surprise anime of the season. I'm shocked by its sheer amount quality and originality. The animation and art are clean and colourful. The 3D animation used in the short magic sequences is wonderfully choreographed and the models are 2D-fied with perfect outlining magic. The premise is the first of its kind yet fits into the magical girl genre perfectly. The pacing is fast yet doesn't miss a beat. Everything and everything is done with such precision, I could immediately tell this anime is made with an ambitious vision.

Despite the cartoonishly noisy main girls, the anime pursues a high degree of realism for ... its subject, tackling topics that are very relevant to the youth and female audience. The drama is spiced up with good amount of unlikable characters, but held back a little right on the wholesome borderline. I believe the anime can be enjoyed by a wide range of audiences. Unfortunately, most of them will turn away at the constantly annoying characters, extremely fast-paced introductory episode and vague, seemingly shallow conclusions.

Among the original anime that came out this season, I would easily put Maebashi Witches at the top. It's relatively spicy for a magical girl/idol/band show, but the high quality production makes it worth watching. Banger OP. Solid original song in episode 5. I dare say this is the anime of the year so far. Highly recommended for drama fans.

This is a hidden gem, truly one of the best anime of this season.

Maebashi Witches combines elements of both idol and magical girl anime, with energetic characters who represent what, at first, seem like the typical cliché archetypes of this type of anime. However, as the episodes progress, we begin to get to know them more, and they reveal a complex personality, giving us a slightly darker side to these teenagers lives. But, without falling into the tendency of being edgy just for shock value and without losing their wholesome essence. With unexpected twists in almost every episode, Maebashi Witches has kept me entertained from ... the very beginning, and i definitely recommend it.

As a bonus, the animation and the songs are soo good; the love that went into this anime is truly evident.

I usually judge an anime based on how much I enjoy it.. and I think the story, artwork and music are at least at the higher tier level.
Although I won't say that the story is like great, but it is workable with it's twist. The music and the harmony of the voices (The idols) is top tier to me. If you're watching just to relax and not think so much, I think it's kinda good.. The story development is kinda making progress and I do find myself liking characters like Azu more now.. If you're someone who is working and wanted something just to relax ... and enjoy Japanese music in general (Not all the songs are very idol-ish) , I think you can try for it.

This anime has a lot of things to offer such as great visuals, stories, etc. But what I'm mostly interested is the character design and the visuals. Everything is so AMV material.

Honestly though, i'm surprised not many people watched this anime. It's so fun, i'm really happy that we got a proper magical girl series. This will be my favorite anime. But i do aware there's one sensitive thing that mention in episode 2 that maybe make people thinking twice to continue this anime.

I think this is recommended for people who like slice of life and magical girl fans. This also could be reference ... for your art.

Maebashi Witches — an "idol" show with no strings attached to similar counterparts. How You Like Dat?

I'm just going to be frank with you: the feeling of sometimes having to play Devil's Advocate on some shows that the minority will think are "the greatest thing in the world," but which are sold in a genre that the masses will generally skip, is these kinds of unintentional Freudian slips that expose quite the fanbase that those shows are marketed towards, and let's be fair here: they work out for the most part. This is most certainly the case with Sunrise's newest non-"Idol-based" series, Maebashi Witches, a ... not-so-Love Life!-esque series that's all about being regional witches to help people solve their problems, no matter how major or minor the issues can be.

If you're wondering why the "minority" here would speak up and give praises to "idol" shows like this, bear in mind that Maebashi Witches, despite having Sunrise's smooth flair of animation to boot, is both down to people's biased generalization that "all-girl song-based anime are all idol shows" and how that perception led people to believe that the series is marketed towards people who love idols and the like, which has always been a myth to begin with.

In actuality, the Gunma Prefecture-based capital city blend with the Mahou Shoujo element brings about this in a coming-of-age fashion, though all is not what it seems when the series progresses on to a different radical. And if you're wondering even further, yes, it's the 5 central girls of the group of Maebashi Witches, featuring the vibrant-but-annoying Yuina Akagi, the hard-headed fashionista Azu Niisato, the caring, level-headed Kyouka Kitahara, the optimistic nickname meister Choco Mitsumata, and last but not least, the carefree Mai Kamiizumi, alongside the Sergeant Keroro-esque Keroppe. Their central control of operations in the comfort of a magical flower shop where anyone can come in and have their worries known sets the stage where the 5 girls can parade their customers with magic, music, and mayhem that's filled with the caresses of the broken human heart, all in one place.

The Maebashi Witches are rowdy, but you get to know them well through the daily grind, which allows the new Mahou Shoujo witches to grow through their experiences, which are mostly cookie-cutter. It's marketed in such a way to get you rooted to each and every one of them, and while it's not bad, it's the absence of the story plot that, while it can be interpreted as lacklustre, instead gives an opportunity to shine in an open-ended way for the writers to know what values they want to bring into the anime, which can be rather mediocre for the most part, trying to wait for "something" to act.

Alas, if "idol" shows like this are not your cup of tea, the show certainly doesn't try to alienate itself from the minority of the devoted fans, because all the annoying aspects, from how the characters act to even the songs themselves, feel like talents are wasted just to market to hardcore Love Live!-esque fans. And it's very noticeable at that.

That being said, Sunrise (or, more appropriately, Bandai Namco Filmworks) certainly has given more flair to the shows they produce, and Maebashi Witches is no different for the most part. Directed by Junichi Yamamoto alongside veteran scriptwriter Erika Yoshida, it's the latter's writing that'll speak volumes to those who love this show to pieces, and I'll acknowledge that her writing is definitely better than expected, especially during the final moments of the series. Even the OST reeks of that of an idol show with the rather catchy OP and a slower, but still upbeat song for the ED, from the VAs of the Maebashi Witches themselves.

At the end of the day, I know that I'm probably going to undersell the show as just your typical idol-inspired garbage (fact-speaking for the majority here), but the underlying truth is that Maebashi Witches is a show that wears its heart on its sleeve and depicts it as such, which, while there's not much going for it, has a poignant theme of (the power of) friendship and acceptance that you'll only come across every once in a while, and its execution can be a hit or miss.

So...feel free to flame me, I guess? Maebashi Witches isn't bad, but it was a journey of highs and lows to thoroughly accept it in its various forms of enjoyment.