Mahou Shoujo-tai Arusu

Brilliantly rendered with unique style and brimming with boundless imagination, Mahou Shoujo Tai Arisu (Magical Girl Squad Alice for the non-weeaboo among us), is a charming anime about a girl who loves magic, who falls into a realm where it is a tool of oppression and warfare. An adventure in the truest sense of the word: a journey to strange new land, and an exploration of the human heart, through challenge and trial. The show is fun to the very core, and its fictional landscape is well-realised in all its peculiar glory, but it also has some very strong dramatic moments, and some dark/mature themes, ... which is what ultimately makes it so compelling. Its quirky characters befit the experimental feel of the show in general, especially the protagonist, Alice, who is simply an absolute joy to watch in any scene she’s in. The series is 40 episodes long, but each episode is only half-length, so it actually ends up being a shorter series that usual. However, with the way the show is paced, it covers a lot more than pretty much any 26 episode series can manage. In fact, at first the ridiculous speed at which the show moves forward may seem jarring (especially, perhaps, if you’re not too quick with subtitles). There is almost constant dialogue, and the scenes move rapidly from one to the next, so you really have to be paying attention. However, I soon got used to it, and loved the way in which it didn’t waste time.


Produced with a childishly colourful simplicity, but also with an ever-present artistic flare, the show almost always looks stunning. The actual detail in the cel animation is very low, but, as is the case with the lack of consistency in Noein’s animation, it just doesn’t matter, in fact I prefer the way this show looks to countless other anime irregardless of their detail. The use of colour and an innovative stylised approach make the show look fantastic, and is just one of the things that make it stand out from the crowd as a unique viewing experience. Probably the best thing about the way the show looks, though, is the directing, which, without any doubt, is some of the best I’ve seen in any anime. Why this ‘mahou shoujo’ (albeit unconventional) is deserving of such fantastic direction is beyond me, but it has it in spades. Being very fast-paced, the show has a lot of editing to deal with, and I suppose that some of the interesting techniques evolved from that. But thanks to this factor, almost every scene looks remarkable, and the effort that went in to the show’s design really pulls through. Also, I think some of the sense of freedom the show uses as a theme seeped into the minds of the producers, because conventional is thrown out the window in favour of experimental - which, fortunately, works. My only criticism is that there are a few (2 or 3) episodes where the animation is poorly done. The music is also fantastic, especially the theme music (which is also the OP) - I just love it.

The show is relentlessly energetic, propelled forward by Alice’s uncompromising ideals, stubborn bravery, and love for fun and freedom. For me, she represents the epitome of the goodness of human beings; she is comprised of every emotional quality I value in other people and myself. I think almost all of my appreciation for the show comes from my love of her character, and the way she behaves. Her belief in magic, and her faith in herself is oftentimes inspiring. Her big heart and childish innocence lend the show a strong emotional potency, from the moments of playful laughter, to those of great sadness, Alice’s character attached me to the show’s emotional context. Very rarely can a character do this, and I think it’s because she was so well-written: despite her larger-than-life attitude, she felt very believable due to the fact that despite her actions always being admirable, they were not always right. The other factor that contributed to her greatness was Alice’s seiyuu, who I don’t think I’ve heard until I watched this anime. That’s a shame, because the way she voiced Alice her was just spot-on, and her voice itself is so full of life and sincerity that she became her character in a way that many seiyuus don’t manage. Needless to say, she’s now one of my all-time favourite voice actresses.

The thing that ultimately sells the show and made it such a memorable experience for me is that it tells a story with heart; every moment of the show radiates with an aura of originality, and one can see that it wasn’t produced just to sell - it’s not trying to appeal to its audience through generic moe or pointless mecha, it’s trying to tell a story. It’s the sort of impression one gets from reading a good book, but one I rarely get from watching anime, and in a sense, that is why this show appealed to me so much; beyond its actual quality it speaks to my inner love for fiction as a product of passionate creativity. To sum up the series, I’ll say that it is the best mahou shoujo (if you care to call it that) series I’ve ever seen. It is dark and dramatic at times, has a thoroughly compelling plot, memorable characters, an exciting plot, and is always great fun to watch. I’m positive that most people won’t agree with me on this, and even I’m surprised at how much I enjoyed the series - if you only like shounen or fanservice: stay away, otherwise, give it a try!

I see what they were trying to do; that's why it pains me even more to give it such a bad grade.

The Good things:
Concept:
The concept was great: a human girl who wants to be a witch falls into the witch realm, and finds it different then what she was dreaming of.
In theory a great start, yeah? I'll tell you where it went wrong at "the bad things".

The art, holy-moly the art was fantastic. It was refreshing, almost realistic, but not off-putting. It seemed to have come directly from a colorful web-comic like W.I.T.C.H. (but with even better art). There are so many ... wonderful designs for objects solely used by witches (the dog-chest, the dragon-house etc.).
The only thing that was off-putting were the facial-expressions sometimes. They picked the weirdest times to show off their skills in the "dramatically-disturbed look" department. (you know the one, big eyes, forehead-zoom in that looks really creepy).

Voice acting: The voices showed off the character's personalities well (tbh, I wouldn't be able to pull of Arusu's up-beat character for so long even If I had the training).
The only voice-actor that left me wondering was the one of Lennon (Renon), whose gender was supposed to be ambiguous, but the voice left little to the imagination.


The mediocre things:
Characters: Don't get me wrong I like them, archetype and all, but their personalities were either too consistent or all over the place. A change of one's mind could take up a few minutes before they'd be back to their old personality again. Their motivations are also vague.
(Does Arusu want to go back to the human realm, or does she want to stay? Who knows, not her).

Sound: I didn't hear anything special in it. The Opening was just a less than epic instrumental and the ending, though soothing enough to make you fall asleep, didn't really stick with me. The rest of the OST didn't stand out to me and was sometimes a little creepy- though that did fit the situation sometimes.



The bad things:
The plot:
With the plot I mean the following: Structure, pacing, possible potholes and other plot bunnies that never came to fruition.
Man oh man, from the beginning I could tell the pacing was off, and it irked me bad. The beginning wasn't a beginning but a flash-forward, just like many of the scenes to follow were either badly timed flash-forwards or flashbacks. Take this and put it into a structure that already had no clue where it was going, and you have a mess.

The storyline started off simple enough; one objective, and a punishment if it wasn't done. But the objective was not only undoable, but also unfair and mathematically (or evolutionary, depending on how you look at the fairy crisis), nonsense. [You want to tell Me, there's only one fairy of every species in that entire world? Makes no sense at all.]

There were many things that, in the end, didn't get resolved (or I had to guess at, like the timeline of the Witch realm and the human realm: a complete mess). Facts were almost always presented late, or kept as guesswork.

Some questions I have that contains spoilers- read at own risk:
[Why is there such animosity between witches and warlocks? When was the human realm and witch realm divided, and how? How did daddy dearest have two children in different timelines (which doesn't add up), How did a child survive alone in that dimensional sea? ] /End of spoilers.


Conclusion:
It's such a shame it turned out this way. If the story-boarders had just paid a little more attention to the structure and maybe a little less time on quests that didn't make it through anyway, I might've actually given this a way higher grade.
If you just like to watch something when you're bored, this show is not a bad way to kill time, but don't expect too much, or you might get dizzy.

I can't actually believe that people are giving this anime such high score. I mean seriously!!
The art is awful, especially since there where way better art styles than this in the 2000s.
The animation is butchered and some time there are huge mistakes in how the characters move.
The story is a big empty nothing full of plot holes and we see character development in only one character, Sheila. Also if there is comedy in there I can't find it!!
The sound I suppose is not that bad but it doesn't save anything.

Over all to anybody coming to this anime to see an ... isekai or mahou shoujo anime I advice TO TURN BACK AND SEARCH for something else!!!!