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(Dark and Edgy: Magical Girls Edition)
What are the essential elements that make a show dark and edgy? It must contain awful and terrible events happening to our characters, a dark and troubled past, causing anguish, a bleak setting, and very obvious good and bad characters.
This show has it all, and more.
The show aims for shock value with no clear narrative to justify its inclusion. It also deliberately has exaggerated facial expressions with “dark” dialogue to reinforce the dark and edginess. After a certain point, I stopped caring about the setting and characters, I didn’t care whether they lived or died, or whether they will get their “happy ending” or not. In fact, the show doesn’t have a happy ending, it’s a bleak and inconclusive ending with many questions let unresolved. In short, Mahou Shoujo Site is an awful, aimless, and agonizing show to watch.
STORY:
Story Summary: a bunch of poor, unfortunate girls are recruited by a creepy figure, running a sketchy website, to become magical girls, only for them to discover that the website holds a more sinister message + cue lots of anguish, misery, and anger + lots of distorted facial expressions and over-the-top violence = this fucking show
Mahou Shoujo Site is a dark and edgy show from beginning to end. As soon as you finish Episode 1 and move on to the remaining episodes, you’ll realize the darkness and edginess never fades. As the series progress, does it get more dark and edgy? That’s debatable. However, for me, in terms of dark and edgy, I’m finding it really difficult to top anything beyond Episode 1. In fact, let me breakdown what occurs in Episode 1, so you’ll understand why I believe it’s more dark and edgy than any episode beyond it.
Episode 1: Aya Asagiri, our main character, is constantly bullied at school at the hands of Sarina Shizukume and her friends. They write verbally abuse language on her desk, they destroy her books, they beat her in the bathroom, et cetera. What does Aya do, she does nothing, but soak up all the abuse. At home, Aya experiences domestic violence at the hands of Kaname Asagiri, her older brother, whereby he continuously ties her up and beats her. What does Aya do, she does nothing, but soak up all the abuse. Then, one day Aya’s pet cat is brutally murdered by who else, her school bullies. And, on that same day, the bullies decide to get one of their guy friends and ask him to rape her. Luckily for Aya, she doesn’t get raped. And, again, luckily for her, she had received a magical weapon from the sketchy website, and used it on the random dude and one of Sarina’s friends. In the next scene, they are shown completely decapitated by an oncoming train. Later, Aya becomes friends with Yatsumura, a violent sociopath, who casually slits the throat of Sarina. End of Episode 1.
Yep, that all happens in Episode 1, and the remaining episodes will continue to have dark and edgy content, such as the kidnapping and torture of a burglar, the cruel and horrible character backgrounds, every action Kaname Asagiri does, the gory deaths of many characters, and the depressing undertones. A show that is dark and edgy is fine if there is a meaning and purpose. However, for Mahou Shoujo Site, there is no real meaning or purpose. In fact, the show seems to bask in all the violence, cruelty, gore, and “mature” themes without restraint, and shoves it in the our faces and expects us to enjoy the content. More importantly, many of the “mature” themes are never addressed in a serious manner and are used as a tool to artificially create sympathetic characters, which to mean is a sign of bad writing.
Besides its awful setting, unnecessary “mature” themes, and bad writing, the show is missing tons of content. For example, the early battles with the administrators and the later battle with Nana, the introduction of important characters like Alice Misumi or Hinomoto Makoto, Sarina Shizukume’s realization of the truth, her supposed “death” was suppose to happen soon, and her reasons for revenge, additional background details of many characters, the kiss with Yatsumura, etc.
In addition, there are numerous unanswered questions, such as who is that girl that the administrators are talking too, why was Aya’s brother kidnapped and locked away when he could have killed all the magical girls in the resort and finished it, why is the detective working for the administrators and what does he gain from all this, and why is the King the most unfortunate girl in the world?
Some additional problems include: the death of Nijimi Anazawa lacked impact even with her backstory told within the episode, the detective appearing out of nowhere to stop Kaname Asagiri was a huge deus ex machina, also Aya having a new power to save Tsuyuno was a really ass-pull, the reshuffling of the fight scenes, and finally the Anime’s ending deviating from the manga.
ANIMATIONS:
The art is adequate and, sometimes, downright hideous, especially the background art and character designs. The character designs are simple and not very detailed. The characters sometimes look janky and off-model, but it usually occurs to background characters. The background art features many dark colors, such as shades of gray, brown, black, and red, and it maintains these colors throughout the series, constantly reminding the viewers that Aya’s world is filled with terrible people who do terrible things, and that anything she does will only hurt her and her friends. The background objects, such as buildings, furniture, trees, and other landscapes, are plain-looking and unremarkable. There are occasionally some bright screen tones like ‘love bubbies’, ‘love flowers’, or ‘speed stripes’ to emphasize certain emotions and actions that are being performed, but they are short and often fleeting.
The animations are decent, especially the excellent live-action ending credits, and, at time, outright hilarious. For example, in episode 2 and 9, Kaname Asagiri displays some of the most distorted and exaggerated facial expressions I’ve ever seen. It was created to be serious, but it was too funny to not laugh. Other characters will also have distorted and exaggerated facial expressions, such as Nijimi Anazawa when she wants to kill someone really badly, or Rina Shioi with her crazy eyes and loud laughing, or everyone else with their heart or blood shot eyes.
SOUND:
The voice acting is very good with noticeable performances from Nobuhiko Okamoto, who voices Kaname Asagiri, Yuuko Oono, who voices Aya Asagiri, and Himika Akaneya, who voices Tsuyuno Yatsumura. The background music is very hit-or-miss, it sometimes creates the mood and atmosphere of a typical horror show, other times it fails and turns it into a comedy. This mainly happens when the girl beginning to chant “fa la la” attempts to create horror vibes, but turns it into a trivial and ludicrous scene. Basically, that particular background music is cheesy and occasionally distracting.
The opening song, “Changing point”, is sung by Japanese band i☆Ris, and its intro displays many magical girls, including our two main protagonist, set in a gray and dreary world with most of them bleeding from various areas on the body. The ending song, “Zenzen Tomodachi”, is sung by Haruka Yamazaki, and its outro displays live action clips of idols running and dancing, various scenes of our two main protagonist, and hundreds of CG sperm flying through the sky. The opening song is your standard J-Pop, which to me is uninteresting and dull; the intro is also typical for many anime shows, thus making it uninteresting and dull. The ending song is also your standard J-Pop, however its outro was so bizarre and strange that I couldn’t help but be enthralled by it. I mean, watching live action clips of dancing idols with CG sperm flying through the sky? Interesting. Very interesting.
CHARACTERS:
I’ll be honest, I hated almost every single character in this show from their pathetic excuses/reasons to perform stupid or inhumane actions to their shallow and tragic backstories and finally to their almost nonexistent character developments. Everything about these characters just screams unrealistic, superficial, mentally unstable, and soulless. Still, I want to talk about four characters, specifically our two main characters and the two antagonist characters. Every other character was either lacking depth, irrelevant to the story, or not interesting.
Main Characters in this Show:
Aya Asagiri is a middle-school student with fair skin, long straight black hair with bangs, and pink eyes. Her stick is a gun that allows the teleportation of people to her last visited location. Upon using her stick's ability, many physical changes begin to occur: blood streams from her eyes, her inner eyes become heart-shaped, and her hair turns red. She is very timid, frail, easily frightened, and isolated from her peers; she suffers from depression and has suicidal ideations. She has a warmhearted personality and doesn’t hesitate to protect people even at the risk of her own life, as seen in Episode 5 where she protects Yatsumura and Shizukume from the collapsing building.
Now, here’s the problem, the anime was throwing everything it could to turn Aya into the most sympathetic character possible. Shown in Episode 1, Aya was viciously bullied at school, suffered from domestic violence, had her pet cat killed, and almost became a rape victim. The viewers are forced from the very beginning to feel sorry for her and to be angry at the bullies and the older brother for the horrible things they were doing. This is such a cheap tactic to gain sympathy for a character that I can’t believe the creators would put something like this in Episode 1. In fact, I’m sure most people weren’t feeling sympathy for Aya, but rather disturbed and disgusted by the “torture porn” filled first episode that they didn’t even make past the half-way mark. And I don’t blame them. And if you do decide to continue watching, you can expect Aya to cry, whine, and bitch all the way until the final two episodes, where she suddenly grows a backbone. But, for me, it was way too late, and I had already grown tired of her.
Tsuyuno Yatsumura is a middle-school student with fair skin and short blonde hair. Her stick is a smartphone that has the power to stop time for herself and for anybody else written on the smartphone. Upon using her stick’s ability, many physical changes begin to occur: blood drips from her mouth, her inner eyes becomes a crescent moon, and her hair turns orange. Before meeting Aya, she had a stoic personality and a tendency to be sadistic, but now with Aya being her friend she was slowly changing and opening up to people.
Tsuyuno has a typical tragic backstory, where she lived an ordinary and fortunate lifestyle, until a burglar murdered her family. She was spared, however the burglar vowed to return and find her when she grew up. And since then, she spend several years living in fear that he'll return. That is, until she discovered the magical site, received her powers, and exacted revenge.
Now, I would like to say that Tsuyuno is a fairly interesting and dynamic character with a justified backstory. However, her earlier actions, slitting the throat of Sarina Shizukume, portrays her as a violent sociopath. And her kidnapping and torture of the burglar, only reinforces this notion. Still, her repeated interactions with Aya made her charming, sweet, and caring, and thus one of the better characters in this show.
Main Antagonist in this Show:
The real antagonists are, of course, the administrators, however the lack of appearances and the numerous questions concerning their existences makes it difficult for me to either like or hate them. Some questions include: who was the first administrator, what are their ‘true’ intentions, what is their method and purpose to using magical girls as administrators, do the administrator remember their former lives, etc. Because of these unanswered questions, I’ve decided to focus on Sarina Shizukume and Kaname Asagiri as I despise both these characters.
Sarina Shizukume is a middle-school student with fair skin, red hair with pigtails, visible neck stitches, and red eyes. Her stick is a yo-yo that can cut anything. Upon using her stick’s ability, many physical changes begin to occur: blood leaks out of her ears, her inner eyes becomes the Greek letter phi, and her hair turns yellow. She has a fierce and violent personality, who exhibits traits like resentfulness, envy, and insincerity.
Sarina’s path to becoming a magical girl is marked by deep vengeance and personal hatred against Aya and Tsuyuno. Originally, one of Aya’s bullies, she replaced Shioi Rina as the new Magical Girl Hunter, shortly after getting sliced by Tsuyuno. However, in Episode 10, she suddenly has a change of heart and assists Aya and her friends in defeating the administrators.
Now, I’ll state that I dislike Sarina and her bullshit reason to commit vicious bullying, as shown and explained in Episode 4. Her reasons for this bullying are extremely petty and beyond stupid; she bullies Aya because she seen as timid, weak, frail, “unthankful”, and a hinder to the class. I guess she must have thought, “Hmm. If Aya is making class hard for everyone, I’m just going to make her life even harder by bullying the shit out of her. Yeah! And hopefully, she will stop being a hinder to everyone in class.” Wow, solid reasoning! And the strange part is that after becoming a Magical Girl Hunter, she decides to join Aya’s side because she was “pissed” and the administrators were treating humans like animals. (Which is ironic because she treated Aya almost like an animal as well.) Anyway, in the anime, her reasons to join Aya’s side are weak and extremely sudden, unlike in the manga where she had a more justified reason to join Aya’s side.
Kaname Asagiri is a tall and handsome high-school student with blue-black hair and glasses. He has used two sticks: Nijimi Anazawa’s panties to mind control people and Sayuki Ringa’s katana to cut and kill Nijimi. Upon using her stick’s ability, many physical changes begin to occur: his inner eyes becomes spades and his hair turns white. He is manipulative, abusive, egocentric, and has ‘god complex’, i.e., feeling a being superior to everyone. He is extremely abusive and violent towards his sister to the extent of physical and psychological torture. He performs these cruel actions in order to expel his hatred of his father, i.e., the father abuses him and has high expectations of him getting into Tokyo University. It’s because of this stress and pressure that he regularly ties up Aya and punches her, and even stating that her only role in life is to be his stress relief.
Kaname is one of the worst characters in anime I’ve ever seen. He’s an inhuman bastard that doesn’t care about anybody, but himself. He has killed two people, Keisuke Naoto, Nijimi Anazawa, without remorse and believes they are human scum. He likes being in control, as shown in Episode 8 and 9, and enjoys the suffering of other people. In short, he’s a terrible character with no redeemable qualities what so ever.
ENJOYMENT:
Mahou Shoujo Site is one of the worse shows I’ve ever watched. We have “dark and edgy” villains who get high off of bullying, torturing, and killing people, and we have a weak and pathetic main character who cries and talks rather than fight. We have an incomplete story with many lingering questions and numerous omitted details and content, revealed only in the manga. It also has many pointless mature themes, such as domestic violence, torture, suicidal ideation, and sexual assault, just for the sake of making it “dark and edgy”.
We have cheap and bland background and character designs with decent animations, especially the distorted and exaggerated facial expressions. And finally, we have hilarious background music of a girl chanting “fa la la” trying to create horror vibes, and an interesting live action ending song complete with dancing idols and sperm flying through the sky. There are many additional problems with this show, however the ones that I mentioned are what’s making this show absolutely goddamn awful. My recommendation: avoid this show like the plague and watch something else. Something with more substance and entertainment than this piece of shit.
