The Fall 2024 Anime Preview Guide

Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc.

“Magical Girl”— A profession that undertakes the work of exterminating a kind of natural disaster called “Kaii.” Kana Sakuragi, a female college student who struggles with job hunting, is picked up by a magical girl startup company and…

Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. is based on the Magilumiere Co. Ltd. manga series by Sekka Iwata and Yū Aoki. The anime series is streaming on Amazon Prime Video on Fridays.

Do they have to be magical girls? I'm not objecting to the job, mind you – I love the genre and most of its permutations. But I think we can all agree that the people in question in this show aren't girls but women: fully grown adults. Unlike in Precure Full Bloom or Arina Tanemura's manga Idol Dreams, both of which feature grown-up transforming ladies, they don't age down when they transform, and their transformations are for their full-time jobs. I know this is silly to get hung up on, but what can I say? I can be pedantic.

That quibble aside, I was pleasantly surprised by this episode and am now fully convinced that I was in a bad mood when I read the manga. This adaptation seems to balance being faithful to the source material with understanding the needs of a motion-based format. Much of the imagery is taken directly from the first volume, particularly the cityscape with all the magical girl company signs and the opening fight on the motorcycles. Other elements are beautifully extended, like Koshigaya's transformation, which needed animation and sparkle. Amusingly enough, it feels more exhaustive than any of the transformations in the currently airing Wonderful Precure!, which is a classic magical girl show aimed at a young audience. Still, it also isn't overtly sexualized, which is always a concern. Koshigaya's shit-eating grin during the entire thing is a lot of fun; this is a woman who loves her work, possibly because she gets to beat things up.

I don't love the technological aspect of the way the magical “girls” fight, though. Kaii (the in-world monsters) being sucked into USB drives is inherently funny, but the technology to fight, complete with tablets linked to the magic wands, feels overly complex. Koshigaya has to yell out her commands to the tablet, which sends the attacks to her wand, but she also needs someone to hit the reload button on the tablet, which is how classic overachiever and presumptive soon-to-be magical girl Kana gets involved. It's an attempt to update something like Pretty Cure's group (or just duo) attacks, but it doesn't work for me. I do find their BROOMS, which look a bit like the magic drive shafts from Wish Upon the Pleiades, to be entertaining, though; they make sense in a world where motorized transportation is the norm, and I enjoyed that Koshigaya was putting stickers all over hers.

This fills the same niche as Acro Trip, a different take on an old genre that's trying to reach both genre fans and those who might not be. I don't like it quite as much as the former, probably because I'm not thrilled by office politics and bureaucracy, which is already sneaking in a bit, but it's definitely worth at least the three-episode test.