Magical Destroyers

Episode 10

As many an anime has done before it, Magical Destroyers has given us what the trope-savvy among you have already probably identified as the show's “All is Lost Moment.” You've seen it in countless other stories: Now that the scope and scale of the Bad Guy's machinations have been revealed, the Good Guys put their all into one final assault on the enemy base, but, since this is a fiction in need of some drama, everything seems like it's going to hell right before some kind of last-minute twist or revelation changes everything. Sometimes this big changeup gives the heroes exactly what they need to succeed, and other times it only serves to plunge them even deeper into despair. “Silent Before Rage” is one of the latter kinds of “All is Lost” episodes.

Now, just because this is a common storytelling trope, it doesn't mean that I'm sad to see the show going back to such an old well. On the contrary, Magical Destroyers has needed some truly concrete stakes for a while now, so I'm honestly in favor of killing off a bunch of the side characters and throwing in some mind-melting reveals for good measure. All of the other otaku soldiers have been marked as cannon fodder from day one, which makes all the jokes at the expense of their cliched camaraderie and death-flag-waving go down a lot smoother. Honestly, the joke about literally everyone else has gone to the mildly interesting train museum except for the Train Otaku Guy is one of the funniest gags that the show has had in a while.

The plot developments concerning Slayer, Shobon, and the whole of the SSC's attack are a mixed bag, however. On the negative side of things, while I think the asspull of all the otaku being immune to brainwashing because of their obsessive nerdiness was supposed to be a kind of “so stupid that it's funny” kind of joke, it's still really dumb. I'm more in the middle in regards to the SSC Magical Girls all being clones of our heroines (or vice-versa, I guess). It's a predictable twist, but it works well enough. The best bit of the episode is the stuff with Shobon's special notebook being the collection of storyboard sketches that we've been seeing as episode previews for the past ten weeks. It's weird, meta, and a genuinely clever way to reveal the more obvious elements of Shobon's mastery over this reality.

The big problem with Magical Destroyers going all in on the tragic spectacle that an “All is Lost Moment” demands is the whole “spectacle” part. This has never been an especially good-looking show, but Magical Destroyers has always gotten by on the skin of its teeth thanks to its wacky creativity and lively, stylish energy. This approach still mostly works on the kinds of limited fighting that you can get away with in Magical Girl battles, but all of the Otaku Army stuff just doesn't work. Slideshow animation, weak staging, and a total lack of depth and momentum in the artwork simply make it impossible to appreciate the valiant last stands of all these nerdy weirdos on an aesthetic level, which is kind of the whole point when all of the characters doing the dying are such one-note cliches.

Still, this is far from Magical Destroyers' worst episode. I'm eager to see how it all ends in just a couple more weeks. While this will never go down as one of the all-timers, I'd love to see the show manage to stick the landing well enough to be remembered as one of the good anime original productions, and not one of the depressing disasters that we're all too familiar with in this industry.

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Magical Destroyers is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.