Magical Destroyers

Episode 6

Well, it was probably bound to happen, sooner or later. While I wouldn't go so far as to say that “Revolution Eve” is a bad episode of Magical Destroyers, it's the first episode of the series so far that simply doesn't do anything for me whatsoever. I wasn't mad, confused, irritated, or in any way perturbed by this week's episode of Magical Girl antics. I was just kind of bored, and I have very little to say about what went down. In a way, that might actually be worse than if it were just a straight-up failure.

There are two core issues at hand with “Revolution Eve” that I can easily identify, with the first issue being that the episode is an origin story of sorts, which shows us what life was like for Otaku Hero in the weeks after three naked, mononymic Magical Girls got Fed-Exed right to his front door. The problem here is that there really just isn't all that much to even tell. Anarchy, Blue, and Pink basically imprinted on Otaku Hero like a trio of busty baby birds, and, after a couple of very basic “cute friends doing cute things” bonding scenes, the girls' magic abilities awaken thanks to the power of their love for their Master/Father Figure/Boyfriend/Military Commander…Guy.

All of this might be fine if the episode were particularly funny or inventive, but that leads us to the second issue of “Revolution Eve”, which is that it sees Magical Destroyers kinda-sorta trying to take itself seriously. Maybe? It's honestly hard to say since the root foundations of this whole show are just so damned stupid that it is very likely that moody scenes, like Otaku Hero mourning at the makeshift graveyard of his otaku brethren before dramatically confronting the evil SSC Leader, are simply another layer of the joke. Either way, though, since Magical Destroyers lacks the visual polish to really dial the drama for the sake of ironic laughter, the whole effort just feels somewhat clumsy and half-baked. Even in an ironic context, the show hasn't earned the right to try to get us to actually care about its story.

At least, not yet. With all of the scenes involving the spooky SSC TV Head Guy, not to mention Otaku Hero dropping the background-info bomb of his own dead-daddy issues, I still cannot shake the feeling that Magical Destroyers is building towards…something? Or, at least, it's trying to? I will continue to weather on out of pure, morbid curiosity if nothing else, but there are only so many more times I can say “Maybe next week is when the show will really show us what's going on” before we get tired of playing the waiting game.

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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.