Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc.

Episode 11

If Magilumiere wants to keep my attention, it just needs to keep throwing cool new magical ladies at me. As foreshadowed last week, this episode brings in Makino Akane, a magical girl guest star for Kana to mentor. As newly added characters should, Akane shifts and shakes up some of the show's dynamics, and even recontextualizes some elements. She's a great addition that's only tempered by the fact that she's almost certainly only a temporary tagalong with the main cast and that she heralds the Magilumiere anime getting ready to coast to a stop just as it feels like it's getting going.

As with any new addition to your workplace, initial time with Akane is spent just trying to get a read on her. Her general vibe pushes the "career woman" side of magical-girls-as-a-job that this series is founded on, reflected in her sharp business attire and general go-getter attitude. She, at first, comes off with a very mercenary approach to furthering her career and climbing the magical corporate ladder, to the point that I thought she was insincere. Her outside denigrating of the Magilumiere building gives way to compliments of the crew that seemingly feel backhanded.

It turns out that Akane's words might be genuinely kind, and she's so straightforward in her approach that you have to take her at face value. Despite possessing the energetic attitude of a newbie, she's actually in her fourth year of working as a magical girl. As evidenced by the awards and MVP plaques decorating her home, she seems to have started strong in her job. But now, four years on, Akane is in a place where she feels like she's stalled out, and needs to find a way to upskill and properly broaden her possibilities. Hence, taking instruction from Kana, a magical girl who's been on the job for only a few months, but works with a startup that's actively, rapidly innovating in the space. That marks Akane as sincere—she knows she needs this new knowledge to move up in the magical world.

The innovation of Magilumiere itself is also an idea that gets a boost from being recontextualized through the lens of Akane. The audience has been watching Kana and Koshigaya working in tandem through the series, reporting to Shigemoto and Niko in real time so new spells can be whipped up on the spot. What tracks now is that only the girls of Magilumiere have been seen working that way. Not that Magilumiere is only back-confirming older details in this episode. A rundown is given of the "Kaii Calamity" incident from 15 years ago that caused the boom in the magical girl business and might be the origin story of several main characters.

I'm pretty sure next week's twelfth episode will be the last one this season for the Magilumiere anime. Only getting a sampling part of the source material covered is just the nature of the beast of anime adaptations these days. Still, it stings that the show will stop after effectively translating all the foreshadowing of further plot that might not get covered. I'm not sure how this series is doing in ratings success, but for now, I'll hold out hope for a second season.

I have to set aside my misgivings about running its course because this episode is great. Once Akane's character has been properly established, she's cool as a magical girl, showing off a sharp transformation sequence and aesthetic. She's sympathetic in her simpleminded struggles to improve at her job, including running off into a tense climax for this episode that had me worrying about her the same way I did for Lily a few episodes ago. I assume this story will get Real at some point, but for now, it still played me like a fiddle in sighing with relief that Akane turns out fine after barely escaping a Kaii-fueled building explosion. It is setting Magilumiere up for some kind of big finish next week, and if it can be as good as this episode was, I'll probably be reasonably satisfied with it.

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Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Chris would 200% work for a magical girl company if they were real, but he'll settle for writing reviews and ad copy instead. You can peruse more of his views over on his blog , or catch him reskeeting art of anime girls (magical and otherwise) on his BlueSky.