In recent years, creatures known as Kaii have frequently attacked cities and wrought destruction. Exterminating these monsters quickly became a popular and well-respected profession, carried out by magical girls. More than five hundred magical girl companies, ranging from small ventures to large corporations, offer their aid to those who need it.
Kana Sakuragi is a studious college graduate struggling to land a job despite attending numerous interviews. But when a Kaii attacks during her latest interview, she finds herself assisting the magical girl responding to the crisis. Although she lacks battle experience, Kana relies on her exceptional memory and knowledge to help subdue the monster.
Hitomi Koshigaya, the headstrong magical girl who faced the Kaii, recognizes Kana's potential and invites her to join Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc.—the startup where Hitomi works. Wishing to make a difference, Kana accepts the offer to become a magical girl herself. While Kana may not be suited for the corporate world, it soon becomes clear that her true calling is to rise as one of the most talented magical girls in existence.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
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Comentários
Marinate1016
As a massive Mahou Shoujo fan I came into this season very excited because of the number of magical girl entries we had. Out of all of them, Magilumiere was the best and honestly I think this is one of the best magical girl stories ever. Even with all the titles JC staff had this season, they didn’t miss a beat with this one. Cool fights, transformation, a great soundtrack and a really fascinating world. Kana and Hitomi rocked my world and are definitely in the running for best duo this year. This is a must watch for any magical girl fan! Instead of just beingcute magical girls fighting monsters of the week type of story, Magilumiere puts us in a world where magical girls are a legitimate career with entire companies, staffing agencies and more dedicated to them. This show focuses more on the economic aspect of being a magical girl, at least in this first cour. It also has the distinction of featuring an all adult cast which is so nice because even as a Precure fan, I want to see more adults in this genre. It’s easier to relate to and I think there’s more interesting topics that can be handled. While we only got a little sample of the world building and larger story in this first season/cour, I’m very much excited to see how things play out in the future with the characters balancing their work as magical girls with their own personal lives.
Speaking of the characters, they’re a huge reason this show is so good. Kana is a very relatable character that I think a lot of people will be able to empathise with. You know, the recent college grad looking to get your career started and find a company that actually values your talents sort of relatable. She finds a home in Magilumiere, a place that not only values her talents, but encourages her to nurture and develop them. This was such a nice viewing experience for me because Kana finding such a great work environment is reflective of how so many young adults feel today. All the rejection and trials she went through and just finding that one spot where you’re valued and feel like more than just a number, but an actual part of a team. Hitomi, her partner, was also really fun to watch. A gyaru gym teacher with tomboy tendencies who started out mentoring Kana, but as time goes on Kana ends up being the one to show her new techniques and skills while on missions. Their dynamic was really good, only issue I have is Hitomi herself was lacking a bit in the character development department. But the manga is ongoing and we have another season coming so likely that’ll be addressed then.
One of the very underrated parts of this show is the production values. This is the 2nd best looking JC staff show this season outside of Danmachi. The fights look way better than they have any business doing. The soundtrack is also crazy good, like one of the best this year good and no one’s talking about it. The composer for this one is someone I wasn’t familiar with before, but their pieces really elevated the story!
It’s a bit grating how slept on this show was this season in relation to how damn good it is! Leaving this to rot on Prime with no promo was such a bad choice. It’s a really fun magical girl story with great action, characters and a cool setting. I think even people who don’t usually like magical girls will be able to jump into this one and enjoy it just because of the relatable adulting themes, the action and overall vibe. Can’t praise or recommend this one enough.
Magilumiere gets 9 out of 10.
Dangerous_Boy
Mahou Shoujo only in words, Magilumi is (in general) closer to New Game! and (in anime that aired with it) Trillion Game as a workplace drama anime, rather than close to Precure in any way. But while both New Game and Trillion Game are mostly personal, focusing on the human element of the many working parts in an office, Magilumi is mostly professional and the cast is quite shallow. This first season was pretty much about a singular thing: Kana's professional growth. She is good at learning the theory, but through these episodes she learns from people, from experiences, from the industry and through working. Andthat's it. Kana as a person doesn't shine through, and neither does anybody* else in the cast. If Kana is to be Aoba, Koshigaya is to be Kou, which is not only Aoba's Vergilius, but also her enemy down the line, making their dynamic ever more interesting; something which doesn't happen in Magilumi. Koshigaya is almost a deus ex machina, she's just there to solve every issue while Kana is still learning the ropes.
The Kaii aren't enemies or antagonists, which can be perceived by how there's no personality to them or their designs. They're just a simple proxy for "problems at work" for the drama to occur. New Game gives its problems solid form, deadlines, art issues, marketing issues, programming issues, concept issues, which gives the problem personality, and allows the characters handling it to show who they are. By making the problems the opposite of Koshigaya, in that they're just there for things to happen and Kana have something to think about and solve or not, much of how we, as viewers, can interpret what is taking place is also lost. In the finale there was finally a good design in the enemy, but the way to handle it was the same as always, in that vague magic shenanigans occur and it's over. It's mostly style over substance, without being very stylish at it (Mechaude, for an example, was also style over substance, but they went all out on the style, so it earned its worth.)
Ultimately, the antagonist of this season wasn't the monsters, nor the capitalist company, but Kana herself. The evil she had to defeat in this journey was her own self-hatred, and becoming a better professional by overcoming it, seeing how her talents aren't worthless and how what she does helps the company. Putting it this way, it does sound Mahou Shoujo-ish, in how she had to regain her own hopes and dreams, but through finding a job that allows her to see herself, and what she can do, and validates and values that. These girls are magical for people that work on terrible jobs, or aren't valued, or are soon graduating and fear what the future holds.
*Shigemoto isn't shallow and carries the show, both in personality and voice acting. Now that the "Becoming a full-fledged professional" arc is over, I can only hope his past and the future his ideals lead to are what the series spins around, as that's what's most interesting in this world.
KANLen09
Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. - A Mahou Shoujo work focused on corporate management? That's a first. "A satirical, grounded take on magical girls, where they fight the biggest evil of all: corporate management." That's the comment from the ever-so-popular AniTuber Gigguk, and I have to say that the sentence rings true for mangaka Setta Iwaka's lone series that is a fascinating take on the oversaturated Mahou Shoujo genre that houses within the much-popularized platform of where manga series become huge juggernauts in the process: Shueisha's Shonen Jump+. And truth be told, you can experiment on a genre so much to the point where it becomes staleby the dozen (at least when it comes to Isekai/fantasy works), but at least in the case for Kabushikigaisha Magi-Lumière a.k.a Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc., it has a promising hook, on the basis that you have to give the anime a second chance to let it stretch its plot in a slow, but tolerable manner.
In the world of Kabushikigaisha Magi-Lumière, the Mahou Shoujo work is taken as a true profession: a legitimate one because of the creatures that roam around, which can quickly become a nightmarish catastrophe: Kaii, monsters that come in all sorts of ranges that's pretty much like Pokémon with their various types. And for the sole girl that is the new college graduate of Kana Sakuragi headhunting for her first job, she has an excellent depth of memory to offer, but most companies would find it to be more of a liability than anything. That is, until she comes across the Mahou Shoujo of HitomI Koshigaya having to exterminate a Kaii in an emergency situation, and with her depth of knowledge being the prime factor to help the Magical Girl defeat the creature, Kana is immediately signed onto the unkempt start-up company that is Magi-Lumière, where Koshigaya is the company's Mahou Shoujo spokesperson.
For one thing, birds of a feather flock together, and Kana finding herself within an old, rundown building that houses the startup company alongside eccentric people that ranges from the crossdressing Mahou Shoujo fanatic of president Kouji Shigemoto, his able HR secretary of Kaede Midorikawa, alongside magic engineer Kazuo Nikoyama, not one single person is sane in this small startup company. But if there's one thing going for them, their quirks make up the fact that despite having more than 500 Magical Girl companies established for the very reason to exterminate Kaii, Magi-Lumière stands out for its orthodox approach to the standard, typical work that is assigned: to create and assess their aesthetics, as opposed to big corporations like AST Corporation's president Kei Koga and his able-bodied, all-rounder Magical Girl of Mei Tsuchiba, who is the best representation of Japan's typical Black Company culture, putting funds and results first before people. The dynamics of Magi-Lumière being the startup company as it is, they need not conform to hard-and-fast rules that would be the irate response to workers quitting, and instead, can establish themselves as a Magical Girl company operating on their own terms, terms that would not assume or judge people at face value, and the wholly trust by hiring them based on their hobbies and likings that would be future contributions to the company in a good way to help excel the growth into a good reputation. Now that's the mark of a strategic company, especially for Magi-Lumière's status as a small organization willing to experiment on the good and bad and see what works to advance their limitations forward.
The anime being yet another one of J.C.Staff projects for the Summer/Fall seasons, the No. 4 of 8 shows, certainly is the mark of what I would come to expect of a J.C.Staff show, though it's the collab with the smaller studio Moe being its first foray into anime production. While the overall production is a touch above average, it's a thing of beauty to see the classic Mahou Shoujo transformation trope get some much-needed love, with each girl getting a minute or two spliced just for their somewhat heavily elaborate transformation sequence that shows every nook and cranny of their Mahou Shoujo likeness. Honestly, I'd feel that this show has not a single minute wasted on anything insignificant, and even if it does, it's only splashing on the minor stuff, and this is the one extent that the hit-or-miss studio Moe director Shingo Nagai and his no-name staff team got things handled right.
The standout would be music composer Makoto Miyazaki's OST for the anime, and given his repertoire of high-profile works, the likes of One Punch Man, Spy x Family, and the most recent of which is Zom 100, I guess I shouldn't be surprised of a veteran's weight and prowess after all. Even both Mafumafu's OP and syudou's ED are good to great, catchy songs at the very least, and I find myself enjoying both songs quite a bit.
It's easy to get lost in the Mahou Shoujo realm thinking that the genre can flex just like Isekai/fantasy does, but at least it's not to the point where it is run dry and overdue to correct its course too late to its run. At least in the context of Kabushikigaisha Magi-Lumière a.k.a Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc., I think that this is a show that deserves a second look, despite looking average and directionless at the very start to set its paces properly. It does have a plot, but like the story of the hare and the tortoise, it's better to plow through the plot/premise slowly than rush through its paces and end up being a trainwreck of an adaptation.
Of course, there is the original source material of the manga to plow through, but why read when you can watch the show instead? With Season 2 confirmed to focus more on the main story at hand, you have no excuses to not give the anime a shot if you haven't yet already, you won't be disappointed.
Reviewholic
A refreshing take on the magical girl genre, while also fantastically wholesome. The big bad first. During my viewing of this anime, I'm always aware of its quality of drawings. This season is full of anime of the action category with solid art quality, Magilumiere unfortunately, does not have that luxury. Its weakness becomes especially apparent during action sequences. The most important action, the magic attacks, are really just the girls staying almost motionless with their wands out and let the passable special effects take over the screen. The antagonist in this story are mostly monsters called Kaii, which mostly have very limited movement andalmost zero expression. Magilumiere also has this interesting take on how magical girls work, starting their action sequence with this long prelude that is akin to a pest control, which diminishes the sense of threat from the monsters they're facing. To lower the stakes further, the magical girls are never severely injured throughout the anime despite the constant verbal warning that it is a life-threatening job. Maybe it's just the beginning, so the monsters aren't that dangerous yet. Or maybe, this is the viewer-friendly tone the anime is trying to maintain. Regardless, the anime has much room to improve on its action sequences.
Now to get to the good part, I think Magilumiere is clever on utilizing its sci-fi and corporate themes. Usually, magical girl anime only have a few chosen heroines who can transform into magical girls. But in Magilumiere, pretty much any girl can pick up the tools and start working as one. So instead of getting stuck in the old loop of "monster of the week", Magilumiere adds another "magical girl of the week" to the mix. They also expanded the idea of magical girls by adding more roles to the business, with coordinators, engineers, manufacturer and all that. Rather than just monsters, you get more characters into the story, bringing out more personalities.
The best part of Magilumiere imo is the fantasy. Ahhhhh, the fantasy of having a friendly, supportive, respectful work environment. The anime is most enjoyable when the MC, Kana, interacts with her coworkers. You know when the boss says to you "We are all family here"? In real life, that's a huge red flag that could be translated to "Family members should tolerate my exploitative behaviour". But in this anime, the boss, President Shigemoto, says it like he's Vin Diesel. He treats Kana, a total rookie, as a coworker, rather than a subordinate. His orders aren't commands from a superior, but guidance from a leader. He showers Kana with ridiculous amount of praises, and probably only spoke sternly once to her while maintaining courtesy. As if that isn't dreamy enough, he drops the hardest lines in action. Alongside Prez, Kana is also mentored by a senior magical girl called Ms. Koshigaya, who is a super friendly tomboy. Ms. Koshigaya is quite a straightforward character and talks funny, she is the life of the party in the company. Kana also meets more magical girls on her job, who are just as friendly and supportive. I work in a mildly dog-eat-dog industry, morality and courtesy kind of comes in second to profit here, so it's a soothing experience to see the world of Magilumiere where their magical girl profession is treated with so much respect.
Plot wise, not much of the main plot has been revealed yet. The monsters do get stronger and more dangerous as Kana's journey continues, but very little worldbuilding info and history about monsters and magic are given at this point. The backstory of the Magilumiere company too are only surface level. There is definitely progress on both Kana and her company's growth but plot wise, not much is going on due to the semi episodic formula. And that's an okay approach for a first season, to introduce and develop the characters first. It is implied that things will get more serious in season 2, and while I'm pessimistic that the action animation will scale up to that seriousness, I will definitely keep watching Magilumiere for the healthy vibes.
whiteflame55
This one was an oddity for the season. I picked it up relatively late and spent a lot of the time with it just vibing with the worldbuilding. I’ve done that with other series like Delicious in Dungeon, but that series left me constantly hungry (pun intended) for more information on the minute details of how the world works, whereas this one just kept me lightly entertained with its details, more like a continuous drip feed. The two do share a relatively middling narrative throughline and each has their interesting characters coming in with their own baggage, but the concept of this one is morebasic by design. It’s part of a larger trend of taking fantastical concepts and bringing them down to earth by making them part of a more mundane, systematized setting. That’s not a negative, but it does mean that these concepts don’t elicit “wow”s so much as they do “that’s interesting”s.
Still, it’s the worldbuilding that hooked me and it’s the characters that help bring it to life. Everyone in the cast plays a role in fleshing out how its various elements work from the field work (Hitomi) to the engineering of spells (Kazuo) to the planning required to make them effective (Kana) to the organization behind those efforts (Kaede) to the leadership required to ensure that the company can stay afloat (Kouji), and the outside parties we’re introduced to reflect the different pressures and emphases of other companies.
It’s a neatly laid out story with some interesting, somewhat quirky characters and it leads to some creative confrontations with the various Kaii of the world (mostly mutations) that also simultaneously functions as a bit of the second best start up story this season (what can I say, I’m loving Trillion Game) as others discover their talents and Magilumiere moves up in the world. I would have loved to see them spend more time being scrappy and underappreciated in their industry, but it makes sense that their successes would be recognized as they have, even if it feels like we’re missing some opportunities to see how larger companies respond to this newfound competition. Instead, the series stays pretty tightly focused on the characters, particularly Kana, and how they develop their skills and expertise over the course of the series and become more confident in their roles.
Unfortunately, this focus also limits the series somewhat, since its narrative only hints at more going on outside of these dynamics. The history between Kouji and other CEOs seems like an interesting source of drama that could explain a lot of how the distinct mentalities of the different companies work, but we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s going on there. I get the impression that there will be a shift to focus attention there after this, but there isn’t really a narrative drive towards some conclusion so far, just progression of the company and developing the people in it and those they interact with.
This season was a good time. The animation is decent and mostly pops in its interesting Kaii and magic designs when they really get going, particularly in that final episode. It sets a pretty strong foundation for a story that could build on it substantially if it ups the conflict and the drama, which is enough for a season 1, even if it doesn’t really stand out as much as I was hoping. I can't give this a full recommendation as a result, but I think S2 could do a lot to expand on this.
PixelB
What is the main issue of this show? I really can't suspend my disbelief at the setting sometimes. Generally speaking, I wouldn't say I am very picky when it comes to worldbuilding. After all, complaining about how physics just doesn't work with 3DM gear in Attack on Titan is just an "erm actually" moment and doesn't actually affect anything. However, Kabushikigaisha Magi-Lumière fails to even pass my low expectations. It's magic in modern world! The problem is quite apparent once you look at even just the first few episodes. The show is a profession-type show, with the main focus being the logistics of how magicalgirls fight Kaii (monsters) with their magical powers. The way the magic is generated, the pipeline towards subduing kaii, and overall the general worldbuilding surrounding magical girls is the focal point of the story. They even use code to generate magical spells in this world. That's all and good, but that also means that if you're going to be so focused on the development of magical girls as an industry and profession, it's got to be a bit more than just Sailor Moon logic. After all, with Sailor Moon, the plot is that "our heroes --magical girls-- have magic powers and can transform." That's perfectly fine for what Sailor Moon was trying to achieve and I am satisfied with that explanation. This show obviously tries to go more in depth on how the magic actually works, so on and so forth. Thus, if you focus on it, you need to flesh it out more.
So begs the question: there's a LOT of blatant plot holes or worldbuilding the anime just decides to never explain or show to you. For example, how does the magical girl industry actually operate? We can go back to even just the adventurer's guild in a classic medieval fantasy as an example. Adventurers take on quests based on their rank, and these quests are issued out in conjunction with the adventurer's guild. The adventurer's guild is a third party entity similar to a contracting company where they accept requests from all sorts of individuals. Even the government will commission adventurer's guild to serve as mercenaries or to clean up monsters in the area.
Here's the thing though: even this simple explanation of how adventurers work is not extended to this show with magical girls. After all, what does the government have to say about this? I have to say that some novels and anime make governments omnipotent. For example, the government being able to predict when monsters appear and issue people to address the issue immediately. In this show, the government doesn't even exist. The show kind of just assumes that a capitalistic privatized magical girl industry would actually be a good solution for a public safety concern that governments would probably have large regulations or control over. At the very least, it would be a mix of privatized and public magical girls depending on the pay and location. Anyways, you might say this is a huge nitpick, but it ties into the main issues I have.
For how in depth the show goes onto looking into how magical girls perform magic and how they exterminate monsters, I really dislike how the show never bothers to explain how the industry came to be in the first place. To begin with, magic can clearly be used with harm as well. How are magical girls controlled and how are magic girl criminals handled? It'd be kind of fun to just see how let's say, see how magic brooms and wands are programmed with failsafes to not target humans under any circumstances, and how the history of that came to be. That's kind of the charm of these types of shows in my opinion; being able to focus on how things came to be in a fun but sort of realistic manner. For a show that has episodes showcasing magic conventions on how to deal with monster mutation and how the pipeline of creating spells from code to the actual field is emphasized, there are still very large holes in logic like this is commonly shown in this anime, which doesn't really make sense for what the theme of the show seems to be. I'm only focusing so much on these sorts of things because the anime clearly wants to be realistic about some things. Such as the fact that in a privatized industry, there's proprietary spells, software, and equipment that they use. And that such proprietary software and information is licensed out to magical girl companies. When you have dedicated research labs towards in-house magic development in companies and have a large amount of exposition and worldbuilding surrounding it, sorry if I also expect to have some semblance of how the industry actually works when it comes to government intervention and public safety.
All other aspects of the show are fine. The show was fine to watch. It's just large leaps in some logic and storytelling makes the show a lot worse. For example, in one episode, Kana has a perfectly functional broom while her partner, Koshigaya broke hers and is running out of power. Since Kana is a beginner while her partner is trying to do the heavy lifting in this episode, is it not normal for Kana to swap brooms so Koshigaya can do her job? Instead there's a crisis with a clear solution but Kana never wants to pursue that line of thought. You might argue that Koshigaya wouldn't be able to reach in time but it's clear that in the next few frames that Koshigaya is able to push off the building and land right next to Kana to do the exchange, showing that it was possible. Instead, Kana inexplicably just does a risky move that she's never done before and crisis averted. Strange.
Other ways the show is just straight up awful is how Kana is portrayed in the first episode. "huh, I really need a way to hammer into the viewer that Kana has good memory. How do I do that?" In an inconsequential scene, Kana is able to memorize all of the previous customers' orders in a coffee shop because the barista forgot their orders. This scene is so shoehorned in just to show how Kana has good memory it's ridiculous. The scene was only crafted to showcase that Kana is smart. It's not the fact that Kana has good memory that makes the scene bad, it's just that the scene was only created to show to the audience the in such a straightforward and forced manner that makes it bad. Could it not have been done more subtly or elegantly?
Anyways, I have been bashing the show but characters aren't so bad outside of Kana's first episode and how her character is introduced. The episodes themselves are frankly average but enough to retain interest. There doesn't seem to be much of an overarching plot so it just makes the episodes focused around magical girl monster extermination and how magic can be applied in different ways. I did think the special effects and CGI were a cut above normal to be honest, and the animation quality isn't the greatest but good enough. I enjoy how the anime blends the CGI and 2D animation. Only in far shots is CGI used for the main characters, and most if not all closeups are hand animated still which is good. The show clearly understands that CGI can be used as a way to save money, but when shots matter, they won't use it.
drainingdays
Seeing the trailer, I initially thought this anime would be terrible solely because of the animation like the 3d low-quality animations for the monsters they’re fighting. I’m thrilled that they improved the animation to be not as bad as the trailer, the animation of Magilumiere has become decent! I loved the manga because it was a fresh new take on magical girls, an innovative concept! The story and development were meaningful yet unexpected which makes it exciting. It touches on realistic themes due to its concept of magical girls as more of a corporate and technological industry driven by software and programming instead of solelyon magic. It's a more mature and systematic concept, especially with themes of idealism vs efficiency of corporations and issues on corporate slave. I hope the manga will get more love and moreover a bigger budget for upcoming seasons because the latter part of the manga is especially exhilarating.
HOWEVER what makes this anime good regardless of the decent budgeted quality of animation and the yeah okay directing was the OST and sound engineering! I normally appreciate OST to an extent and never really noticed sound engineering as much. The OST and sound directing were what pushed me to keep going and finish the anime, whoever was responsible for this I just want to say the team was a godsend. Whoever composed the OST was so good, it had a similar hopeful heroic vibe as encouraging and heartening as My Hero Academia OST or How to Train Your Dragons. The OST has truly left me inspired. I came from reading the manga and I simply liked Magilumiere because of the story, but watching the anime, the ost really made me see Kana Sakuragi in a new light, her story seemed much more inspiring because of the OST. I now understand her personal struggles more and how she grows as a character to become more heroic. The OST moved me to tears, it reminds me of how inspiring Deku was in My Hero Academia as he grew from his struggles and became the hero he has now become. Furthermore, whoever directed the sound engineering was great, they understood great timing.
bossunhimeswitch
When I first saw the manga, it was several chapters in and so I didn't end up reading it, and I'm a little sad I didn't just jump in because this series is so fun and engaging. The characters are easy to like and root for. It's nice watching a blend of slice of life, magical girl, and work place comedy/drama. It also has the benefit of most magic girl stories that are shounen of feeling a bit fresh since they're approaching the subgenre from a different perspective as shoujo typically does. I don't have much to complain about either. It didn't set my brainon fire but I still had a good time. I'm looking forward to season 2.
If you enjoy magica girl and are looking for something that feels kind of grounded in reality then you'll like this. If you're looking for high romance then look elsewhere.
