From a young age, Kurumi Mirai has aspired to become a magician. Driven by her ambition, she has spent her childhood preparing to join the prestigious Rettoran Academy of Magic. Although Kurumi excels in the selection exam, her dream is crushed when she is not chosen for the elite magic class.
Admitted to the standard class at the academy instead, Kurumi soon befriends Maki Kumiiru, her new roommate; and Yuzu Edel, another girl unhappy with her placement. However, to everyone's surprise, their homeroom teacher, Minami Suzuki, promises to teach the class magic anyway. Although skeptical at first, the girls start to believe that this may be their second chance at realizing their dreams and becoming wonderful magicians.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
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Firechick12012
Man, it sucks when I can't enjoy something. It especially sucks when it's something you were looking forward to. The subject of today's review, Stories of Girls Who Couldn't Be Magicians, or Mahoutsukai ni Narenakatta Onna no Ko no Hanashi, actually has a bit of a story behind it. In 2018, a company called Project Anima held a contest allowing entrants to submit ideas in the form of novels, scripts, manga drafts, illustrations, and so on, and the winners would have their pieces adapted into anime. MahoNare, as I'll be referring to it for the sake of brevity, took the grand prize for the contest'sfantasy/another world category, and the anime was set to air in 2021, but for some reason was delayed. Luckily, the show was set to debut in October of 2024. And hey, I'm always down for more cute witch/magical girl stories. Unfortunately, MahoNare wound up not being one of the better ones. This one had the potential to be good, but squandered any opportunity it had to rise above being mediocre.
The story centers on a young girl, Kurumi Mirai, who loves magic and wants to be a magician. When she was little, she met a magician who gave her a mysterious notebook, which Kurumi finds out is given to students of the prestigious Letran School of Magic and Magecraft, the only known institution that trains wizards for the International Mage Alliance. Kurumi studies hard so she can get assigned to the Magic Class...only to find that she didn't make the cut, even with her good grades. Kurumi is crestfallen, as she's always dreamed of becoming a magician, but now that that door is closed to her, she's resigned herself to being stuck in the Standard Class, where they study anything but magic...until their homeroom teacher, a strange, tiny woman named Minami Suzuki, announces that she's going to teach magic to everyone in the Standard Class, status quo be damned. But Minami's brand of magic isn't like the magic that Letran usually practices. Is there a chance for Kurumi to finally fulfill her life-long dream after all?
Yeah, this show is pretty much trying really hard to be Little Witch Academia. Let's be real here. Magic school, girl who seemingly can't do magic, a stoic rival with a girl posse who at first hates the MC but later becomes her friend, you've seen it all before. The plot of the differences between ancient and modern magic give off High Guardian Spice vibes, while the side plot of gatekeeping magic brings thoughts of Witch Hat Atelier to me. I will admit, one thing MahoNare does have going for it is its art design. The actual animation isn't much to write home about, and it does its job decently, both the fantastical and the mundane, but its art direction is quite honestly beautiful. It's not the most visually striking show in the autumn 2024 season, but it has a style that's all its own, with charming, watercolor backgrounds straight out of a children's fairy tale, full of whimsy and eye-catching vibrancy. The character designs are fun too, done by Lily Hoshino of Mawaru Penguindrum fame. I have less to say about the soundtrack, though...how in the hell did they manage to get Yoko Shimomura to work on this?! I do not remember her working on anime soundtracks unless they were tied to a game adaptation or something, like Legend of Mana. Though if I'm being honest, this isn't one of her better soundtracks. I couldn't tell you the first thing about it, or the ending theme. The opening song is nice though, and it's done by PuffyAmiYumi. Kinda nice to hear them again. What was the last thing they worked on before this? One of the endings for ReLife, which was in 2016? Dang, that's a long time. Good to know they're still active!
Unfortunately, that's all the positive things I have to say about MahoNare, because everything else about it is a mess. First off, this show has way too many characters. Not as many as Lapis Re:Lights, but 12 episodes is not enough to handle an ensemble cast this big, and they don't get fleshed out beyond their one archetype, so they all come across as extremely bland and one-note. As a result, the series feels really cluttered. A lot of them feel like they're just there to take up space and not much else. Hell, one girl doesn't do anything outside of translate what Minami's pet frog is saying to Kurumi and Yuzu and just disappears, so she comes off like a random plot device than a three-dimensional character. Even the two main girls, Kurumi and Yuzu, are as cliche and bland as white rice. Yuzu just feels like a knock-off of Diana from Little Witch Academia but without everything that made Diana work as a character, and while Yuzu is the only one who gets any real, noticeable development, her change from stoic alpha bitch to Kurumi's closest friend seems to come out of nowhere, feeling more like the writers wanted to change her character when it was convenient rather than actually showing her changing. Going back to Kurumi, as much as I want to like her arc, she honestly feels like a side character rather than the main protagonist. All throughout the series, she hardly ever does anything on her own and spends a lot of her time being indecisive or angsty. There were so many times where I wanted to smack her because she spends so much time whining and unable to act when it matters most. She doesn't manage to do anything noteworthy until episode 10. A character like her might have been fine as a side one, but she fails to deliver as the main protagonist. In all honesty, Minami feels more like the main character than Kurumi does, because Minami is the only character who really moves the plot forward in any capacity. I wouldn't blame anyone if they thought she was the main character, and I feel like the show would be better off if they focused more on Minami than the kids. Also, some of the characters' names are really dumb. Lemone Juicy? Really? Why would you name someone that? Speaking of her, good God her voice is screechy and annoying as hell! Also, there's one point where one of Yuzu's girl posse gets angry at Kurumi for supposedly stealing Yuzu, but this never gets followed up on, so any development she could have had is just thrown out the window.
Though that's not even mentioning how slipshod the story is. MahoNare feels like a longer show that's crammed into one 12-episode season. A good chunk of it just focuses on boring, boiler-plate magic school shenanigans, more interested in meandering and goofing off than actually telling its story. The plot doesn't kick in until a quarter of the way through, but even then its execution falls extremely flat in every way. I have to go into spoilers here because my complaints about the story won't make sense if I don't explain them in detail.
*******SPOILER*********
So it's revealed that the principal of Letran, Northern Harris (Seriously? Who names their kid Northern?), designed a magic system that makes magic more convient for himself and anyone he deems worthy, but it comes at the cost of their energy and lifespan, and ancient magic is actually magic from nature itself, which he sealed away for...some reason. Yeah, the show never really explains why Northern hates ancient magic, and his evil plan makes absolutely no sense because of it. Honestly, Northern himself is a terrible villain because not only does the show not go into more detail as to why he believes his cause is better, which definitely would have helped, but he comes off more like an entitled brat throwing a tantrum because boo-hoo how dare they hate his method of doing things. He has no charisma, no flair, nothing to make him stand out from your regular Saturday morning cartoon villain. For comparison's sake, I've been playing Metaphor: ReFantazio recently, and I find the character of Louis Guiabern to be a fantastic villain because not only does he get shit done people's opinions be damned, he's actually smart and charismatic, knows how to persuade others to his point of view, has an understandable backstory that informs who he is without excusing his actions, and absolutely owns his villainy, but has enough nuance, self-awareness, and depth to him that the story actually works with a character like him driving it. Northern is just...a mediocre villain who, in the end even when he gets defeated, doesn't even learn his lesson because the show ends on a dumb cliffhanger revealing that he has other stuff going on. I'm sure MahoNare is trying to go for the message that modern conveniences don't always work when the chips are down, but if you ask me, Witch Hat Atelier handled the whole gatekeeping magic for the elite plot better.
Actually, beyond Northern being a half-baked bad guy, MahoNare doesn't even bother to answer a lot of questions or resolve its plot threads. Why do most of the staff at Letran turn into animals? The school nurse is apparently a cat, but why does he change into a cat? Is it some kind of curse? And what's the deal with that kid who claims to be Kurumi's brother? Why doesn't he ever talk to her? He spends the whole series just standing around and being mysterious, and he never so much as interacts with her. How does he fit into this whole mess? Does Kurumi even know she has a brother? The show never explains this kid's motivations or what his end game is, and the cliffhanger ends with him getting kidnapped. Like...the show has so many questions that it doesn't bother to answer or resolve, and there's no confirmation of a second season right now, so what was even the point of all this? This is what I mean when I say MahoNare feels like a longer show compressed into a format that's too short to handle it. It sets up these plot threads and characters acting in the background but refuses to really do anything with them. Hell, Kurumi never even finds out that Minami is the magician she met years ago (Yeah, I figured this out in episode one because they're voiced by the same person. Minami doesn't even bother changing her tone of voice), nor that her grandmother was a Letran student too.
*******END SPOILER*********
Tl;dr, MahoNare spends more time goofing off and on a cliche "stop the machine from blowing up and destroying everything" plot than actually answering important questions, developing its characters, resolving important plot threads. God, I really hate that I couldn't enjoy this show, because it does have interesting ideas. But the staff made to work on this were just not the right people for the job, and there are so many other series that tackle this premise or similar ones better, like Witch Hat Atelier, Little Witch Academia, The Worst Witch, The Owl House, and so on. If you want a short, breezy witch girl series to show to your kids, MahoNare is fine, but has nothing of real substance and has nothing to offer beyond its shiny, sugary frosting. Seriously, just check out the stuff I mentioned above, you'll get much more out of them than Stories Of Girls Who Couldn't Be Magicians.
Frousties
(New review after end of anime) This anime is a pretty boring letdown. Typical of your 12 episodes original anime. The artstyle is kind of the only interesting thing about it (which yes, is very pretty, but the animation really never goes very far to take advantage of it) It's not really trying to do anything new or particularly well. The relatively interesting premise is muddled by a huge lack of proper worldbuilding and expansion on the magic system. Kurumi Mirai was at first a pretty likeable main character, but as the show goes on you can only really see her as an incredibly unmotivated moron. She just,doesn't try at all the entire show, everything is handed to her, and she even has the gall to give up on her magician dream midway through after only a couple mistakes and ZERO training. It takes the literal last episode for her to get over it. Also, she must have amnesia or something because her grandma taught her so much and even when her teacher talks about things she told her, she never, ever connects the dots or get a leg up from advance knowledge. She is incredibly useless and only pushed to do stuff thanks to her rival turned oddly close friend, Yuzu.
Talking about Yuzu, she is a much better protagonist than her, and her staying in denial for most of the story makes more sense than Kurumi's agonizingly weak motivation, even though she doesn't really try very hard either, she's just smarter and more pragmatic.
The story is just some nonsense, multiple mysterious characters hinting at mysterious shit while not doing any single thing until the very end, where they do what the main characters were gonna do anyway. Add to that a pretty uninteresting and abrupt final act, where the anime just completely changes what the story is about to focus on characters that barely even exist and how they are somehow the most relevant parts of the plot. Then the main characters fix everything in the first minute of episode 12, great, thanks for wasting my time ig.
The side cast is also pretty bland in an inoffensive manner, not many highlights and the annoying ones are barely here. The anime makes you think they have depth, but it's an illusion, none of them matter.
The world and magic systems are also incredibly bland. At first, showing magic as a technological tool seemed very interesting, calling "magic arrays" the spells characters could cast, hinting at a potentially really creative system... only to NEVER be elaborated upon. The same goes for the other type of magic.
It's basically the most basic magic system disguised with a thin layer of interesting.
Sadly, a pretty disappointing show that failed at every single point to make me give a shit, it's quite impressive, actually. Even worse animes at least gave me hating it as an entertainment. A shame an artstyle like this got wasted on a big nothing-pie.
DoctaMax
I will keep this review brief because I want to encourage as many people as possible to watch this anime without diving into lengthy analyses. I stumbled upon this series on a rather questionable anime website, which I won't name for obvious reasons. I was immediately drawn in by its artwork, and after just a few minutes of watching, the first thing that came to mind was 'Little Witch Academia.' Although this show may not fully do justice to Trigger's masterpiece, still we are in a time where artistic anime(s) have become increasingly rare, it feels like a breath of fresh air. I highly recommend itto anyone who appreciates art, enjoys magic, and especially to those who miss 'Little Witch Academia.'
I am genuinely hopeful that this show will receive a second season. I rated it a 7 because it lacks a proper flow in storytelling, but aside from that, it is thoroughly enjoyable and heartwarming
patkarunungan
'The Stories of Girls Who Couldn't Be Magicians' is a good anime. It has a great premise. It's just that, it fell short of its potential. § Overview Mirai Kurumi had always had this dream of becoming a magician after meeting this certain magician who inspired her to be one and gave her a magical notebook, the one used at Letran Academy of Magic. Years later, she got admitted to Letran Academy of Magic. It's just that, she failed to be admitted to the elite magic class and had to be placed in the standard class. But a mysterious teacher, Suzuki Minami, claims that everyone is capableof becoming magicians and that she will teach the entire class how.
Will she succeed?
§ Notes
§§ Positives
1. The art style is based on water colour. It may be disorienting at first, but it's refreshing from the usual slop.
2. It has a great premise. It's about a girl who couldn't use magic but it's hinted that may eventually be able to do so. We are then invited to root for Mirai Kurumi.
3. Even if unintentional, the makers of this anime point to the battle of educational pedagogy, between classical education versus progressive education, with the in-universe clash of modern, app-based magic versus ancient magic. Just with this aspect, I am giving it so much props.
4. It features the strong female bond between Kurumi and Yuzu.
§§ Negatives
Here's where it goes bad or at least hampers the anime from reaching its full potential.
1. It spent way too much time going about its slice-of-life aspects, which annoyed most of us who were in this for the plot. It ended well, and the last episode is magical, but the middle episodes will really test your patience. No wonder this anime has a preponderance of mixed or negative reviews.
I know the slice-of-life aspects are there to develop the friendship among characters, especially Kurumi and Yuzu. But better pacing and having it develop the plot earlier would have made the experience better.
2. It failed to show how Kurumi is exceptionally gifted with magic. Minami-sensei and Kurumi's grandmother were talking about how Kurumi is gifted, and I was expecting so much after this revelation. There was no extraordinary display of magic. Perhaps it's understandable considering that Kurumi wasn't closely trained and perhaps this display of high magic I'm looking for might happen in a hypothetical season 2, which is unlikely.
3. Speaking of season 2, was it necessary for them to include a post-credit scene in Episode 12 hinting that there would be more? The source material seems just a novel, and there's no ongoing manga/light novel series. Perhaps what we've seen is the entire thing.
4. I don't know why this anime introduced Kurumi's shape-shifting brother if she will not interact with him nor be given an even bigger role other than being an observer. It's a waste of character.
§ Conclusion
Despite these annoying problems, I still recommend it. It could have been an 8/10 story but 6 will do. If you come in thinking it's just a chill, school life anime, it won't annoy you so much.
Dangerous_Boy
Starting with the good: -Watercolor backgrounds really give it a unique visual identity. -The OP is unskippable, Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi still got it -Prominent doses of Horie Yui Now, onto the intrinsic factors of it: This show was sadly dragged down by its main plot. So much was dedicated to the evil lurking beneath our daily lives and the magic to solve it, that what actually was well done in it was lost. Episode 5 was the best episode in the show, worth of being the finale (though the finale did also do it for like 2minutes) even. The ensemble cast of various gimmicks often faces two issues: Morecharacters than the writter can develop and/or more characters than there's screentime to share. Episode 5 showed they actually could write these characters, and use their gimmicks in interesting ways, but refused to, to focus on a The Great Evil plot that had no punchline, point or climax. It all just happened because it had so been written.
The proper execution of this show can be found in Princess Tutu: The darkness shouldn't manifest in random objects which are then exorcised and forgotten, it should envelop the members of the cast, and focus on clearing the darkness in them, developing their characters and through the clash of personalities show both who they and the MC are. Somewhere in here there is an Ahiru Kurumi Mirai and Rue Yuzu Edel, I can see it, but the show just rolled without any more profound developments.
Lastly, what I found most disappointing personally, is that the premise was "we're all magicians," Horie Yui was here teaching the entire class magic, we had an entire colorful cast, and the finale they cooked didn't include all the students gathering together to use a spell that saves the school or the world. They seem to want a second season, which I wouldn't believe to be likely to come, and if it does, I don't think that's the direction they'll take.
Yet another show that didn't notice what it was good at and didn't capitalize on it. It looks pretty, Horie Yui sounds like an angel, but even if my eyes and my ears are pleased, it rings nothing in my heart. Watch Princess Tutu, instead.
