MANGA REVIEW | "Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc." - Volume One
Many women who grew up watching Pretty Cure could only wish that being a magical girl was an actual job. You get to save the world and beat up evil villains, all while looking cute doing it. But it’s not all mystical powers and animal sidekick characters uttering a strange catchphrase. There’s also a lot of paperwork and hiring processes that need to be done, as the new series Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. goes to show.
Written by Sekka Iwata and illustrated by Yu Aoki, Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. follows the day-in-the-life of the company of the same name. The main star of the company is the one and only magical girl currently: Hitomi Koshigaya. They’re a fresh startup, meaning that they lack the reputation and the staff to deal with larger monster problems. Fortunately, that’s where Kana Sakuragi comes in.
A fresh college graduate, Kana is doing all she can to find a new job. However, despite her smarts, where she lacks is in confidence. Before a big interview, a monster known as a Kaii attacks the building, resulting in the company giving a call to Magilumiere Inc. Hitomi arrives, only to have issues battling this certain Kaii. But Kana winds up being a surprising help to Hitomi, with her strong memory coming into good use when it comes to defeating the Kaii.
Quickly, Hitomi snags Kana and brings her to the company. After hearing the details, Kana agrees to become a magical girl. From there, she gets to know the rest of the staff of Magilumiere Inc. From the head of customer support Kaeda Midorikawa and magic engineer Kazuo Nikoyama to the cross-dressing president Kouji Shigemoto, Kana finds that her new coworkers may have a few interesting quirks that she’ll just have to make due with.
A lot of Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. is a satire on the genre itself. Unlike Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka, this series stays in the lane of comedy. However, I’ll admit that only half of the time did I find myself laughing at this manga’s sense of humor. Reading through Kana’s first broom-riding mishaps is pretty funny, but for some reason, some of Hitomi’s mannerisms came off more annoying than silly.
There’s also the issue with the story’s pacing. The first volume only makes up for four chapters, with the first three being more super-sized than normal. Yet even with learning about the lore of magical girls or how certain magic works, it was hard to stay interested in what was being said. Thankfully, there’s a saving grace in all of this: Kana herself.
Here’s a woman who has gone through one failed interview after another, with the work world constantly beating her up. It reaches a point where she starts losing faith in her skills, despite her many strengths. When she’s finally given the chance to shine, Kana transforms (sometimes literally) into the worker that she’s always wanted to be. In a way, her growth in the first volume is very relatable, especially when it comes to how grueling a job hunt can be!
When magical girl battles begin, Yu Aoki’s art shines. From his unique take on the transformation sequence to the fights with the Kaii, the visuals look beautiful and detailed. The character designs look great, especially when you have president Shigemoto arrive looking half-asleep wearing an elegant magical girl outfit. Bonus points for the way the magic brooms look, which take a generic item and inject it with 21st century technology that’d make Dyson salivate over the pages.
It’s a rough first volume of Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. However, by the end of it, it starts finding its voice. Perhaps things will improve with the next volume, now that the main crew and the world has been established. With a new worker with a strong can-do attitude now on the team, Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. has some potential to be a difference-maker in the magical girl genre. But like that job hunt grind, it takes a little slogging to get through before arriving at the good stuff.
FINAL GRADE:
Promotional consideration provided by Chantelle Sturt of VIZ Media.
