MozillaFennekin

The term “edgy” gets thrown around as some sort of criticism by people who like to sound smart and mature, because they engage with a medium for people half their age. Personally, I don’t use the word as a criticism, because I often enjoy edge a lot. I think there’s a level of edge that gets enjoyable, because it passes so many levels of believability that I don’t believe it was meant to be taken seriously in the first place. That’s where Mahou Shoujo Site comes in. A more accurate term to describe this anime would be “campy”, but fucking nobody uses that term so I’mnot gonna bother. This anime has knives so therefore it is edgy ha ha ha never saw that joke coming did you. You may be thinking that this is a matter of “turning your brain off” to enjoy something--ignoring the flaws to indulge in the positives. This is also false. I don’t believe in such a concept. In fact, I present the opposite: you should keep an open mind and keep your brain turned on to understand why a creator would make such a thing in such a way. “Mahou Site is sooooo edgy!!! It’s just a bunch of shock value!!!” Wow, it’s almost like that was the fucking point or something. Some people like edgy schlock like this. Why? Who knows. Maybe I’m just some sick fuck looking to get off. Or maybe it’s because I don’t always need a compelling narrative to pick my brain. Look, I’m mentally challenged enough. I don’t need my damn cartoons to enforce that. Sometimes, I like to keep it nice and simple. There are girls in this anime, and they get hurt a lot. It’s not real, so I don’t need to take it seriously. And that’s about it. At no point did I ever get the impression that Mahou Site was supposed to be taken seriously. It wasn’t even trying to take itself seriously half the time, and I can explain this just by looking at the first episode. Asagiri, the main character, thinks about throwing herself in front of an oncoming train, but hesitates at the last minute. As she sits on the ground in her despair, office men on their way to work mutter to themselves how it’s too early in the day to deal with this kind of bullshit, that they were slightly inconvenienced by her attempted suicide. This is the best thing that happens to her on this day. She goes to school and gets thrashed around by some bullies. Then she goes home and gets thrashed around by her brother. Her only salvation is taking care of a stray cat, which the bullies kill on the next day, right before they send in a JoJo character to come rape her. So, in fifteen minutes, we’ve already covered suicide, bullying, rape, animal murder, and domestic abuse. Some would tell you this is all an act to make you pity the main character, and while you’re free to do that, I don’t feel that any attempt was made at making Asagiri a likable character, and here’s why: Aya Asagiri is not a character at all. You see her in an ordinary day, where she lives through incredible amounts of horrifying things, but at no point do you ever get a sense of who this person really is. Her entire character is defined by the things that happen to her. And, at the expense of making my most callous remarks to date, there is simply no logic behind her survival. She hesitates to end her life, but why? She doesn’t have anything to live for. No friends, no dreams, not even a conviction that “it gets better”. Aya Asagiri walks this fictional Earth only to suffer. Anyone who’s depressed, suicidal, victims of bullying, etc. all put up with it for some clear, emotional reason. Aya does not, which is what separates her from being an actual character you are meant to take seriously, as opposed to an avatar for projecting suffering onto. In regards to the graphic loli suffering plastered on the screen, it’s all there just for you to gawk at. Maybe you have some weird fetish, or this kind of thing is just amusing you. You do you. Personally, I find it funny. Mahou Site is cute. It’s a level of edge that comes around to being endearing, because it passes so many levels of believability. Even disregarding my argument about Asagiri not being a real character, the things that happen to her are so extreme that I can only see the thinnest lines of logic. Knives in her locker, that’s believable. Glue on the chair in the class, that’s believable--the recent season of 3-gatsu kinda covered that. But setting up a rape in the back room and watching it? Look, I’ve already proven that I’m not the greatest person, but this is crossing a few lines of sanity here. Not to mention that the older brother beats the shit out of Asagiri right in her bedroom. What the hell kind of soundproofing did they do to their house to keep the parents from not hearing all of the screaming and gasping and thumping? I just moved into a new basement with a thin roof, so it’s very creaky and I can hear everyone talking and having sex, so I’d like to get in on this. Shit, I’m already 900 words into this review for a website I don’t even like using and I still haven’t even scratched the surface of how silly this anime is. How about the fact that one of the magical girls is some bizarre fetish idol group that wears dog costumes and calls their fans their “masters”? Or the magical girl that has some weird, old-ass, masochistic butler who praises her existence so much that he lives to be stepped on? How about the scene where the brother… you know what, no. I can’t spoil that episode. It’s too good to be sullied by this review. All that I’m trying to say is that Mahou Site is wacky. And if you have a problem with that, then that lies with you alone. If you’re disappointed that this author isn’t making high art, that’s fine. And although I can’t speak on behalf of this person, I don’t believe they were trying to make high art in the first place. To dismiss Mahou Site as worthless simply because it is not to your standard is not a weakness of the anime or the creators, it’s a weakness of your own for not being able to accept things outside of your comfort zone. Look, I’m not trying to sound pretentious. I’m not perfect. I dropped Tada-kun after one episode because it bored me to tears. I don’t like anime that have natural characters in a natural setting, and they don’t do anything in particular, but it’s a romance because of course it is. There’s no real reason for that, I just don’t like them. But, I never got the impression that Tada-kun was a bad anime. It was just an anime that wasn’t for me. If you wanna see something from Spring 2018 that’s super edgy and DOES try taking itself seriously, go look at Devils Line. However, I won't go into detail about that because this is a review for Mahou Shoujo Site and not Devils Line. You can ask me about it if you want. That’s all I have left to say on the matter. If you're interested in the story itself, it's not much on paper. Girls get magical items called Sticks, and they use them to do things, and they have to prevent some sort of doomsday. Some people, aka dumbasses, will tell you that this is a Madoka ripoff, but it's really not a unique formula to begin with, as many action series, anime or otherwise, have some sort of doomsday plot. Overall, I don't really have anything to say about the story itself because it's not anything special, but the way it's told is very fun, and that's what's most important. Now, all this being said, does this mean I have no complaints about Mahou Site? Not true at all. It could’ve been better in a lot of ways. As much as I’ve said that the anime shouldn’t be taken seriously, there were admittedly some moments where scenes get heavier and more emotional, and it doesn’t pay off too well as they not only drag on for too long, but the characters aren’t engaging enough to get behind. I also would’ve preferred more action in this series, since it involves a bunch of magical weapons and abilities. While there are a few big, key fights to be seen, the anime plays more like a drama than an action thriller. I suppose this could be more of a preference, because both elements blended together fairly well, but it should be kept in mind that it’s not super action-heavy. Moreover, Asagiri develops into a character that’s just annoying and even more non-sensical than when she had no personality. Hearing her try to plead with others to not harm the ones who’ve caused her grief is just strange and unsatisfying. I was hoping she would have some super badass moment where the gloves come off and she unleashes a rage that reciprocates all of the wrong that’s been done to her in the past, but instead she insists on playing the good girl. It’s boring. People don’t like Guts because he had a shit life. People like Guts because his shit life hardened him into a living badass, so you know that when goes into battle, he does NOT fuck around. Fortunately, the other characters manage to pick up the slack. They’re not amazing, but they’re enjoyable enough to keep the show on its feet. Yatsumura works great as the #2 of the show, and the side characters are about as weird as they come. I already mentioned the fetish idol, but I didn’t mention the girl who felt the need to state that she had big tits like four times in one episode, or the girl whose Magical Girl weapon is a knife that cuts herself to heal others, and that she’s okay with it because she was “already practicing self-harm.” But the real star of the show is the bad boi Onii-chan, whose personality is so off-the-rails that you could tell the author wrote him with a smile on their face. It helps a lot that star actor Nobuhiko Okamoto delivers him with tons of conviction. And I’ll say it again: this character has the greatest scene in recent years. The soundtrack had no notable pieces, but the voice acting was good all-around. I already praised Okamoto, and I’ll do it again because he was great. Newcomer Yuko Ono does a solid job as Asagiri, nailing the despairing moments well along with having a wispy, wimpey voice without sounding like a dying mouse. Yuu Serizawa also delivers with the character of Nijimin, who has some rather severe shifts in tone that happen quickly, and both sides are done well. The OP grew on me a bit--it’s not much more than a standard rock tune with a bit of an edgy streak to it, but it gets the job done. Same with the ED, but less so. Rather, they are carried with their visual presentation--the OP has a cool camera effect that looks like it’s being played through a broken screen or lens. The ED is……… uh, it’s something. Something about two girls doing a live-action dance on a school rooftop while a bunch of sperm cells float around in the background. Yeah, I dunno. Art and animation--ugh, can I go now? I just wanted to dunk on people who were talking shit about me liking this anime because apparently edgy = bad or some stupid bullshit. Look, I’ll just leave this 7/10 score right here, and that should tell you the art is good but not amazing. Alright? Alright, kids, what have we learned today? We learned that watching violent cartoons is okay, there’s no such thing as turning your brain off, and that if you have no personality then you should kill yourself. Alright, cool. Leave me alone now. Story - 8/10 Art - 7/10 Sound - 5/10 Character - 6/10 Enjoyment - 8/10 Edge - 9/10 Overall - 7/10 Favorite episode - 8 Favorite character - ONII-CHAN Recommendation level - Medium-high

SunlitSonata

Have you ever seen a show so banal, so worthless, so unintelligent, so uselessly defiant, so lazy and so pathetic that you hate it with every fiber of your being the longer it goes on as lazy jump ship of popular trends? For me, the biggest example of that, is the latest edge cancer to pound the anime community known as: Mahou Shoujo Site. It is inevitable that within a community, when some concept does something to “break the mold” in a unique way and becomes a mega hit, there will be a ton of copycats spawning from it, to get a slice of that sweetsweet dough. In Western Animation, films like Shrek, as well as cartoons like Ren & Stimpy and South Park made such big impacts that they inspired a jillion ripoffs continuing to this day, all misunderstanding what made their originals work. In anime, we’ve seen this a lot recently when shows attempt to make money by blatantly taking the template from a successful series. It has come with the success of the high school battle harem genre, the survival game genre, Sword Art Online, and of today’s subject: Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Not the earliest example of moe gone dark (When They Cry beats it by about half a decade), but certainly a modern landmark. Madoka Magica, a show using the disguise of a typical Mahou Shoujo praised for its artistry, emotional depth and willingness to go to dark places in showing its characters confronting mistakes they wished to undo, was a mega success, and other creators’ response to that was “if we take a Magical Girl show, and add dark elements, it’ll be a hit”. Shows like Yuki Yuna, Selector Infector WIXOSS, Magical Girl Raising Project and today’s subject: Mahou Shoujo Site, are a result of that bandwagoning. Having seen Yuki Yuna about two years ago, it felt like it went too safe with its content, not being able to properly explore the darker elements the same way Madoka did and not greatly delivering on the lighthearted fun at its front. At the time, I thought maybe if one of these shows would be more willing to handle darker themes, it could have interesting things to say about life and expectations. I was WROOOOOOOOOOOOOONG. Mahou Shoujo Site might, flat out, be the most thoroughly reprehensible, apathy inducing, tryhard, edgy, unpitiable, lazily produced, tonally deaf, inhumane, DISGUSTING pile of shit that I have ever come across. It sucks ass! It sucks balls! It sucks ASS BALLS! And it all starts from one of the worst first episodes I have ever seen for ANY series, let alone anime, one that was so bad it encouraged me to see this to the end just to tear it to shreds. The entire episode was nothing but torture porn, shown with a shy cute girl, to instantly draw sympathy dealing with a list of edge tactics like it was some sort of fucking checklist. These range from her contemplating suicide, to being emotionally/physically tortured by school bullies, to being viciously beaten by her psychopathic brother, having a cute kitten she saved be thrown in front of a train/delivered to her, and being nearly raped by an upperclassman while said bullies just snicker and watch. Eventually through the power of plot convenience, she obtains a magic gun that accidentally kills several of said bullies, only for her to be backed into a corner by another character threatening her with a razor blade. That character then gets stopped by an edgy sociopath girl who could control time. Using so many edge tactics would be laughable if it wasn’t so thoroughly DISGUSTING to watch. All of this torture throughout the first episode is handled in an overtly methodical way, not representative of genuine human fault but a lazy writer using every edgy thing he discovered as a means of forcing audience sympathy. It doesn’t work, not even in the slightest. Gore, violence and cruelty all have their place in a meaningful narrative when they underlie an interesting story or human drama, but going on episode 1 alone, more care seemed to be placed on the tools of edgelords compared to the basic essentials of story, character, or presentation. And yet, despite this awful first episode, it never tried to go further in darkness, but remained brain dead, single minded and bizarrely bipolar with edge to the end. The show was too lazy to even go to the same extremes again. People like me who wanted to watch this to see how much more torturous it could get were met with a barely functional Madoka plagiarist trying to wring earnest interactions out of fetishes with no sense of tone, pacing, or comradery. Everything from Episode 2 onwards is introducing a powerful world ending conflict (the nature of which was blatantly stolen from you know what), while other characters are slowly but surely brought in to put on their edgiest Yandere smile before becoming party members in the inevitable quest. There are many, many, many problems with the writing of this show but for me, the biggest one is tonal cohesion. It can be seen as a problem in a large amount of anime from Fullmetal Alchemist to The Ancient Magus Bride that there are silly comedy moments in addition to the handling of darker themes. However, shows like those keep their overall presentation at a respectable middle ground where either comedy or drama could work when needed, because they care and understand about character building causes for conflict or human drama. The one thing I wasn’t expecting Magical Girl Site to pull was have so many moments where “comedy” arises, whether through one character taking on an appearance with gag boobs, a reference to “apple butts”, comedy credits stingers with the sister-molesting older brother, XD chibi expressions, a girl who frequently gets off to smacking her old butler on the ass, magical mind control panties, or a Beach Episode. Yes, you heard that right. A BEACH EPISODE. A show where everything I mentioned in the first episode occurs, where a character cuts herself in order to heal people with blood, and where another character says “God has never abandoned me before” crazy eyed while bleeding from the mouth and nose, has time for a beach episode. The sheer extent of the whiplash is what really takes me out of anything the show attempts. Whatever humor exists here would be horribly unfunny even in a comedy show, but putting it in a show where nearly every girl deals with cold blooded torture and bleeds from some part of their body when using their power makes any attempts at wacky humor feel like incomprehensible tonal homicide. And not intentionally to create false ease like say, Higurashi. The humor mainly exists to fulfill more of the author’s obvious fetishes. And it’s not just the humor that detracts from the show’s tone, it’s the forced togetherness of the End of the World conflict (pretentiously called The Tempest) that brings it down to the dark depths of anime hell. In a show where crazed maniac girls are commonplace holding death grudges against one another, none of the many relationships feel like they build to comraderies. They just happen because the plot type demands it. Most egregiously with one of the bullies from Episode 1 that remained alive. Said character gets an incredibly disproportionate reason for starting her less than human bullying streak, nearly kills the protagonist at a latter point, and then just because the protagonist doesn’t kill her back, they become buddy buddies to stop the end of the world. WHAT?! Sure, there’s a realization there but that’s barely a redemption arc and it is unforgivable to try and move our sympathies to a girl who gleefully tortured the shy and ineffectual protagonist in Episode 1 because of a ctrlCctrlV broad conflict. Several other character relationships go the exact same way, with characters at each other’s throats becoming close friends without any sort of proper pacing to get to that point. What could’ve been developed drama of troubled characters finding it within themselves to work together becomes sullied by a forced need to have the “band together against the apocalypse” involving way too many characters who get no time to let conflicts hold. For a show proudly putting its foot down to say “we’re willing to go to DARK depths of what people suffer in life” without time to care about anything, going Team Force Friendship is about the most cliché thing it could possibly do. It’s DiC Sailor Moon putting on the mask of Elfen Lied and Mirai Nikki just to appeal to the edgelord crowd, forgetting that it drove out all likability in only the first episode! Then there’s the power system and eponymous Magical Girl Site system itself, which like many elements of this show, are also f*cked beyond belief. First off, every weapon used by a girl in this show is called…….a Stick. Yup, a Stick, like a tree branch or something. It’s used here to describe anything from heart guns to necklaces to yo-yos to magic controlling panties. Unless you named the weapons Ding Dongs I don’t think there’s any way the author could’ve put less thought in. Serious scenes where characters call their weapons Sticks come off as more silly than fierce. I could just now imagine one girl picking up a tree branch and attempting to wear it underneath her skirt, insisting that it is called underwear, in a world where magic panties are considered Sticks. Finally, the whole Magical Girl Site concept. “Scary” face papercut people in some weird pocket dimension hack computers to give random girls magical girl powers for what seems like no reason, but eventually is revealed to relate to the completely forced apocalypse. The one who gather the most arbitrary negative energy gets to survive while everyone else dies. No specific idea is handled with the Magical Girl recruiting, since they didn’t even nick Madoka’s “wish for a price hope/despair” routine, just the enemy identity idea stolen in every series ever featuring fights against inhuman monsters, with no time to sink in because of awful pacing. Most of the origin stories for the girls don’t get an exclamation at all for the site being there, like the writer was too lazy to care about why they had their generic or fetish powers. The site itself doesn’t connect to the conflicts of any character even semi-well, with this antagonist force not getting any justification for their appearance, random ass powers or Halloween play paper cutout appearance. In that sense, the show’s script is emblematic of everything regarding this series. Illogically lazy. Not bothering to commit to any unique ideas, it instead nicks them from a source most people would recognize, but lacks any sort of tonal cohesion, proper pacing, variety, understanding of human drama, effort or passion. It doesn’t even conclude itself properly, giving fuck all to any sort of viewer payoff as well. It’s pure phoned in tripe, creating a torturous 1st episode only to wring further relationships from the foundation of a used toilet paper tower on a raft in the ocean, during a thunderstorm. Naturally this laziness extends to the animation as well, from the studio’s 2nd ever project. With no effort blasé character designs, bleh grey and black backgrounds (except during the beach episode), and absolutely nothing resembling flow in fight scenes, this is about the lowest effort one can put into a TV anime, sans excessive CGI armies or characters moving like a PowerPoint presentation. Even the few attempts at visual flourish are either “paint everything blue or red”, or sunset scenes. Action, as I mentioned before, has no flow in any capacity, even doing things like using action lines over colored backgrounds that I thought we grew out of in early Pokemon. Fundamental things are done terribly, like crows not bleeding when they are cut in half, or photoshopped meatballs being over characters’ heads in one occurrence. And there’s also the wonderful images of many Yandere faces, a psychotic grown man putting on little girl panties, and the ED having sperm fly everywhere. A show like Hand Shakers looks godawful in its own way but I could at least tell that the staff at Studio GoHands were TRYING to do something unique and inventive, despite it backfiring in every conceivable way. A show like this does about the minimum effort possible to be considered passable in some capacity, and absolutely suffers for poor art design because of it. So it’s a shame for however many Japanese animators spent long days and nights on it. The sound is also low effort, so low effort that I barely have anything to talk about. Suppose I could mention that the one girl who runs fast does so with an obvious stock sound effect, or the fact that this show’s entire reason for being adapted hinges on promoting the idol group I⭐️ris. You heard that right, even the STUDIO only made this to profit off a contract for a promoting idol group, one whose insert in the series wasn’t even memorable by Idol standards. Because anyone who gave a crap about artistic integrity or creativity stayed as far away from this as possible. Finally, the characters. What “characters”? This show has none! All it has is inhumane gleefully cruel excuses for the author to jot down his fetishes and edge checklists. These characters all have names and unique hair types, but without any distinguishing character features to them, the “character” element fades in the background. Already Episodes 2-12 are forced to work with Episode 1’s broken foundation, and when it does have to try and “develop” anyone from that episode, it has nothing to work with and leads to nothing properly worthwhile. The pacing’s jank so any chemistry between devices feels tenuous at best and completely unbelievable at worst. The lack of effort isn’t just present for what the show lacks but for what is present as well. Of the nine girls (eventually ten) that it puts in the “Hero Group” role, six of them have edgy Yandere moments at different points, which is not only lazy but barely distinguishable or built up. Higurashi didn’t make every single girl a Yandere, and for the ones they did, they built up the element, however well. It even uses the “my parents were killed by a psychotic man” backstory twice, one of which gets revenge so fast that we have no reason to care for the endeavor. And when those in the show are not being psycho Yanderes (including the evil for the sake it older brother), they’re either completely cliche or fulfilling a sick fetish for the author with no substance or identifiable goal. Whether it be the gag boobs girl, the apple butted idol who controls people with magic panties, a girl who cuts herself frequently to heal people through the mouth insisting she’s not emo, a girl whose only trait is “runs fast”, or a girl whose main trait is smacking about an innocent old butler. Every Magical Girl bleeds from a different part of their body as well, so anyone with a bleeding fetish can rejoice in knowing that bleeding from body parts will be a continual process that is never confronted as a problem because the show is that lazy! The ONLY attempt at anything resembling a character arc is protagonist Aya, who learns to get over her shyness, make friends with other characters, rebel against an immediate plan following a character death, and organize a beach visit for everyone! On paper it’s acceptable growth, but in practice, the terrible writing and relationships that aren’t given any time to rest, making many of her choices feel forced. This includes her forgiveness of the bully girl who viscerally tormented her prior and during the series start. It’s a cliché path hampered down by the creator’s laziness as well as awful plot rolling. No one else has anything CLOSE to that attempt, which I should stress was unsuccessful. Enjoyment and Conclusion One could easily say “why did you even talk about this show if you knew you were going to hate it from Episode 1”? Simply put, anime tends to inspire me in its ambition. Whether a show is a masterpiece or a dumpster fire, I’m usually enthused by its wide variety across genres, different strengths and screw-ups, passion projects and inventive concepts using animation. I admire the storytelling potential present in an anime series, whether it be from the classics period or the modern age. The reason I single out a show like this is because it is the antithesis of everything worthwhile in an anime, or any form of art period. Rather than putting effort to make their series high quality, the author did nothing more than rip off popular trends to steal away a direct audience, not having to keep tone so he can throw his sick fetishes into an angsty Yandere-full horribly contrived setup. It’s a show the studio put out, not to share an inventive idea with the world, but to promote an idol group with the bare minimum in every capacity. This isn’t misguided passion, or even the type of hilarious straight faced terrible idiocy one could find in Ousama Game. This is a product, assembly lined from checklists and trends that shouldn’t persist, forgoing the artistry its inspirations held high, and is impossible to enjoy because it was neither consistently in straightfaced “crawling in my skin” nor smart enough to be a parody of itself. Laziness begets laziness when it comes to this, spitting on the potential of anime storytelling for something less substantial than starring out a smoked window for 4 hours. This fetish fueled, plagiarized, lazily produced tripe isn’t even remarkably bad. It disgusts me in having nothing but contempt for the concept of effort. It’s boringly awful in every way, but complete failure all the same that I could never recommend to anyone.